New years Eve 🎉🎆🎇🎊

13:28 Pi is the new bitcoin 1 Comments

Today is the last day of 2015. A lot has happened during this year. But we shall remember this year as the year when we have overcome many odds and challenges to build our dream home.
Yesterday we had a meeting with Magnus from Myresjöhus and to end this year with a bang, we concluded the final details of the house and signed another ton of papers so that the production process of the house can start.
Another thing we discussed was the preparation of the land. As I mentioned earlier there were many big stones found on our land. These stones would need blasting in order to level the land of building the house. We were worried that it would cost us a huge amount as there were really a lot of big stones. But Magnus assured us that it won't be a big issue because he had considered some buffer for this already while calculating the costs of the house. So it would not cross the initial cost estimate for the house. This also means that we won't be able to save any thing from the access buffer that was considered.
Once blasting of the rocks is done,  we'll know for sure whether we managed to save something or we need to spend some more from our pocket.
But until then we shall relax and enjoy the new year's eve and welcome 2016 and the surprises it has in store for us.
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!  

1 comments:

Finally Bygglov!! YAY!

17:24 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

Finally, after a looonnggg waiting time, bygglov has now arrived. Ufff.. what a relief.
Actually, as I mentioned in the last post, the bygglov was approved already before Christmas, but due to holidays in between, the actual papers arrived just yesterday evening. Also, the information is published on the public announcement website, as it is required by law.




The preparation work at the site has already started, and out plot doesn't look the same anymore.
Although, it seems that there might be a little problem. Many big rocks have been found after digging at our plot. This means that these rocks will need to be exploded in order to level the ground for building the house. Which means we will have to shell out some more money from our own pockets. :(
But we hope that this cost is not too much. We have a meeting with Magnus from Myresjöhus tomorrow and we shall come to know the details on this. Now we keep our fingers crossed and hope that the cost for preparing the land does not go up than what we had planned for.

It looked like this in the beginning

Another angle - in the beginning

Digging started

Half way through

And this is how it looks today... Lots and lots of rocks. 

There is still a lot of work to be done. And I know that the final result will look much better.
But for now there are rocks which needs to be exploded. And we really hope that it does not cost too much.








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Bygglov is coming soon!! Ho... Ho...Ho...

21:02 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

It is almost Christmas, so I thought I should give some update before the holidays.
There is some good news and there is some more good news. The bygglov that we have been anxiously waiting for has been approved, at least verbally. But the building permission approval papers will take some time to arrive due to Christmas holidays.

As it was almost eight weeks now that we have been waiting for bygglov to arrive, I decided to call the planning office myself to check what was taking so long for them to clear our building permission. As it turns out the person who was handling our documents was sick for some days which added to the delay on top of the earlier missing document issue we had. But now that person was back and had processed our documents and when I called the planning office and spoke to him, he was just finishing the approval process. So we are happy that at least the approval was given before Christmas and also that our extended veranda and balcony were approved as well. YAY!!



Now for the next part. After speaking to the person at planning office, I called up Magnus from Myresjöhus to inform him that the building permission was approved and the documents are on the way. Magnus said that it was a good timing, because the land preparation work on our neighbour's land had just begun and we could take advantage of this opportunity and get our land prepared as well at the same time. Thus making a win-win situation for us, our neighbor and Myresjöhus, because as the excavator was already at the site, we and our neighbor could split the cost for bringing the excavator to the site and get the work done at the same time.





Magnus said that the land preparation work had begun already and although we still have a long way to go, the land can be prepared now. This will also help us know whether the additional money for land preparation that we had considered in the cost of the house would be fully used up or not. We are really hoping that we could do some savings in the land preparation cost. So once the land preparation work is done, we will know for sure if we saved anything or not.

Well that's all for now.

Wish you all a Merry Christmas & Happy holidays!!


0 comments:

Where's the bygglov at?? 😔

22:30 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

It has been 5 weeks and the bygglov (building permission) hasn't yet arrived.
When we started our excitement was on the top. 


Planning kitchen, laundry room, other things in the house was exciting and to some extent entertaining, as we always had something going on.


But when we were done planning the kitchen, laundry room and other small things, we came to a halt. At first we thought, well soon we will receive the news about bygglov, so we were holding our breath in anticipation.



But 5 weeks passed by and still nothing.

To proceed with other things we need to have the bygglov. And the planning office is taking for ever to grant the permission to us. 




Unfortunately we cannot do anything but wait patiently.

