It's starting to get serious at Sant Antoni

The folks at Address.Properties have been working hard with us to try and nail down details before we left Spain. Unfortunately, so many people in Barcelona were on vacation that we couldn't finalize things.  And we have a lot of details to nail down.

What the hell am I talking about?

Irene found a place across the street (really, right across the street) from Mercat de Sant Antoni. The building is undergoing a complete renovation, with new wiring, plumbing, and structural reinforcement just for us... OK, to support the addition of a new top story. That's the one we want, "el atico", the penthouse.  There are two in this renovation and one's sold. We've got our eye on the other.  The quality of the work we can see looks quite good.

One of the lower flat's done, and another we saw is well on the way. Where they can, they've salvaged the antique Catalan tiles. Irene's not a fan and the patterns are a bit too busy but I like how they've combined the antique with clean modern lines of the fixtures.

 Salvaged French doors overlooking the Mercat.

 Wood floors into the back bedroom with its own French doors to a balcony.

Because construction on el atico (I love saying that) hasn't started, we could have some freedom to influence the design.  Oh, look: our new kitchen!

Irene surveys the interior courtyard from the current roof, which will be built up a bit, then el atico built on top.

OMG.  We renovated our 100-year old house on Capitol Hill with our bare hands, moving a staircase and bathroom to make room for a kitchen we really loved, redoing all the plumbing so we had good water pressure, and rewiring the house to serve modern needs.   We then designed our concrete and steel house in Arlington, with open spaces and tons of light everywhere.  We've got a bug: I don't think we'd be happy in someone else's house.  This presented an opportunity we'd sadly resigned ourselves to never experiencing again.  Irene instantly filled the flat on Raval we were staying in with dozens and dozens of variations on floor plans. I found the Roomle web-based floor-plan software which could give us a good 3D visualization and help identify too-tight areas. We drew up a plan that sacrificed some of the proposed living room for a walk-out terrace; I thought it would be interesting to introduce a diagonal element to the shape.

We met with Alfonso, the architect for the whole building project. Then we asked: since this is new construction, can we push in the facade to create a terrace? No. Not a chance. The architecture board would never approve it. No way, no how.

He's got some great ideas about how to incorporate the vertical extension of the building with the historical facade, and hopes he can persuade the board to approve his more adventurous plans.  We love his work. I don't want to violate his intellectual property so below is just an excerpt of one of his drawings; too bad I took the photo crooked with my camera.

But we were crushed: the walk-out terrace was non-negotiable for us. We expect we'll eventually get old and don't want to have to walk downstairs to a park, or whatever; we're used to our outdoor space in DC and Arlington and take our breakfast and dinners outside whenever we can. We felt like outdoor cats that have been told they have to stay inside.

We were about to walk out when he told us something that our realtor wasn't even aware of, that got us to sit up and listen intently, that rekindled the enthusiasm.

To be continued...