THE ENGLISH VERSION
THE ENGLISH VERSION
2015
The reason why we want to move from remote but lovely Hommersåk (with the best nature-kindergarden in the world) is that the politicians in the region are making logistics more and more difficult. It takes longer and longer to go to work, and there are limited possibilities with public transportation. Basically, it is impossible to have two full time jobs. At least one of us has to work reduced hours in order to pick the kids up from kindergarden before it closes.
And then, of course, we wish to realise the dream of building our own house.
The new house is located by the red arrow, next to tall trees, 5 and 8 km to work on bikes respectively, and located in a green place surrounded by hills. And then the plot is rather large, so there is a good distance to neighbours and space - in Norwegian terms. Nice hiking paths and the beach is not far away, together with perfect canooing waters.
We have to be in Stavanger by August, when Sebastian is starting school. Either in our own house, or in a rented place.
Building our own house is an old dream that we have both had even before we met each other. The exciting part is not to build big, but to build smart and get the best out of a given framework. We wish to use the light during the day i a good way, use the square meters efficiently and build in the best way possible in term of energy efficency. We intended to build a passive house, but that is just insanely expensive in Norway, so we quickly gave that up. Steffan needed a ca. 40 sqm garage for the Mini and a workshop for this and future projects, and we could ...
We have designed 11 other houses in the spring and early summer. though we are just amateurs within architecture, though above averagely interested. We built the houses on the plot in the Google SketchUp 3D visualisation program.
We have been especially fascinated by the ‘Dutch farm house’ shape, which resembles the Bergen or any other quay-side house, but we had to give that up, because it the esthetics of the shape turned out to be very expensive.
The final house itself is in fact very Danish. When we realised that we had to simplify our design as much as possible to keep the cost low, as outlined by the final house-building-company, we simply googled “cool parcelhus”. A “parcelhus” is a boring Danish standard house from the 60‘ies and onwards, built in the suburbs of Danish towns. Quite frightening, actually. But then this amazing architect Bjarke Ingels had of course come up with his elegant version of this rather horrible building - and of course it was fantastic. And very much in line with our thinking; a big room for living, cooking, dancing, having cozy times and just being together, and then rooms to hide in, while still being somewhat present near the big room. We always wanted to achieve to have a place to withdraw from the buzz, but still be able to be with the rest of the crowd, and many ideas have been up along the journey.
Furthermore, we have been fascinated about ‘hiding’ a shape in another shape, and when we saw the trapezoid shape of the Slim House of Bjarke Ingels, we just had to create a trapezoid house with a shape that followed the outline of the building plot where we were allowed to build. In Norway, you have to have 4 meters from the building plot boundary to your house. This means that your garden space is totally ruined, as house has to lie almost in the middle of a building plot.
We are not building a Bjarke Ingels Slim House at all, our house has just been inspired by it. There is not enough space on the building plot for such a beauty with all the aspects, so we have had to build partly within the tunnel-shaping white overhangs. Then needed to adjust the build due to a neighbour who wasn’t willing to discuss things - and then the concept disappeared completely. It is fortunately still a nice house, we think.
There is going to be a so-called ‘hems’ in the eastern part of the house, the part that runs along the road. We are going to use this space for storage, guest rooms, play rooms and bed rooms. That is freeing up space downstairs, which can be used for something else. The bathrooms are regular Danish size and not the Norwegian bath hall size, and the kitchen is gigantic compared to a standard Norwegian one. We have also included an office section in the living space, which can be used differently by the next family living there. We have also made an overhang in the southern end of the house, that will be filled with wooden beams to create a beautiful light in the kitchen. And then maybe later, if money and regulations allows, we can create a green house in triangle there.
Overall, it is a small, flexible and space-efficient house - made by Danish EBK and us in a very efficient and constructive cooperation. This will be good!
The part for the house will be built in Denmark in a factory, and then be shipped up here to Stavanger after Easter on a couple of trucks. If we are lucky and everything goes well, we will be able to get the building materials for the garage up here before Easter, so we can put up the garage ourselves before the house comes. The house will be put up in 4-5 weeks time by the builders from EBK with walls, windows, roof and doors, and then all the exterior will be finished. And then it is time for us to build the interior.
It has been a quite bumpy road with a lot of bad luck and unfortunate incidences over the last nine months, some of which could have been avoided and a lot which couldn’t. The latest bad luck is that the Norwegian Krone has tumbled, and the devaluation has cost os an additional 350.000 NOK since we got the price for the house and garage. That is a nice 10% of the budget, taking out our buffer. We hope that the Norwegian Krone will recover a bit before we actually have to pay in four months time. One could say that buying a house in a different currency is taking a big risk. And it is. But it was a really good offer, and no one really expected the oil price and NOK to devaluate like it has...
Basically, building a house is risk management . At least it has in this first phase.
The English version
7. jan. 2015
Here is why and how and how much on our self-designed house that will be build over the next half year.
It has been nine months since we first bought the plot, but now we have all approvals from the authorities to start up. It will begin in a couple of weeks.