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...

Invisible apartment with a great location

Irene found a listing through Address.Properties. We're really keen on it.

You know what the realtors say: location, location, location. Well, this place has it -- at least for our tastes. It's right next to our favorite market, Mercat de Sant Antoni, that we've written about before. The renovation work is really coming along quickly, now.

We're not getting any younger, so it's nice to know we can hobble over to the market and get our bacalao, shellfish, fin fish, fowl, rabbit, snails, fruits, vegetables, nuts, olives, and even a good bite to eat and some vermouth or cava to slake our thirst from the arduous trek across the street.

It's 3 blocks to the Airport bus, which we used several times this trip. It's a 3 minute walk to the L2 (purple) metro, and 8 minutes to the L1 (red) or L3 (green) lines. We explicitly don't want a car, so this is great for us.

There's an antiquarian book fair that's set up every Sunday on the cross street, and the stalls spill over onto the adjoining streets, including one in front of "our" front door. I bought some comic books aimed at kids in Castilian to help me learn the language; no way I'm ready for the Catalan books I almost picked up.

After I saw Irene off at the Airport bus, I wandered around and it seemed like there are at least 20 cafes open, even on a Sunday morning when many things are closed, with a 2 block radius of "our" place. The spiffy Moritz brew pub is a block or two away.

We determined empirically that neighborhood fixture Els Tres Tombs' cafe stays open an hour later than the other cafes. Great for night owls like us, and 3 minutes from "our" place. We spent at least a couple happy afternoons at this place when we were here years ago.

There's just one small problem: our place doesn't exist yet. More later...

Architecture old and new

My last day in Barcelona, after Irene left for Scotland, I had plans for dinner at a fish place, MariscCo. It was a 35 minute walk but I hadn't gotten out of the house much to exercise so I hoofed it. It covered a lot of the same route we've come to repeat heading toward the Plaça de Catalunya. Then it turned straight up and the walk became a noticeable climb. I could see Tibidabo on the top of the mountain (?) in the distance; I walked block after block but its illuminated form never got any closer.

Barcelona's filled with great architecture, both old (gothic) and new (very contemporary).

On Carrer de Balmes, I was entranced by the pure machine-like form of this geometric building; it looks like some science fiction movie computer or an interstellar hibernation chamber. This photo is not black-and-white nor retouched.

The modernistas left their stylistic stamp all over town, with organic and floral shapes like those of the Art Nouveau or Vienna Secession movements; I'm crazy about this aesthetic. Frequently, the plasterwork is not just painted, but incised then painted; it's great work. You can see it here in this dramatically-lit facade on a building a block away from the machine-like building above:

After a fine dinner lubricated with a bottle of good cava, I wasn't in the mood (or shape) to walk home so I headed for the Metro.  One of the sidewalks had this wonderful interlocking tile pattern. I'd first seen it mentioned in a guide book, indicating it was not in fact a modernista design, then later saw it on the swanky Passeig de Gràcia. You can see spiral sea-shell like patterns, but also a second interlocking pattern of flowers that look like thistles and a third that looks like tendrils. I'm curious where this clever and gorgeous design originated. [time passes] I finally got my Google-fu on and found other references to this tile, all pointing out that it's a Gaudi design; makes a ton of sense.