Come on Karlskrona Kommun, show me some Big Love... I mean Bygglov. ;)

0 comments:

Wishlist Vs Necessities... Serious Budget Control

16:02 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

As in any project we have also introduced checkpoints in our house building project. If you don't do a reality check every now and then, there is a big risk of exceeding the budget to more than one can afford. As the saying goes "Stretch your foot according to the length of your blanket".

We had a meeting with Magnus from Myresjöhus to finalize the changes we have done so far in the house plan and also to see how much have we gone up from the initial budget when we started. The outcome of the new calculations was not in our favor. We knew and expected our budget to increase, but we did not think that it would increase so much. The fact that what ever change we do in the house and the resulting increase in the cost would also result in increase of "Pantbrev" (mortgage deed) was totally missed out. In addition to this we also had to consider the "Lagfart" (land registration) cost.

When we did the calculations including all the changes we had made plus the cost for "Pantbrev" and "Lagfart", the reality hit hard in our face. We were shocked and a little worried by the increase in the overall cost for the house. We were prepared for some increase in the cost, but this was beyond what we had thought. So it is now time to re-evaluate things. Need to check our "wishlists" Vs what we actually need.


Me and Ana had a long discussion later in the evening that day and started chopping off things in our list that were "good to have" but "not really necessary".

The first thing we crossed out from our "change list" was the "Vitrinskåp" (Display cabinets with glass doors) in the Kitchen. These are just one of the "good to have" things that aren't really necessary. Normal kitchen cabinets (without glass doors) would still serve the same purpose of storing the plates, glasses, etc. There is no need for showing these things off anyway. Also, if having these "chique" cabinets is going to cost so much that we won't have any money left to purchase new items to put in these cabinets, what is the use?

Next thing to face the "merciless budget control axe" was the special stainless steel Kitchen appliances like oven, microwave, dishwasher, refrigerator and freezer. Having these Kitchen appliances in "stainless steel" is just a "marketing gimmick". The non-stainless steel versions of these appliances function the same way and has the same output quality. So why spend unnecessarily on these things. Also, these items are the ones that can be replaced anytime in the future whenever needed. So spending additional amount of money just to have them in stainless steel is a waste of money in our opinion.

Now the amount we will save from these above mentioned changes will be used for other useful purposes. We want to have full length windows down to the floor in the Veranda as we think it will provide a better ambiance and more light in the house. Weighing this change in Veranda against the "good to have" things in Kitchen clearly steered our opinion and motivated us to do the cuts in the Kitchen.



So there, we did some budget control to fit things in our estimated budget. But this is just for now. We will have to have these "pit-stops" every time we make any new change, until the full list of things in the house is finalized.

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Roadblock... No fun without roadblocks. 😒

19:23 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

It has been around 4 weeks since we applied for the building permission (bygglov) for our house and we were hoping that we might get the decision this week. But... then came a letter from Karlskrona Kommun.
We got very excited thinking it was the approval from the planning office. But as our luck would have it, the letter was not about approval. It was a letter saying that the application we sent for building permission was lacking some drawings.
I got a little nervous thinking if I forgot to add some important documents when I did the application. But then I remembered that all the documents and drawings were prepared by Myresjöhus. Me and my wife only had to sign the documents. So I took the letter to Magnus from Myresjöhus to check.


 
As it turns out the problem was not with the house plan. I was a bit releaved.
The letter was asking about the drawings for the outer fence wall. But Magnus insisted that all the required information and drawings were submitted. So he said that he would call the people responsible at Karlskrona Kommun to check and sort out the problem.
All this meant two things ; the building permission was not going to arrive this week  but on the brighter side it also meant that our application was being processed and we had a great chance of getting the extended veranda and balcony approved.
Now we just have to wait for Magnus to sort out the issue with the drawings for the fence wall and then hopefully we will get the building permission soon after.

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Trip to Jönköping 🚗

21:57 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

We finally visited HTH in Jönköping. Our initial thought that there was no point in going to Jönköping when there was a HTH store in Karlskrona was proved wrong. The huge exhibition and showroom of HTH in Jönköpng cannot be compared to the little store in Karlskrona. And we are glad that we decided to go to Jönköping. 
According to our great plan, we had left the kids at school very early and started our journey immediately. 





It was a beautiful view and I enjoyed driving in the snow.


It's f*king cold... Brrr.

It was around 6:30 am when we left Karlskrona for Jönköping. It was dark, cold (-13 degrees) and the road to Jönköping was full of snow. Also me and Ana had not been on a long drive in a very long time. So we were enjoying each-others company without the kids in tow. It felt amazing.



