On Tuesday we met the first guy, who came as part of a team with another local who also happened to work at the baladiya’s office. This is a bonus as he has contact with a number of engineer’s and architects, plus he could get our plans approved quickly. We walked them through the house, Vince explaining in French the changes we wanted to make as we went from room-to-room. There was much discussion about how to get the essentials done on a small budget – good! – and appreciative comments about the house, location and view. They also said that all the modifications were easily doable. The verdict on the roof was the same as before, not good, but the metal beams may be able to be salvaged if they weren’t rusted all the way through. We then accompanied the builder to two other of his current projects in order to see the quality of work he did. One was an enormous riad with a central garden, about six months into it’s restoration. The work looked good, the team working there seemed efficient and best of all, the owner was on site so we were able to have a quiet word. A white-haired French gentleman in his sixties with sparkling blue-eyes informed us that he was very satisfied with the work so far. A second property we inspected also looked as if it was being renovated very professionally, so we made an arrangement for the builder to come back through our house the following week to give us an estimate.
On Wednesday we met the second builder who had been recommended by Louis, our original contact in Fes. He had used him to help finish off his own house, when he’d fired the previous builders who were ripping him off. We instantly like the guy who seemed very genuine and said lots of lovely things about our house during the tour. He said straight away that giving an estimate was very difficult before seeing the plans, and that it would be better to do the work in stages, reassessing as we went. He then started to talk about ways of getting around various permissions and back-door tactics, so we stopped him there and explained that we needed to be above-board. Doing private houses where nobody sees the work is one thing, but a restaurant would be open to the public and therefore, need to stand up to proper inspection. Plus, we didn’t want to jeopardise our prospects of getting licenses or have to pay bucket-loads of baksheesh to get them.
We also inspected some of this builder’s previous work which seemed well-finished and over coffee he agreed to help us find a structural engineer in the mean-time.
Both sets of builders came through with contacts for potential architects, one who was also an engineer and we arranged appointments for them both to see the property on Friday.
Meeting number one was with Louis’ builder, who presented us with a gentleman who could undertake the topographic survey, engineering survey and architects plans for us all in one. Vincent showed him around, conversing in French, and he confirmed that it was possible to create the balcony, extend the kitchen, add a security exit door to the street (a requirement we had discovered for restaurants) and install a dumb-waiter. [With only one narrow staircase between the floors we are planning to fit a dumb-waiter to transport the food between the kitchens and second level to cut down on stair-case traffic]. He also pointed out the grim state of the third-floor ceiling, which we were by now fully aware of.
All was going well, when his colleague and partner arrived. After a quick inspection he declared that we were going to need to build an additional staircase. According to him, the regulations had changed recently due to a restaurant fire in Casablanca where some people had died. I rolled my eyes and asked Vincent to translate where exactly he thought we could possibly fit another staircase in an already small restaurant without totally ruining the space. The man shrugged. Vince said that our restaurant was relatively small and for the number of people we would have on the second floor, one staircase would surely be fine? Besides, there were plenty of restaurants in the medina with only one. The discussion continued with them eventually saying they could try to arrange things so that we wouldn’t have to build another staircase. The colleague then said in an aside to Vince that he knew guys in the fire and safety department who could be paid to look the other way. The meeting ended with a quote for their services: 25,000dh to get the house to the building stage. When we asked for a breakdown of the costs it worked out as: 2-2500 for the topography, 5000 for the stability/engineering assessment, 8-10,000 for the architect, another 1000 for the drawings, 1000-1200 for a fire assessment, a 200 agency fee, assorted other costs and taxes. Vince and I discussed this afterwards and thought maybe we could get them to do most of it, but bring in a cheaper architect as we didn’t need any fancy plans or creative input, just simple drawings of the few changes we wanted to make – most of which involve moving or enlarging doorways. After a few days of reflection however, we are both feeling dubious about the second man involved – the engineers colleague. His manner was shifty and the second staircase story sounded like a ploy to extract baksheesh. We are still undecided.
The second architect we met was a portly man in corduroy who looked and sounded French despite being named (like half the men in Morocco) Mohammed. He had worked on some prestigious projects, like the restoration of a large mosque, and was very into preserving traditional structures in their original form. Given this, he balked at our plan to change the entry so guests would arrive through the salon instead of into the courtyard – necessary as we have to extend the tiny downstairs kitchen. Apart from that though he liked our plans and chatted away extensively to Vince in French. [Most of the communication with officials and locals that’s gone on the past two weeks has been undertaken by Vince, and his native French speaking has made our lives a LOT easier.]
He was very knowledgeable about historic buildings in the medina and gave us a brief history of all the significant buildings that can be seen from our rooftop, which are quite a few given the scope of the view. He wanted to know what we’d paid for the house and was impressed at the 500,000dh figure. He said that with the view and the location he would have expected it to be more like 800,000. He also said that the style of the wooden painting in the house and the layout meant the property was likely to be 400 years old. We were happy to hear this as we’d been asking for opinions about the age of the property (realising that the estate agent’s 400-year-old proclamation may not have been accurate) and had been hoping it was as old as we’d been originally told.Vincent arranged to meet the architect again next week to discuss ideas and fees, but we were pretty certain that given his pedigree, he would be way out of our league.
No comments:
Post a Comment