Despite the fact that we're desperate to finish and move in upstairs, we're going to miss the everyday work of renovations as it's something we both really enjoy. So it's lucky that our company, that specialises in real estate in Valparaiso and Chile has bought a beautiful, but slightly crumbly, property 2 minutes walk away from us that we're going to convert into two large luxury loft apartments in Valparaiso. With sea views and parking. And the location is incredible.
It's going to be the best quality Valparaiso renovacion patrimonial project Valparaiso's seen and we're really kind of excited about being able to do it. Almost all of these loft projects that Valparaiso has seen have been really, really poor quality. The finished apartments are almost all small, cheap and crappy. Not places anyone would want to spend more than a few days at a time. We're going to do a high quality job and create apartments where people could actually live. The idea is to help attract people to spend more time here and not just use the apartments as mere holiday homes. More details in a couple of weeks...
In the meantime, here are three photos of the outside of our house from before, during and after...
5 comments:
Well, from the Jolly Roger to the Saint George's cross is a change...But seriously, Grand Job! well done. Would you say the English are back after a 100 years hiccup? Long Live to Merry Hill!...and the rest of them!
Is good to set up a standard, even if in Chile, standards are considered as something of a nuisance, foreign, unreal,...unaffordable.
Yeah! "unaffordable", I think that's the best way to describe the feeling of a normal Chilean gazing upon a job well done for the first time. And then hardwood becomes cheap damped pine, curves become squares, lime becomes plaster, corrugated steel becomes ondulated tin panels, glass turned into plastic, sash windows become fixed windows and ornament becomes extinct. Sort of defeat before trying. That's why is good to see the original mind of these houses brought back by someone of that same distant land.
Me best regards, mate,
Santiago
J'ai hâte de le voir.
Are the english back..? well, there are a few of us...slowly recolonising the city...
What you describe about the corner cutting in chilean construction is absolutely spot on. It's exactly what has happened in all but one of the loft conversion projects i've seen in Valparaiso. It's partly because people have thought that no one with any real money would want to buy property in Valparaiso so they did cheap conversion jobs to be able to sell the finished product cheaply.
Sophie-we'll be completely finished in a couple of weeks so you'll have to come over to Valpo and see it then!
Looks great from the outside, I look forward to seeing the pictures of the interior.
Kevin J
I once went to a house to make sketches of it, when I was still a student; a very beautiful house, in one of the hills in Valparaíso, completely derelict, with a magnificent cast iron entrance gates, leading to a sinuous stairs that brought you to the main floor, a good 10m above the entrance. In ruins, it was squattered by a very poor mother of 3, and being the house so huge (and you could really see how grandiose might have been in its days) and with so many walls already fallen, she decided to live in the only one room with roof. She and her children lived in a sort of spiral dwelling, where the room was the centre and the rest of the open rooms unwrapping around them, with no need for an external patio. She might have wondered why would someone spent all that money in something that can't be maintained in time? And, oblivious to the marvel around her, she hanged her laundry on a rope from an oakframed window to a marvelous plaster centrepiece to an ornated oak varanda. Something like that happened to Valparaíso for many a year. And as I said before, it has much to do with the road downwards leading to poverty and all that reminds you of that.
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