Us


Our plan worked out very well, we made a very fruitful trip to Jönköping. Everything was done in time up to the last second. We had planned it so well that I was surprised to see that we managed to discuss all the details of the kitchen and conclude the final kitchen design in less than 2 hours. All those 'to and fro' email discussions we did before going to Jönköping paid off. I am sure Ulrica at HTH might be tired of my emails, but all that helped us finalize things in less time than we had expected.
HTH showroom in Jönköping
We even had enough time to have a nice lunch at the nearby IKEA store restaurant. 
I must admit that Ana had such a great control over her temptation of buying stuff at IKEA. I mean, one does not just go to IKEA and leave that place without buying anything. So full marks to Ana for her super temptation control.
During the whole trip the only expenses we had were for the food we ate at IKEA and the fuel that was used for the journey.

The IKEA store where we had lunch
But still few small things remain. Some things just can't be decided immediately. The options to select from are so many that one second you think 'this would be better', but then you see something else and start having second thoughts. 
We couldn't decide whether to go for a granite stone worktop, a composite stone worktop or the laminate wood worktop. Each one had their own pros and cons. And as we were tight on schedule we decided that we would confirm that part later.
We still managed to do some nice changes and Ulrica at HTH presented us some amazing ideas for the kitchen cabinets which we liked very much and promptly agreed upon.
Of course the cost for the kitchen went north bound, but it was worth the investment. Also we had planned and prepared for it in advance so it was no surprise. 

For the past couple of days we have been thinking about what kind of worktop we would like to have. And all our calculations are pointing us to use the "laminate wood" option. The simple reason behind it is the fact that it is around 20 to 25 thousand Swedish kronor cheaper. And it is durable and strong. So why spend so much money on the other options that gives you the same final outcome.
It seems that we have made the decision and will finalize the kitchen by end of this week. Now next step is to book a meeting with Magnus from Myresjöhus.

0 comments:

Planning kitchen isn't a child's play

00:29 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

It has been quite some time since my last post. My days have been very busy. Especially the kitchen plan and design has taken a lot of time. Never in my life had I thought that I will spend so much amount of time planning and designing the kitchen. But kitchen is an important part of the house, so when you are building a new house, everything including the kitchen needs to be perfect... or near perfect at least.
Like I mentioned in my previous post we have finally decided to visit HTH showroom in Jönköping. But it is going to be a rush. We don't have much time to discuss all the details as the meeting would be just couple of hours and we have to get back to Karlskrona to pick up the kids before school closes. So we are trying our best to plan as much detail as we can manage for the kitchen. So we have asked our contact at HTH in Jönköping to make 3D plans of the kitchen with the basic setup so that we can get an idea how the kitchen would look like and then do the modifications that we want.
Since the day we have received the drawings for the house, I think I must have changed the details at least 4-5 times till now and have asked our contact in Jönköping to update the 3D drawings with every change that we made. I think our contact at HTH in Jönköping must have realized that I am not a easy person to deal with when it comes to designing kitchen. But hey, we are the ones paying, so they will have to bear with us.
Me an my wife have so many discussions 5-6 times a day about each and every tiny detail in the kitchen plan and design. What color would suit the best, would dark shade look better than the brighter one, what kind of holders should we have, where should the sink be, would the color of the shelves and drawers go with the kitchen floor color, would LED stripes be better option than the LED spot lights.... and many other never ending questions keep running through our heads.
The idea is to at least have an agreement between me and my wife on majority of the things that we would like to have in the kitchen so that our visit to Jönköping is more useful in finalizing the kitchen with in the couple of hours we would have there. So we also paid a visit to the smaller HTH shop here in Karlskrona to get a feel of some materials. It was supposed to help us, but after looking at so many options we got more anxious as to what we should choose. 😵

In the mean while we have also been looking at some apartments to move in temporarily to save costs. And the last apartment we saw looks promising and if we are lucky, we would be able to rent this apartment. We are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best. After all we have only until the end of January.

0 comments:

Achievement unlocked... Apartment found!! 😁

00:36 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

Finally... Our luck has shined. Remember the example I gave about finding an apartment... When you have to attend the nature's call and there is no toilet nearby, 😰 so you focus all your energy in finding the toilet asap. 😣 😟 
Well, let's just say that we found the toilet and it actually came with rest of the apartment as well. 😉 
We finally found an apartment which we could rent for a while as our temporary residence until our house is built and ready. The queue for the apartment was very long this time too, but I somehow managed to convince the lady at the renting company to rent it to us.
But not everyone is happy. My wife is upset because the apartment we got is nothing close to be called "good" compared to the current one. Like I said before, our current apartment is amazing and located in a very nice area. But the other apartment is located in not such a nice area. To put it straight, the other apartment is located in an area which people in Karlskrona consider as the worst locality. 


