The Beginning

The beginning of work on our property....

The pictures and captions tell most of the story. Thus far we have mostly been cleaning up the land a bit and demolishing the main old house. Our friendly neighbour, Gregor, agreed to help us in return for the old wood from the house which we didn't need anyway. He put 5 days of hard labour in for us and in return got a huge stack of wood for his stove at home. With his help, we were able to clear most of the old house and now have a clearer idea of our next steps.

We are now collecting the foundation rocks from the main house and stacking them for future re-usage. They should be able to go into our future terrace walls and anywhere else we need large rocks in the landscaping.

Next week we hope to get a back-hoe/loader (or a "bagger" as I am constantly being told the name is in Bulgarian) in there to rip-up the land and begin forming it. There are many, many overgrown bushes with stubborn roots and trees that need to be yanked out and this is way too much manual labour for any of us. Also, the smaller brick house will need to be demolished and disposed of...unfortunately the bricks are no good for re-using.

After that, it all depends how quickly we can get our building permits together so that we can begin breaking ground and digging out the basement in preparation for pouring concrete. If we can get concrete poured for the basement and foundation by the end of this Summer, we would be thrilled so that we could start construction hopefully next year. As you can imagine the Bulgarian beaurocracy is thick here in regards to getting the permits in order and this may take several weeks or months I am told.

Map Tip: The green ponter indicates the approximate location of the property and you can zoom out to get a better idea of where we are in the world.

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