Progress!

At our first dinner party we had the opportunity to get to know a British couple that we’d briefly met two years earlier. They provided us with a different perspective on the building process as they’ve chosen to manage their builds (they are restoring two properties simultaneously) themselves instead of using a company. This has involved them sourcing all their own tradesmen, from masons to plumbers, and finding suppliers for all the materials from scratch.

We discussed the pros and cons of this approach at length, with the husband being the one in favour and his wife discouraging us from following their example. The arguments for doing everything yourself were mostly financial – a company has extra costs built in and by controlling the sourcing of workers and materials you kept prices down and had a beady eye on everything that came in and out of the work site. For example, the practice of skimming off materials – a few bags of sand here, some cement there – would be eliminated.

The arguments against were that you had to buy insurance to cover any accidents on site and the build took twice as long because you were starting a process that you had no prior experience of and a lot of time was wasted through learning by trial and error.

We concluded that because we were trying to open a business as quickly as possible that any financial gains made through managing the build ourselves would probably be lost in the extra time it took to get up and running. However this couple has been a goldmine of information and contacts for us. Since catching up with them for dinner we had a meeting to discuss their experiences a bit more, which turned out to be the most profitable hour I’ve spent talking to anybody so far. They recommended an architect, an engineer, a topographer and a plumber, knew both of the builders we were considering using and steered us in the right direction and then introduced me to a French guy who is currently having his house restored by the builder we were leaning towards. He had also used the same engineer and plumber and recommended all of them.

The couple and the French guy all provided me with lists of what they’d paid for everyone’s services so we could compare and be sure we weren’t being ripped off. 

Finally, we were getting somewhere!

In the meantime, Vincent had organised an electrician to move the meter boxes outside our house and reconnect the power.

This was a lengthy process that involved three meetings before the work actually took place. Once to meet the electrician at our house to discuss the work, another time to discuss how much it would all cost, and a third time to drive into town to purchase the materials. Eventually the day arrived to actually do the work, but commencement was delayed while cement and sand was purchased – it had been forgotten in the original materials run.

Finally everything was ready and the first work on our house began.

The old meter boxes were disconnected, a hole was dug in the wall outside to relocate them to, they were reconnected to the power line outside and earthed. Earthing involved digging a metre deep hole in the ground and burying a copper rod in the ground with a mixture of coal, salt and water.

Two new fuse boxes were also put inside the house to prepare for when we have the whole place rewired. The work took a whole day – during which time interested neighbours stopped by to peruse the proceedings and a kindly lady came out with a tray of mint tea and biscuits she’d just collected from the bakery [traditional kitchens in the medina don’t have ovens, so the women make bread and pastries at home and carry them on trays to communal bakeries with wood-fired ovens where they wait for them to cook and them bring them home again].

During the work, it was also discovered that we’d had water connected to the house the whole time. In the downstairs kitchen one of the workmen just opened a valve in the corner to get the water flowing again so he could make cement. After a few hours however, a pool of water was found amassing in one of the rooms upstairs. “I think you have a leak,” the electrician wisely deduced. The valve is now shut off again until we investigate the plumbing.

It had taken almost a month, but our house had reached the first stage. We had power and water.