So I understand my wife's feeling. But hey, there is currently scarcity of apartments in Karlskrona remember?
And anyway this is a temporary residence just for a few months and then we shall have our own house 🏡. Also I am sure that she will forget about it when she sees how much savings we will make due to this little change.
Now that the apartment issue is sorted out and I can relax knowing that we won't have to spend the winter in a tent ⛺,  I can now focus on planning the kitchen.
We are travelling to Jönköping on Monday and we are counting on our perfect plan to get everything done in time.

0 comments:

Shock and relief !!

19:42 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

Well, this wasn't expected. But today I got a big shock from Myresjöhus. I received a letter saying that the first payment that I had to do for getting things rolling had NOT been received. The letter said that I was behind the agreed deadline for the first payment which had to be done before 30th of October. But... But... But... I already did the payment and that too on 26th of October, well before the deadline. So what in the world went wrong? Why didn't Myresjöhus receive the payment?



First thing that came to my mind was, 'Shit... did I make the payment to a wrong account? Has someone received my money for no reason and is enjoying it while I sit down and worry about it'. I rushed to my computer and quickly logged into my bank account to get the things verified. To my relief, I had done everything correct. I had paid the money to the right account with the right details and correct reference numbers. This gave me a little relaxed feeling, knowing that I will not have to go through the pain of listening to my wife's lecture about not being attentive while doing the bank transactions. But the question still remains, where did the money go if Myresjöhus has not received it?
I quickly rang up Magnus from Myresjöhus who is our contact in Karlskrona. I explained to him what had happened and also sent him the copy of the letter (which said I haven't done the payment) I received from Myreshöhus along with the copy of the payment receipt for the payment that I had done. Magnus said he shall check with the economy department about what went wrong and get back to me.
But I was restless, the discrepancy about the payment that I actually made on time was making me nervous. So I decided to call Myresjöhus' economy department myself. The number was given on the letter I just received. I called the economy department, but today wasn't my luckiest day. At first try the lady at the economy department was busy and did not answer. Then I tried again and this time she answered, "Hej, välkommen till Myresjöhus. Hur kan jag hjälpa dig?"... I said, "Hi, my name is Kiran. I don't speak good Swedish, so can we talk in English?"... She answered "Sorry, my English is not good, so it would be better to talk in Swedish"... I thought to my self, let's give it a try. It's about time to polish my Swedish skills. So I replied "OK. Ja, jag kan försöka.".
I had over-estimated my Swedish skills... OR may be it was the Swedish accent from a different state that I could not understand. I am used to the Blekinge accent, and I was calling a person in Vetlanda. But either way, the conversation after this point just went downhill.
Fearing that there would be miscommunication and this matter was serious, I asked her whether there was anyone that could speak English. She then realized that it was the best way forward and gave me the number of Michael who was very good at English.
I called Michael and explained him what had happened and also forwarded him the mail with attached details that I sent to Magnus earlier. Michael got hold of the situation and said he will check and get back about the issue as soon as possible.
Michael was quick to reply, within fifteen minutes I received a call from Michael who said it was all a system fault. Their system was having some issue and even though they received the payment, it was not acknowledged by their system and after the deadline passed the system triggered a automatic response which I received today.



I breathed a quiet sigh of relief knowing that it was not a fault on my part and Myresjöhus had actually received the payment. I thanked Michael for sorting our this issue and ended the call.
Now I had a nice story to narrate to my wife and show her that sometimes automated systems also mess up things.

In other news, our hunt for a cheaper apartment has started showing some results. We will be seeing an apartment tomorrow evening to see if we would like to rent it or not. Well, we don't have much of a choice to say "no" to this apartment as there is a huge queue for this apartment as well. So if we don't take it, someone else will and we will still be without an apartment. So lets see how it goes tomorrow.
We also finally decided to visit Jönköping to finalize the kitchen and laundry room details, even though it was very far. We have come up with a great plan for taking care of the kids. We will leave kids at school very early and then we would be on our way to Jönköping. But for this we need to keep track of each and every minute. If we are even 5-10 minutes late it can be a problem. But hey, there is always plan B... which at the moment I am not sure of what it would be. We need to take this calculated risk this time.

