Preparation terrain and storage shed

 During the purchase and paperwork business I started prepare the area for construction works.

First thing needed in South America is a wall, I'm not that keen on it but it's a necessity, the Brazilians prefer to build walls as high as possible and preferably with pieces of broken glass on top,but often with a shady wooden gate easy to walk in.... but a wall had to be build. Also a storage shed was a necessity and I decided to build a wall and a shed more or less in the style of the to build house.

It took me the same amount of time to construct the dividing walls of the terrain and erect the brickwall shed as it took to do the legalization of the property... not to bad.

Below some pictures of wall and shed construction.

                    Curved wall at the front                                                        Straight walls at the side 

Above the nearly finished storage, an invisible solar installation at the rooftop with inverter and batteries for the required electricity and internet, the construction "warming up" nearly has been finished.

Landing again

Beside the terrain walls and storage shed, the area was leveled by a JCB tractor and was now more or less ready to work on.

The only thing that bothered me was the distance of this terrain and the house I lived in at the beach, I decided to create a bathroom, bedroom and a small kitchen in the storage shed, total 18 square meters, more than enough for a man on his own.

It took me 2 months to have everything constructed and painted and I moved from the beach to the construction area.

I noticed the curiosity of the neighbours, and soon they sent the kids with a bottle of water for me, it was quit obvious that they were sent as little spies. "Did I really sleep in there", asked the oldest,with her finger pointed at the small building...." Yes" I replied..."Oh", she said... suddenly in a rush, she started running back home, the others following her, still at the road she yelled to her mother that I was really sleeping at the terrain, I imagined her mother blushing....children are nice and honest, games still a cellphone or whatever...

Being a "gringo"

In the meanwhile  the next bump on the road appeared; the license to start building had been filed months ago, but beside the receival of a protocol number, it was worrying silent, my weekly visit at the municipal website gave me the same message for months now " At urban supervision for review" ...

I made an appointment with my technical supervisor for advice, an obligation to have one in Brasil for new buildings, by the way.

He looked at me a bit confused and asked me what the problem was, "I want to start building!"  was my answer, he smiled a little and replied; Why don't you start with the foundation then? Now I was confused, " I can't start without a license" , he smiled again at me and reminded me that we still lived in Brazil.

"When you keep the measurements according plan you can easily start with the foundation works"  he assured me. Also he promised to make some calls to speed things up at the city hall.

Right...I still got to much the Dutch mindset I suppose.

The road to nowhere by following the rules.

In the meanwhile,the drawings of Hein had been transformed by a Brazilian architect into a regular and required Brazilian ( or maybe worldwide) format; "copying"  Hein's drawings into a 'nice and tight'  CAD drawing , accepted by the Brazilian municipality. It all seemed ok... but I was stalling... nothing happened, something pulled the brake. It took me a year to figure out what the cause was; I didn't liked the house anymore, my interest was gone.

At one night I took the stored drawings of Hein and the new CAD drawings and placed them side by side, at a piece of plywood. Immediately I noticed a difference when I looked at the two drawings, one had a soul, the other one didn't. I grabbed all the drawings of Hein and displayed them around, opened another beer and the joy returned... just looking at them. I made the decision to follow the initial ideas of Hein and me... Almost certainly, nasty difficulties would appear in this bureaucratic world, but creating something without all the beautiful imperfections,lines expressing years of reading, shipbuilding, friendship and understanding, seemed far worse to me.

As I wrote before; I decided again to build as drawn by Hein.     

Starting up

More or less relieved by this revelation and the advice of Mr. Cesare, I started with measuring and placing the building frame. All measurements were correct and construction frame had been placed.

To avoid problems, my technical responsible, sr. Cesare, advised me to do a soil sounding to determine the soil firmness and with that,the required depth of the foundation pillars. The outcome was 2 meters depth for solid soil and I requested the owner of the JCB tractor to do the digging, what he did. After 2 days, all holes for the 23 pillars were finished and the construction was ready to start.

The weeks before, I was urgently looking for an assistant, a friend in Belford Roxo gave me a number of his friend who was looking for a job, I called him and he was willing to assist me, the only problem was the distance, he lived 60 km away, we agreed that he could stay at the, now vacant, beach house during the week, weekends off and home , problem solved.  

Excavated holes with rebar columns columns supported by wood

             Foundation column

Tower foundation

Foundation beams completed

Preparations concrete floor

Pouring concrete

First stage finished