Roof as seen from the road

More progress. The roof is finished – yay! It looks lovely as you approach the house from the village road – you will only see that roof, maybe a meter of the north wall and a beautiful eastern stone wall. The rest awaits after you park and walk closer towards it. We even had a small party at the site last Thursday to celebrate.  The roof and stone master Damir is doing wonderful job with all this. That chimney on the right will go.

Pretty (?) red pipes

The majority of work being done now is finishing all the outside installations pipework whatnot and starting the basic landscaping.

Mountains of rocks

Which means moving all the soil and rocks that were dug out when pool was being dug to form 4 “seamlessly blending into the existing landscape” terraces. Remains to be seen how long it will take for it to blend. I will need to buy some grass seeds very soon.

Inside, the electricity and water installations are being finished and this week some of the windows will be installed as well as the floor in “our”, “ugly” apartment.

That floor, if it works out, deserves a very detailed post. Weeks are being spent by Vjeko and me to figure out how to do a simple (and cheap) concrete floor in the interior. We think we found the way and hopefully the people to do it. Magazines are full of it, youtube videos galore, but finding out exactly which products to use and how (especially in Croatia) was fun. It was also fun trying not to be conned into buying “special” products at ridiculous prices. More on this in about months time when the floor no 1 dries out and is sealed. We are using our apartment as a testing ground.

And now onto interiors. I am totally odded with all the pictures, magazines (online and offline)  and “inspiration”. Last week I had to tell the electrician exactly where the wires will be for the bathroom mirror lights with having no mirrors or the lights. And I thought I knew exactly how will things look like, at least inside. Still, I can keep dreaming until reality (of the budget) hits me.

Bolthole before

I still believe that the above can be turned into below.

Bolthole after

The bed and the gallery will look not much like below picture – but that is roughly the idea for the layout of the “bedroom” part of the apartment.

Bed (will be) under the gallery

I love the idea of white walls and contrasting grey – I am not sure I will be able to keep it this soft and lovely – a shot of strong colour here and there is a must and apparently “my style” – so we’ll see how will we pull that out. Still, the walls will be white and the floor (concrete) grey. And windows and shutters will also be grey.

Soft tones

Below is how the bathroom sink will likely be placed in the apartment’s bathroom. Idea being that instead of the clean wood like below, we will construct the shelf from the old beams we have there. When I say we, I mean a carpenter that is yet to be found. One with lot of patience for my ideas. I have sent a brief to one of them last week – not heard back from him yet, haha – probably got scared. I have no idea how much this could cost and as we are getting towards the end of the project, we are watching the budget more tightly of course. You can see the concrete floor below and above – it really is all over the place in these fancy pictures.

Bathroom shelf – idea for

There are three kitchens to be equipped. Ones for “the tourists” are inspired by the hanging one below. They will be lot smaller though.

Hanging kitchen

And “ours” by this one below. The idea again being to reuse old planks and beams as much as possible. If possible at all.

Kitchen cabinets inspiration for

The end result is this on the outside:

Morning (or sunset? or both!) in Lovrinići as I imagine it

And everybody feeling in the mood for love wherever they are. With no permanent consequences to the sheets.

In the mood for love

PS I am writing this from grey skied Oxford, UK. Nice to be back here with our lovely, lovely friends.

PPS Most of the images above are likely either from The style files or Apartment Therapy – I saved them over years without capturing where they are from. I know I could do a Google image search and figure this out exactly, but I didn’t. Hope nobody will mind if credit is not given.