Renovations Stories
No, we still don't have approval to do the renovations but yes, we nonetheless do little bits and pieces to see some progress!

We found bricks!!
In order to do the extensions to the unit we need bricks that match the existing. But unfortunately these bricks aren't produced anymore. So we always look out for them. Last weekend we spotted exactly these bricks. They were used to build a little wall surrounding a tree, but this wall was half broken down. Ian asked the owners and they were actually glad to get rid of them :-)
So this weekend we borrowed a trailer and went there to demolish the wall and pick up the bricks. And we discovered that they used these bricks as well to pave. So we dug out perfectly fine bricks! We are really happy about this because we got them for free and they are exactly the ones that we need! In the end we recovered more than 200 bricks, cleaned them from the mortar and washed the dirt of.

Gas Hot Water Heater
At the moment we use an electric instantaneous water heater but every time we open the tap we will have to wait patiently for about 2min. to get hot water. What a waste! So as part of the renovations we bought a gas hot water system which will hopefully work much better. But we had troubles to find a place to put it. We wanted to put it in the back, so it is not visible. But this thing has to be at least 1m away from any window each side. So there is no room in the back. So we decided to replace the old air condition with the new hot water system. We wanted to pull the aircon out anyway and this way we didn't need to find bricks to fill the hole in the wall. We have done this some weeks ago. But unfortunately the gas meter is just underneath now... which is too close... so we need to move the gas meter. I think only one company is allowed to do this and they charge a ridiculously high amount for this but anyway this will hopefully be done soon.