Sunday 14th June

We drove out to the site expecting to see an enormous gap on the road side where the landscapers had had to remove an extremely large sea grape. However, we were agreeably surprised to find that it looks fine. The large beech trees that were obstructing the footprint have been moved successfully with huge machinery punching them out of the rock. However, in moving them one fell onto the neighbour’s fence, so this must be repaired a.s.a.p! The ridge on the plot is very visible now so we are begining to get a feel of what it will be like living here. (See photos).

Friday 12th June

Meeting with engineers, geotech surveyors, project manager (AV) and J.D and John Yeo.

J.D did a briefing and as the team had no problems Graham brought up ICF walls and re-iterated our wish to have construction methods and materials which were as green as can be practical . Because of the overall lack of enthusiasm for new construction methods we had thought that this meeting might prove difficult. Instead it went well with AV being given the research project of finding out about the pros and cons of both construction methods.

It was decided not to go for design planning now - skip it and wait until the construction drawings are done and get all approvals in one go.

We are not sure how much will be done while we are back in Europe on Moonraker . However, we do want to be happy about construction methods and materials before J.D. commits to construction drawings.. .

Thursday 11th June

Meeting today with Alan. We reviewed all AV’s budget estimate. This was really helpful and took a good couple of hours going over everything with a fine tooth comb. We are desperately trying to make sure we don’t have too big an overspend on the whole project.

Monday 8th June 14, 2009

A red letter day

We visited the site at 8:30am to meet with Tom and agree the clearing of the footprint and drive. I must say that I do have tremendous confidence in Tom. The huge digger started work, claring and loading bush into a massive truck. Somehow we now feel that work has begun!

Last night we poured over the plans again altering room sizes and had a big discussion on costs once more.

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Tuesday 2nd June

New sketches from John… Not many outstanding issues now. The house is looking wonderful ..The dormers are still too small. Garbage disposal to be worked out, and stairs off the veranda to be turned around so they face south and arrive on the deck.

Thursday 28th May

I had a very good meeting with Heather from Sotheby’s) to ask her on her views of the design ( i.e. does it have wide appeal and marketability) She was very encouraging on what the selling price might be and has promised to get back to us with details and price shortly.

What a pity we are still in the dark on the sale of Moonraker. How much? And how long?

Tuesday May 26th

Graham has been doing a much more detailed costing on the house these last couple of days and of course it is now CI$ 130,000 over his maximum budget which does include a 10% contingency - which is not good news!

We hope to get a view from the realtors on the value of the house we have designed and so I plan to see Heather from Sotheby’s tomorrow.

The costing should be refined soon with proposals on RE from Arch Solar and Electrotch and GSHP proposals from Natural Energy and Jeffe Demme, who did Jim’s house. Alan is up dating his costs to include the drive and pool.

Of course this is only an estimate and can not be perfect before AV has the technical drawings.

Tom plans to get out to the site today to mark out the house foot print ready for clearance to commence next week.

Sunday 24th May

All the CAD drawings arrived on Friday morning. - 3 big issues surfaced.

First, the stairs at the front don’t work. They are far to solid a structure and out of keeping with the Caribbean building we are trying to achieve.

Secondly, The back curved stairs are far too grandiose, more for a châteaux in France and Italy.. Need to rethink completely.

Thirdly, for some inexplicable reason JD has done away with the bays on east and west side of the roof. Thought this was all agreed?

Also, we would prefer the pool to be a rectangle and don’t want the curved wall around the pool.

Stephen and Kris saw the design and we all seem to agree the changes needed.

We all went out to the plot again and agreed it is a stunning place. So we have no regrets and just love it .. can’t wait to be living out there.

Good news from Greg - no permit problems with water authority for our RO system
Have sent the Cad drawings to all our consultants to get their comments and then get everyone together for a meeting lat on next week.

Arch will look at the roof area and pitch and we hope they will have no problem with the roof design. - Dana will give us a full proposal before we lea

Thursday 21st May

Yesterday JD sent revised floor plan- all done except misunderstanding over bedroom 2 bathroom. We do need one! Also, top floor looks a mystery!

He seems worried in his response to Graham’s email and overreacted to our concerns over ‘possible’ changes after planning approval. We need to talk. Think JD relies too much on email and seems reluctant to pick up the phone for a quick chat - pity , it would avoid misunderstandings, build better relationship and definitely speed things up.

Friday 15th May

We met Al at Andro to discuss an elevator and today visited a home to view it. It is a service lift and at a really good price of $22,000 . We would like it to go to the two floors and J.D. is confident that he can design it into the roof space. This now seems a must to us.