Anyway, it's late in the night now and this post has become too long... so now it is time to catch some Zzz's. 😴



0 comments:

Initial plan for the house is ready

01:11 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

Today was an unusually busy Monday. Lot of things happened today. To begin with, there was lot to do at work today. Then came an e-mail from Myresjöhus (Magnus) informing us that we now had our own web portal from Myresjöhus where all the important documents for the house will be made available (all documents in one place... Swedes are so organized 😎). So I logged in to the web portal and there were 4-5 documents available for me to have a look at. I clicked on the first one and it was a document with the list of other documents that will be made available. Then I clicked on the next one, it was the situation plan for the house showing how on the map of Karlskrona our house would look from a top view along with the exact measurements.
The third document was the interesting one. It was the actual plan of the house including the optional veranda and balcony that we had opted for. Now I could see how the actual house would look like. 
But this is not the final plan. There are many things that were not changed as we would like to have it. This plan was just the first of many drafts that would be produced until we get all the things in order as we would like them. 
I also received another e-mail from HTH, the company that will build our kitchen and laundry room. They sent a check list of things that are included in the price of the house and also a brochure of other good to have "shiny" things (my wife is drooling looking at the "bling" things). We will soon schedule a meeting with HTH to finalize the details of the kitchen and the laundry room (still hoping not to exceed our initial cost estimates due to the "shiny" stuff). Now it feels like things have really started moving.






 In other news, we still haven't managed to find our temporary cheaper residence yet. The search for another apartment goes on. The pressure is building up, just like when you are no where near a bathroom and suddenly feel the pressure in your stomach building up and then you focus all your energy in finding a nearest bathroom as soon as possible, my situation with finding a cheaper apartment is some what similar. We only have until end of January 2016 to find another apartment and I really don't want to wait until that long... Come on, someone rent me an apartment already!!

0 comments:

Bygglov "Building permission" documents submitted

00:28 Pi is the new bitcoin 0 Comments

We have now signed the documents for the house building permission (bygglov in Swedish) and I personally submitted the documents and the house diagrams at the Karlskrona Kommun's office.

Now we wait... wait... and wait with our fingers crossed so that our extended house plan with additional veranda and balcony is approved by the planning office.

In the meanwhile I am having a continued discussion with HTH about the kitchen and laundry room plans. HTH wants us to visit their enormous showroom and exhibition so that we can get the look and feel of the kitchen we would like to have.

We like the special attention we are getting from HTH. It is all nice and good but, there is a little problem...
We are in Karlskrona and HTH showroom is in... JÖNKÖPING. That place is f*#%ing 231km away. 

Just travelling to and from there would take 6-7 hours and we also need a few hours in between to discuss the details for the kitchen and laundry room. That means we would have to spend the whole day for this activity. So what about the kids... If it was a weekend the kids could have tagged along.  But as usual all good things and places in Sweden take rest on weekends so we need to plan this activity during the weekdays. And as the kids have school during the week we don't have anyone to take care of them after school, in case we decided to take the adventure trip to Jön-f*#%ing-köping.
Need to come up with some plan to do this little trip.

0 comments:

No apartments to be found... We might have taken a very big risk

21:22 Pi is the new bitcoin 1 Comments

Our search for a cheaper apartment continues. I have now registered at some 15-20 websites that post advertisements for rental apartments. But so far we haven't had any luck. Seems like we are looking for an apartment at a wrong time. There are so many people looking for apartments at this time and our number in the queue (yes, queue. Sweden loves the queue system 😉) is somewhere around 150-200. Also the recent refugee crisis have made the situation even worse. I am all in for helping the refugees as it is each one of our's moral responsibility, but at the moment it feels like we have a competition for finding an apartment. Well, cheaper apartment that is, as there are still bigger and expensive apartments available that no one wants to have due to the high rent.

In the beginning of this week I had given the 3 month notice (usual notice period in Sweden for almost every rental service) for my current apartment. Today we received the confirmation from the company that our notice had been received and our current apartment is now listed as available from 1st of February 2016 onward. So the countdown for leaving our current apartment has started, and it feels like we are now sitting on a ticking time-bomb. Either we find a new apartment before February 2016 or find some other alternative (which I don't have any clue of at the moment). It seems like we have taken a very big risk by giving the notice for the current apartment without finding another apartment first. Now I am going to have nightmares every night when I sleep, until we find an apartment to move in temporarily.

Speaking of nightmares 👻 , today is Halloween and my son has dressed up as a ghost. Here is his picture. Happy Halloween 🎃 everyone!!


1 comments:

Visit to our Tomt (plot in Swedish)

20:43 Pi is the new bitcoin 1 Comments

Now that we have paid the first invoice, we thought of visiting our tomt (plot) and take some photos of the place to add it to the blog. It would also serve later on to do a before and after comparison when the house is ready.





This is where the house will stand in a few months time. 


1 comments: