Water Tank

We had kinda forgotten about the water tank issue. Initially I wanted to have a proper, wooden water tower, but budget constraints (again budget constraints!) mean I have to make a decision on where to place it, right now.

If on the ground, waiting for cash for the tower that may never come, a blackout would mean no water, or the need for a power generator.

If we placed it on the roof, ensuring gravity would do its work and at least we would have decent water pressure in the downstairs bathroom during a blackout, we weren't sure how it would look. So I received a couple of options from Fabian today (Autocad, not real photos), and I fell in love with the wooden-clad tank... check it out


here the tank is hidden in a brick & mortar box, don't like it


this is the cute one...

Uruguay, the Kaş of South America

Sibel's friendly gaucho with his pride and joy, the beautiful horse

As a Uruguayan émigré returning to the country after a couple of decades overseas, I have been pondering my decision for a few years. At first, the answers weren’t that obvious. When I unconsciously started getting closer to Uruguay I was actually living in Brazil. Before that point in time, my single obsession in life had been to run away from Uruguay, and my one recurring nightmare for years involved waking up in Uruguay to someone telling me the last flight to the U.S. had just left. My escape planning started at age 5 or 6, when in response to my question “what are dollars?” my favorite aunt said it was the money I would use in the U.S., where I was going to live in when I grew up; so it’s no surprise that after leaving, staying away from Uruguay consumed me for such a long time.

But then I assimilated so well to life in the U.S., that one day I decided I wanted to “be posted overseas.” A smart colleague pointed out the obvious: “But you are overseas!” Nonetheless, my move to Brazil was set in motion, a year later I was living in Sao Paulo, and rather than my annual stressful visits, I was doing Uruguay as weekend getaways.

It was then that it struck me: how mellow things were. Yes, coming from Brazil, or from New York, the pace was different, not marihuana-induced stupor, like in the north of Brazil, but definitely more chill, not only in terms of activity levels, but also socially, it felt less neurotic. And the air. Visiting Punta del Este from Sao Paulo made me realize my favorite thing about the Uruguayan coast: the smell of the air, that mix of ocean, forest, prairies and burning firewood from all the asados.

Last but not least, coming into my “middle age” I was already becoming obsessively noise-intolerant, and I found that in relative terms, outside of Montevideo, quiet was something that could be had in Uruguay. On that basis, and on having fallen in love with a piece of land, I slowly, unconsciously at first, started debating whether or not to return, how to do it, and why.

The process has taken many years, but yesterday, talking about Kaş, the tiny Mediterranean town I lived in for 3 years here in Turkey, I had an epiphany. My friend Simon, a British tour-guide who managed to visit us for a few hours off a cruise-ship, noted that Kaş, which has been his home for half the year for over a decade, now boasts a huge expat (read British) community, and he didn’t sound too psyched about it.

“Yes, but what a nice community it is!” was my instant reply. A group of discerning, low profile, smart, educated people, with whom you will be delighted to strike a conversation any day of the week. Not “potato people” which is what we have here in Kuşadasi – our home for the past couple of years – and in many places throughout the Mediterranean coast.

Good times in Kaş, Simon, Ergun, Phil and Barbi at Sun Cafe


Good times in Kaş 2: Barbi behind the bar, Ali and Burak at Denizalti

The expression was coined by my husband, in reference to the families of obese and alcoholic working class Europeans (Mom in the miniskirt and platform shoes, with Bo Derek braiding, Dad in tank top or soccer shirt, kids in small version of the same outfit) who have beer-breakfast at the pub, roast for six hours by the pool or at the beach, and end up in a coma at the hospital after falling drunk in the pool and forgetting to come back up. That latest bit happened to a neighbor two houses down from us.

In a way, I felt today, Uruguay is to South America what Kaş is to Turkey. A sober, low-key yet reasonably friendly place that mostly attracts the right kind of people.

The right price

How much is this worth? No, I'm not pimping my husband, I mean the miles of empty beach all to ourselves... or as aunt Myrtha would say, "How much does this go for in the Caribbean?"


Nobody wants to feel like they’ve been had in any transaction, and real-estate is no different. But the problem in determining the “right” price for land or a house is that it may have nothing to do with the “fair” price, or the “market” price. And what may seem right one day or year, in retrospect may feel much better, or just bad.

Yesterday, a friend told me of a great deal a mutual friend’s mother had stumbled upon near the city where we live in Turkey. A quarter acre lot, with an old stone house, in a village 20 minutes away from where we live, for $130,000.

Rip-off! I said. The house could be cute-looking but she will need to build it anew (roof leaks, substandard bathroom and kitchen, no insulation, no heating, etc.) I’m thinking of all the Brits and Americans we know who bought “charming stone village houses” and spent fortunes trying to make them livable. But at least they bought them cheap… And if you’re going to be in the middle of nowhere, would you go for just a quarter acre of land? I told him that in Uruguay I am looking at a property that is 60 times that land for half that price, just ten blocks away from the sea! Those were my shy comments.

My friend was shocked. “It’s a great deal! She’s all artsy and she will have room for her pottery and for a garden! And a quarter acre is a huge lot of land for Turkey! And the apartment she sold in the city was three times that price!!”

My point – you might have guessed by now – is that highly subjective factors related to personal circumstances play a large role in determining what something is worth to us. The house that is worth $130k to our friend’s mother would get no more than $50k from me.

My first ever real-estate transaction, in 1992, was the purchase of a condo in Jersey City, in the historic Paulus Hook district, a stone’s throw away from the Hudson River. This condo was the first and only one I saw, and I forgot to even bargain for a discount until my mother screamed at me long-distance. I got a $5k reduction, a good will gesture from the seller who happened to be my landlord in the tenement I was living in. But the thing is, a $30k price increase would still have been the right price for me, because this was the ONLY property available to me. I was an illegal alien at the time, and the only way I was able to purchase was through a shady mortgage obtained for me by the seller, from an equally shady bank in Hoboken that 6 months after the transaction had ceased to exist.

That, and the fact that 3 years earlier I had parked in front of the building in question, looked at the WTC views beyond the river, and decided this was where I would live one day, were the key factors in my price equation. I was just lucky that my dream building fell in the hands of my slumlord-cum-developer.

From the other side of the fence, the same applies to sellers. Even in very liquid markets with readily available benchmarks, setting a sale price is challenging for even the most profit-minded seller. Not to mention pricing houses that are off the "hot" areas, plots in sizes that are not standard, condos with unique features. Here, the subjective takes over again, as pricing a view, or worse still, the smell of the air or the proximity to one’s favorite bakery is a completely emotional process, which may also include other emotional/financial considerations such as need for money, or desire to be somewhere else.

When I sold the Jersey City condo and walked away with a 150% profit on a six-year investment, I was quite happy. Ten years later, it has quadrupled in price since I sold, which prompted the mentally deranged buyer, who emailed me last week, to basically call me a sucker. Funnily enough, I feel like it was quite a success, living in my dream condo for six years, and walking away with a wad of cash, and yet… Dan the realtor’s words continue to echo in my mind. “As long as the river is there” he said pointing at the Hudson from my stoop, “the price of this place will continue to rise.” Yes, I’ve been feeling like a sucker for several years.

My second home, a condo in Sao Paulo, was as much an adventure to buy as it was to sell. Because in Sao Paulo old equals bad, it took me three months of daily viewings to have realtors show me what I wanted to see: an old, very large place in need of renovation. When I finally found it, I obtained a symbolic discount on the asking price, so enamored was I. On reflection, I know a Brazilian buyer would have driven a much harder bargain, as in local eyes, the apartment was as good as condemned. “Detonado” was how the realtor described it.

Two years and a huge renovation later, I was ready to sell, but conditions were far from ideal: I wanted to leave the country, the market was barely beginning to recover from a slump, and every single realtor I contacted refused to take on the listing. It was a 50 year old building, considered undesirable, especially for the quality level at which I had renovated it. To boot, there was a quite rowdy lesbian bar down the block that every realtor seemed to bring up when I gave the address. “Yes, it’s great!” I would say. “It’s open until 5 AM so you can always go for a Coke or to buy cigarrettes!” They were not impressed. Still, I came up with a price that would give me a respectable profit, and said to myself: “All I need is ONE person that feels just like I do.” Six months after my failed realtor canvassing drive, when I had almost forgotten that I was trying to sell, I got a call from an agent. She specialized in another, fancier neighborhood, but she wanted to come visit. Upon opening the door, she gasped, and promised competing bids within a week. She was true to her promise, I got a few bucks over the asking price, and I managed to close on the sale the same day my company announced its first round of layoffs, which I had been planning on being a part of.

Both bidders were foreigners. Where I and the buyers saw an amazing, stylish loft with three en-suite bedrooms, windows in four directions, cathedral ceilings, and walking distance from 5 different movie theaters, most Paulistas in my price-segment saw a trashy looking building with an embarrassingly unimpressive lobby and (horror) a lesbian bar down the block. In the end, I was lucky to find the buyer who shared my perspective and views on the price of the property, within a reasonable stretch of time.

A few months earlier, in the throes of post-renovation depression, on a trip to Uruguay I discovered an area of the coast of Maldonado that literally hypnotized me. In a few weeks I was back, buying 4 plots of land, on a 5 year financing plan offered by the seller. I did not bargain one bit, even though I was buying four plots. I did no research whatsoever around nearby areas. I just bought, because the way I saw it at the time, any money that I did not plunk into real estate installments would be spent on weekend flights to New York, or 3 day visits to friends in Europe, something everybody around me in Sao Paulo seemed to be engaged in, and quite a temptation at the time. After my spendthrift lifestyle came to an end, and facing no source of income for the near future, I negotiated to pay in full two of the four lots, and returned the other two to the seller.

Over the years I continued to buy lots in the same area and in other areas of Punta del Este. Rather than buying the plot for my future home, these have been “investments,” and rather than swimming in cash, I have become acutely aware of each dollar earned, all of which has shed a whole new light on the meaning of “the right price”.

Look Ma! No tiles!

Yes, I finally did it, I have bathrooms with no tiles... and all white.

The pictures below show views of the two bathrooms, which look identical except for the fact that in the guest bathroom there is a door immediately next to the toilet-bowl and sink, separating the laundry area, while in our bathroom, the door is right at the hallway, leaving the cabinets inside the bathroom itself.






It seemed like for two weeks nothing happened. Fabian related a nightmarish sounding comedy of errors where, at a stage when electrician, carpenter and plaster guys were required simultaneously on the site, it took a frustrating number of permutations of one or two thereof before all three appeared concurrently. Well, they didn't quite appear, Fabian chased them all over the place, and the minute he had hunted and dragged down one or two to the site, another one had slipped through.

In any case, the livingroom looks nice and white, I guess they have plastered most of the sheetrock over by now, and the shelving unit on the sea side of the house is completed, just missing installation of the lighting fixtures.

The bathrooms look gorgeous to me. The cabinetry at the entrance is great, for towels, care products, laundry hamper, water heater, there's room for everything in a nice and organized way. Also the color scheme (white to gray) with the ceiling in concrete gray, the floors and walls in white microcement, and the grey-veined white marble countertop and shower divider look super classy. Not to mention the tons of natural light from the window, which, standing under the showerhead, provides a view of the ocean. Last remaining item here is the glass divider for the shower.

I have been living in our Turkey rented villa with the most horrible bathrooms ever. The entire house has marble floors, but the bathrooms have the cheesiest tiling in the world, with flower motif and texture, and to boot, GOLD details... I just want to puke every time. They have no natural light, and no ventilation to speak of either.

In my mother's pad in Punta where we have stayed the past few years, the bathrooms have been nicely redone, but with floor tiles in beige, and I have to confess, I have developed a phobia. I can't stand to see one more beige tile.

So, as our Turkish friends say when they see something white, "Hastane gibi" or "like a hospital," that's exactly what we're going for...



Our "parrillero" or barbeque, still missing the iron grill and wood holder thing. It's big, I say it can serve as extra guest quarters... On the right side along the same wall will go a countertop with a sink. Later, I will make a rolling piece of furniture that can rest against the wall perpendicular to the parrillero, but which can be brought out and placed in front of it when we have asados, and serve as further support area/counter, possibly with several shelves.

Built-in shelving & cabinets start taking shape in livingroom/kitchen

These are not most of the kitchen cabinets per se, but the single unit that runs the entire length of the living-room and kitchen, which we decided to unify into a 12m long (39.4 ft, for the decimally challenged) shelf above the doors, and a shelf unit in the space between the door to the distribution area and the sliding doors to the terrace, plus a broom closet, some shelves/drawers and the fridge "niche". All for the sake of consistency and streamlining the look.



We are now working on the final design for the wall that runs perpendicular to this one, where the kitchen counter, the sink and the stove will be. Today's decision involved the fan (ventilator, extractor or whatever). We had the options of using a long duct going up, a short one, or installing a restaurant-type shell that would hide a regular old-style kitchen ventilator. That was the coolest option, but I don't want to make things too cool, as I've said before, I'm afraid of dating the house too much, by falling into fads. The other thing is that the round kitchen ventilator gets dirty and greasy and disgusting and I don't see myself enjoying the sight or cleaning it too much. It grosses me out. You still have to clean the other thing, but somehow psychologically the round fan feels dirtier... So i chose the short duct, so it doesn't become too visible from the living-room, and I get a double shelf on the kitchen wall.

The autocad images have the imaginary furniture located all wrong, we will make the dining-room inside the kitchen area for the time being (it's big enough, 5x3m, or 16x10 ft), until we have closed the third bedroom/office downstairs. So my temporary office will be directly across from the shelving unit.

Sunrise at Arrancopelito

Barbi is still arguing, he says no way, that's a sunset, it can't be a sunrise, how is Fabian going to be at the site at sunrise, am I crazy?

Well, the proof is in the location of the sun, I guess, sort of N-NE.


For all my bitching about hating plaster, here we go, with the whole wall long plaster shelf that extends from the end of the living-room, above the deck window/door, to the end of the kitchen, forming a shelving unit before the door, and then another storage unit in the kitchen, housing the fridge as well as some cabinets.

We had to hide some structural stuff in the livingroom, and were having trouble solving that side of the kitchen, so in the end we went for the wall-through thing. The neatest thing is that the shelves will hide the sliding door to the stairway and bedrooms area. If we made it slide behind the kitchen cabinets, we would end up with not too much depth in those cabinets, which we need for brooms/vacum cleaner, cleaning supplies, etc. I think it's super cool to have a sliding door, no matter what.