WiP08 – hammers soon!

Today, as every Wednesday, was the construction site meeting for the Molinar Townhouse project, and I thought I’d bring you a few photos and write a couple of lines about it. WiP08, by the way, plainly means Work in Progress 08 and marks the eighth report we’re posting about the Molinar Townhouse project. To keep you transparently and comprehensively informed about the build and its progress.

In fact, we’re perfectly on schedule. We’re now waiting for a few minor things and can then already apply for the Final d´Obra. That is basically the first step for the official building acceptance and the prerequisite for applying for the Cédula de Habitabilidad, the certificate of habitability.

Both are still a factor of uncertainty, connected with the official water connection, for which the street will be dug up again. And of course only the monopoly company is allowed to do that. For the unfortunately quite inflated price, they’ll then close up the street again. So that the electricity utility can dig it up again—for an equally sporty price. Well … The good thing is: These two construction dates are usually very hard to estimate in terms of timing. But the water is now connected. That puts us a good step further along and we may even be able to make an offer to tenants who would like to move in earlier.

À propos: As I was just writing the WiP08, the 7th rental was being announced. You know, here that always has to be sealed with a deposit and a contract. Crazy how high the demand for good products is. And a great vote of confidence that our first tenants signed months ago already!

We’re not finished yet in three houses. Sure—on 8 houses, even larger electricians don’t have the capacity to do everything at the same time. So we proceeded in stages here. You can see here, by way of example, the sub-distribution board with the KNX bus actuators in house 24B. After that, the almost finished wiring and the successful test of the actuators.

It’s always nice to know who’s behind the whole thing, isn’t it? Here are a few of the protagonists of the construction site, where I saw an estimated 60 people today …

At the team meeting for the WiP08, Pilar for interior design and Alvaro for project management were present from our side. Then the colleagues from islabau, the executing construction company, including one of the owners, Javier Bethancourt, as well as the site manager José-Manual. Also with us are Magi Marqués, the architect of this project, and Tomeu Salom, our technical architect, who ensures that the building will hopefully stand for a long time and without defects.

I’ve always said we want to use authentic, genuine materials. And in this project, for the first time, I was persuaded to use porcelain stoneware that only looks like natural stone.

Why? In fact mainly for design reasons. The material thickness is lower. And the material is suitable for identical use indoors and outdoors. And we wanted a continuous grout line from inside to outside without any visible difference in the material. Natural stone is actually roughened differently for outdoor use; you can’t achieve a uniform look with it. And in many places in the not really huge houses, we could simply work much more finely and precisely.

In fact, the material is just as expensive as a good natural stone. But in maintenance, of course, it’s much, much more resistant. Spill a glass of wine on natural stone or get grease splatters from cooking? If you don’t act immediately, you’ll be enjoying that for a long time. But the truly decisive point was the design.

For that, we have the “real” natural stone on the kitchen countertop. There it was visually really nicer because of the solidity.

The kitchen is now ordered. In the design, we finally decided not to build a “U” after all, but an “L”. After a viewing, we took another look at the dimensions of the dining table and realized that the chairs and the table are not really generous. And that we would find it nicer to have a larger table instead of the third kitchen run.

Then we also swapped the LIEBHERR refrigerator and dishwasher for MIELE products. The induction cooktop remains BORA (“pur”) and the oven comes from Gaggenau. The fronts under the natural stone are made of real walnut wood and thus match the doors and cabinets throughout the entire house perfectly.

I hope I was able to give you a good impression of the progress of the construction work with this WiP08. As a team, we’re proud of the progress here, hope that the authorities will keep up the pace, and that we can hand over the keys to the first tenants sooner—or at least on schedule!

Wishing you a good time

Arnd