¡Vamos a España!

Well, we signed the contract on the flat in Barcelona yesterday. We weren't able to send the reserve payment due to security restrictions with the web and mobile app: I didn't have my one-time password card for our Spanish bank account here in Peru, so that'll wait until we return home tomorrow.

Our folks at Address.Properties and the project's architect have been vary patient and helpful as we've been ironing out the details. The floor isn't built yet, so we've changed the layout of the flat, and will be heavily customizing the kitchen (big surprise there!).

Which reminds me, I owe them some diagrams showing where we want the radiators so they don't interfere with our planned furniture layout. Something like this:

The windows on the left side look out directly over the marvelous Mercat de Sant Antoni and over the city to Montjuïc.  The ones on the right open to a meter-deep balcony looking into the interior of the block.  The stairway in the center will go to the private roof deck, and stairs and new elevator go down to the lobby. We expect the flat to be finished late Summer 2016.

Sadly, we're still working-class stiffs so can't just pick up and move to Spain. We expect we'll have to rent it out for a few years before we move permanently.  We hoping to rent it out for about a year at a time and spend a month there each year until that time. Barcelona's stopped issuing permits for short-term "tourist" rentals, in an effort to prevent tourists overrunning the city, so the minimum rental period we could offer would be a month. We'd prefer long-term renters to hen-nights and party-hardy folks anyway.

OMG, A Roof Terrace!

Last time we wrote about an unbuilt apartment we were seriously interested in -- until we found out we couldn't have a walk-out terrace.

We were about ready to storm out of the meeting when the project's architect said something about a roof terrace. He was speaking Spanish, but I could swear he said it was a "terrassa privada" -- a private terrace.  What??!!  Our agent didn't even know about this!

He pulled out his architecture drawings and showed us the roof plan. The entire thing was going to be a roof terrace.  And it was going to be split in half, for use by the two top-floor (atico) owners. For private use by them. None of the owners of the apartments on the other floors would have access.

OK, not the entire roof. There would be a central core where the elevator and stairs and light well comes up, naturally. And around this would be an area reserved for technical equipment -- the air conditioner compressors for the apartments, etc. Here's our portion:

OMG, it's big. The diagram shows 87.9 square meters, almost 950 square feet. That's about as big as one of the floors in our existing house.

We started laying it out with our design software. Some planters around the technical equipment, plenty of outdoor dining space, a hot tub (!), more chairs, a video projector, a barbecue (which I gather is not legal in Barcelona but we saw stores selling Weber kettles and charcoal).  There's plenty of room. Below, the left side looks out to Mercat de Sant Antoni and then on to Montjuïc; the right looks into the interior of the block which is filled with courtyards and decks; top and bottom edges are neighboring buildings.

We have to walk up the central staircase to get to the roof terrace, and that's something we were hoping to avoid because we're not getting any younger. I mean, we've got another 10 or 20 years probably before this would become a problem.  But I did ask the builders if they could talk to the other penthouse owner to see if they'd be willing to split the cost of extending the elevator up to the roof -- not cheap, but a lot easier for schlepping up provisions for a big dinner party.

Our agents said if that wasn't possible, we could build our own private elevator from our flat to the roof, once the construction was done.  I think this is probably not so uncommon, since so many old buildings there have been retrofitted with elevators in small spaces.

From the current roof, we've got a decent view over the market, Montjuïc and the city.  We're hoping that with when our new floor  is added we might be high enough to get a glimpse of the Mediterranean as the building faces the direction of the port. We're not optimistic, but it'd be pretty cool.

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...