We planned a trip in the next few weeks to go over sign some paper work, and finally pick the keys up for the house unlock the doors walk inside, knowing we own it.
We did all of the above over three days, meeting the builder, and showing him inside for the first time, although on our first day out there we arrived early and did a few miles going to bank in Murcia and then on to the solicitors in Almeria, busting for the loo on the way to the B&B, we detoured off to go to the Cortijo to use the loo and you could say that we christened it.
Had a good meeting with the builder, although we went through what we wanted to do, as we need to do the build in stages as it had cost us more in short term to buy the property. As we went through the plans we found that some of the measurements did not fit and walls was shown as being knocked down which had no need to, but as I said early the architect was suggesting for it to be knock down and build completely new, but rustic looking. Therefore, it was decided that the builder would need to see the architect to go through what we wanted to do, i.e. to do it in stages and to build on the existing part of the house, without knocking any of it down, so we could keep the character of the building. We returned home, but did not want to, which was always the case when we come out .
The builder had he’s meeting and sent me the outcome of it and first thing that need our urgent attention was the fact that the building licence that we had at the start of all this was due to expire on the 21st of January 2010.
On the good side we could put in for an extension of the licence for another 2 years, which the architect had written a letter to the town hall explaining the situation on how long it had taken to purchase the property. He said that there should be no problem with the town hall granting us an extension.
We was luckly that the builder had arranged this meeting or we could have missed the dead line, the licence would have expired and we would have had to reply for it from start, phew! You could say.
Also the builder was happy for as to do it in stages and the architect was happy to do the build in the way we had suggested, so long us the outside was in keeping with the original plans, was white and the tiles on the roof was what was stated on the plans submitted to town hall .
The only thing now we had 2 years to complete the build, well at least the external part the inside we can do in our own time.
I started to re look at the plans again to look at want we could do, we had a free rein as such to re design the layout and make sure we use every part of the old parts of the building.