But Daaaad, you said you weren't going to buy another "project"!

[JohnF]

Now we actually have our house, the process of finding a suitable builder begins.

Doing any form of building work in Spain requires a licence from the local council - even putting a lick of paint on your front door technically requires permission from the council!  All a bit bureaucratic but a hoop that must be jumped through.  Its a bit of an earner for the council as well, a minor work licence is between two and five percent of the budget for the work, and you have to present the budget plus plans of what you intend to do at the time of the application.  There is also a major work licence which is extremely complicated to obtain and requires a massive amount of paperwork, the cost of this licence is variable depending on which side of the bed the planning officer got out of...

There are ways to avoid this, but all it takes is one neighbour to complain about noise or dust etc and you end up with a rather large fine. 

What we are hoping is that builder will take care of the licence application as our Spanish is nowhere good enough to deal with the level of detail required and our knowledge of the application procedure is only what we've gleaned from the council web site.

So, we start asking friends for recommendations - reminds us of doing the exact same process in Istanbul!

One of our ex students lives locally and she gave us one, a language school where OH may do some teaching gave us one and a friend came up with another.  We then found a Spanish web site similar to the UK site Rated People and posted details on there.

This resulted in us having a three day period where we would be meeting four builders and one architect.  The only one who spoke English was the architect and after a ten minute chat it became obvious that he was way above what we needed, really nice guy but he was more used to large projects and projects with budgets way in excess of ours.

The first builder turned up, a youngish guy with piercings and tattoos, not your typical Spanish building company owner but he had the common sense to bring along his quantity surveyor who had worked in the UK and spoke excellent English.  He was also the only one who arrived in his working gear, straight from another job.  We walked round the house and he took notes as he went and didn't appear fazed by either the amount of work required or the current state of the place.  We got a good vibe from them and he agreed to get a quote out in a few days.

Second builder appears, together with his architect, his architects assistant and some other random geezer who's job title I didn't catch.  Thirty seconds into the meeting the architect starts telling what we need.  Wrong move big fella.  According to him we need a major work licence and we need this that and the other - we let him go on for about three or four minutes before I said "stop".  We pointed out to him that we knew exactly what we wanted, we knew exactly what was required from the council and bade them all farewell, politely of course!  In and out in less than seven minutes.

Next up was a builder who came highly recommended and having seen his work I knew he was capable of doing a good job.  Another walk round the house talking about what we wanted and how we wanted certain things done.  Out came his laser measuring gizmo and off he went to measure up.  He was thorough and spent twenty to thirty minutes going back over the house, taking notes and measuring everything that didn't have a pulse.  Two weeks he said for a quote.  Hmmm said we, maybe sooner?  Maybe says he.

When the fourth one appeared he too brought a chum, plus his son who had very basic English.  Right from the outset I didn't like him and knew there was no chance of us working together, but had to play out the charade of going round discussing the project.  When his son let slip that he didn't like working on older houses and tended to do more work than was often necessary it kinda sealed his fate. Muppet.

Now comes the waiting.  A bit like going for a job interview and waiting for the yes/no letter to come through. 

First quote to arrive is builder one.  It's a good bit less than we were expecting so after a marathon Google Translate session we worked out that he'd left a fair bit of stuff out and hadn't quoted for materials for a number of areas.  We were a bit disappointed as we'd hoped he'd be in with a shout.

Second quote arrives, from builder four - the guy who doesn't like working on old houses, and it's five times the amount of builder one. No way. Didn't even reply.

Builder three then asks if he can have another look at the house.  We're thinking we want your quote and at this rate it'll be Christmas before we see it.  So, out he comes again, this time with three workmen type chums and spend an hour going over everything.  I was so bored I almost left them to it and went for a beer!

Finally, after a full week he delivers his quote - seventy five pages long and with extremely professional plans.  I only looked at two pages, the first and the last.

So, who got the job, builder one with the piercings or builder three with the professional looking quote?

I'll tell you next time.

JF

[Anne]

Decision time  

[JohnF]

Aye.

Spain is no different to Turkey when it comes to foreigners, builders and prices.  Our experiences (and other peoples) in Turkey have been invaluable here - instead of "yabanci prices" its "guiri precio" and the same rules apply.  If they're foreign then they are stupid and have lots of money.

Ok, we are foreign but when it comes to property we are far from stupid and certainly don't have lots of money.  Unfortunately we haven't been able to pull the same stunt we often used in Turkey, when you let the other person assume you don't speak any Turkish. Amazing what they say when they think you don't understand!

JF

[BernieTeyze]

So...
What's happening with the tiles? Maybe they know where to get some more..
How long before work starts after the quotes..Do they tell you :-)

[JohnF]

In Cadiz province the local council have ten working days to object to your works licence application - if they don't say anything then on the eleventh working day you start work.

Tiles...  more about them later.

JF

[mercury]

Oooh you tease. Don't be a stranger.

.

[JohnF]

Decision time indeed.

Out of all the builders, only one came across as someone we could work with, and it certainly wasn't Mr Professional - besides, his quote came to more than we'd actually paid for the house! 

When we started doing the sums, even though builder one had left a lot out of his quote it gave us a good starting point and after a couple of further site meetings we ended up with a reasonable quote for the work required.  No tiles, windows or doors included, but he's happy to use suppliers we've identified for all of these items.

The big bonus is that his QS, who speaks excellent English, will help us make the application to the council for a works licence. 

There are two types, a major works licence and a minor works licence - we're hoping to get away with a minor licence as a high propertion of the work we're carrying out can be classified as repairs.  The issue that we have however is that the sheer scale of the work may sway the council towards making us apply for a major licence, which a) is more expensive and b) requires an absolute mound of supporting plans and documentation.  We really do not want to go down that road...

Luckily, D the QS has a friend in the planning department and after speaking to him, we come up with a strategy that'll get us the required licence without any issues and without breaking the law!

Application goes in and the council now have ten working days to either refuse it or ask for supplementary information.

They do neither.  On the seventh working day after our application the builder get a telephone call, the council want a site visit the following day.  Oh sh1t.

Unlike when the planning department descend on you in the UK, this turned out to be so informal it was bizarre.  Little chap from council turns up in his bright red, open necked, checked shirt with a smile on his face from the start.  Lets have a look he says and pokes his head into the apartments on the ground floor, for all of about thirty seconds. 

Transpired that all he was interested in was if there were areas of the house that could be of architectural significence, on the basis its pretty old.  In his opinion there weren't so off he popped with a cheery "adios", and said your licence will be ready Friday or Monday.  Result!

I can honestly say that I'm "tiled" out now.  Been to so many tile shops they are all starting to morph into one large multi coloured, geometrically shaped mess.  I think its time to give them a break for a bit.

Here's some of the contenders for various parts of the house:










Monday comes and sure enough, the builder is there at nine on the dot with a couple of workers.  Neither of them had been here and when they realised exactly how much material they were going to be removing over the next week or so you could see their faces drop!  Apparantly in houses this age tiles are removed manually, as opposed to half a shift with an SDS drill, crack on lads...  oh, and did anyone mention safety glasses? 

Before:







Today:







Tomorrow, sort out final plans for plumbing, electrics and air con.  Happy days.

JF

[BernieTeyze]

yes,yes, yes and yes, Good work JF. Approval granted on all tile choices, and not a christmas tree in site. Glad its going ok and the red tape part is over.

[Anne]

Good start John. The last pic of new tiles would be my choice  

[JohnF]

So happy you approve  

Aye, it is a good start Anne, electrician started mapping out all the new cabling today with his wee can of spray paint and plumber now knows where all the new piping has to go.

Trying to make the whole place as energy efficient as possible so using lots of LED lighting.  At last count we need over one hundred light fittings - and that doesn't include all the exterior lighting round patios and stairs!

The electricity has been shut off for years, but we appear to have a supply to one of the ground floor rooms.  No-one knows where it's coming from, even the electricity company say there shouldn't be live cables as they turned it off years ago.  All seems a bit dodgy but at least the guys have got power for their tools.

Off to look at heaters tomorrow. Oh the joys.

JF