We have reached a new milestone in Villaflor; the foundation has been completed! All of the footers have been poured and the three pads have been laid. In total, it took about 13 weeks from the groundbreaking to reach this point. Weather was the primary factor in...
It has been almost a month since my last post. That is definitely longer than I would like, but it really took that amount of time before sufficient progress had been made to warrant a post. When weather permits, work continues on the footers and they are nearing...
Site preparation has been completed. The workers have built a small shed for dry storage, the site has access to water and electricity, and the land has been excavated to the required level in preparation for the next step, digging and pouring the footers. Footers...
Villaflor has received rain every day for almost two weeks, and, with that, a significant delay in the pouring of the footers and foundation. I knew weather, along with slower parts of the construction process, may prevent me from having enough content to make updates...
We have officially broke ground! Excavation and site preparation has begun. This includes securing temporary access to power and water; thank you to our neighbor Victor for both of these items. The small, concrete block building, just above the roof of the backhoe in...
As I mentioned in the previous post, the entire house, except for the footprint and load-bearing walls, are still open for change. Overall, we are incredibly happy with the design of the house, but we are still discovering a few ways to really make the home our own....
If you have peeked at the Financials section of the site, you may have already found the magic number. The house is going to cost $130,000. We have entered into a contract with Marco, the architect, for that amount, with a time frame of about 6 months for turnkey...
Andrea and I did not know any architects. Fortunately, our friends and family in Cuenca knew a handful, and the time to hire one had come. We had a list of about 5 architects we wanted to meet, and Andrea set up appointments for us throughout the coming weeks. We...
Just below is a dimensional drawing of the initial land that we purchased in Villaflor. It is made up of two separate lots because of the intersecting road, sold together, and referred to as lots A and B in the Financials section of this website. About half of the...
This is where we start. The obvious first step in building a home is figuring out where the hell you are going to put it. Our ideal land was at least a hectare (2.5 acres/ 10,000m²) in size, relatively flat, 30-45 minutes outside of Cuenca, and most importantly,...