Onwards and going Upwards............

Just recently back from a week in Datca, the house is really coming along now, have a look at latest photos. We have been promised new photo updates every week, so will be able to add these more often as things progress.



Front of the property



Stone work is all done by hand inside and out, with reclaimed timber over the windows and doors.



Inside of Bedroom 1

First floor has wooden floors, you can just see them on this photo. This is looking out from bedroom one to the study at the front of the house.

Side View - door and window of second bedroom



Fireplace in the second bedroom

 

View of the inside of bedroom two

 

There is still a lot of work to do, and the main priority now is to get the first floor finished and the roof on to make the property watertight for the winter months. The boundary walls will then be worked on, again using the same stone to match the house.

Need to start thinking about the interior soon, kitchen is going to be made and materials all sourced locally, spoilt for choice with the quality and choice of natural materials available in Turkey.

Our project manager, Serkan knows exactly what we want and is really making the project a pleasure to work with him on.  Before we left Datca to come home, we drove over to Mesudiye, a village about 30 mins drive from Datca, to a villa that Serkan, our builder and project manager had recently just finished,  its called Villa Olivio and it looks lovely, so can't wait to get ours finished ready for our holidays next year.

Grand ideas and designs.........

We were recommended a local architect, who we met with, discussed our vision for the restoration and agreed costs for drawing up the house design and project plans.   Three years on... and we learned that restoring a property is more complex and takes more time to get signed off than new build projects.  I must say during this time I did question my own sanity,  wondering why we hadn't just settled for an apartment instead.

Anyway, over the three years we worked with the architect to ensure that the final plans would be as sympathetic and as close to the original building as possible, using the same materials and keeping pretty much to the same layout.  The plans were submitted and discussed at the head office in Mugla on several occasions over that period, before we finally received a call to say they had been passed and we could now start the build.  Elation and panic, omg it was actually going to happen......

Our inspiration for the design, came from numerous places, the village itself, as it is a gorgeous place with traditional houses, a beautiful Mosque, friendly residents, not to mention the Mehmet Ali Ağa Mansion Hotel  recently restored and locally known as “Kocaev” (big house).

How did this happen then........

Yikes, sorry its been a while, got a lot to catch up on, as promised here's a bit of info on how we got to this stage.

Before we could start our restoration project in Turkey, we had to buy the land, as Turkey is not in the EU (yet!) there are restirctions on where foreign investors can buy land and or property.  There's more info here on Buying in Turkey here and also on the Channel 4 site.

It turned out that we had choosen to buy a property owned jointly by four people, (children of the previous occupants), who had all moved away to other areas, so in order to buy the land we had to get in touch with each of them to agree a price. Our turkish friend acted on our behalf throughout this process, (we gave him power of attorney), this involved seeing a turkish solicitor and drawing up the papers and registering with the local notary office.   Eventually a meeting was arranged, with the current owners and after a lot of negotiation, the land was finally ours.  When you buy a house/land in Turkey you should expect to recieve an official document called a Tapu these are your title deeds.

You do need to be aware that there is a lot of administration, time and costs involved in the process, and you really do need to have good solicitors, agents and translators that you trust to guide you through and explain everything, as its all very different to buying in the UK.