View in blue

Our first clean-up is over. We cleaned the terrain in Rukavac, we just need to take out the garbage and branches, but we left that for the next arrival on Vis anyway. We will fill the time until our return to Kutina by wandering around the island and fantasizing about the appearance of our new house.

This is how this cover image was created, in which my wife, me, and the dog Dona enjoy the view of the blue sky and the sea from our terrace. Admittedly, Dona was less impressed, so she preferred to rest her eyes. I was fascinated by this view into the distance to the south and the junction of the sky and the sea separated only by a thin line and shades of blue.

The first dilemma is what to do with the building we found on the plot. It is a small basement measuring 6.5 x 6.5 meters built in the eighties of the last century, for which I have no documentation, so it was probably made illegally, after all, like more or less of all the surrounding houses.

The basement had neither doors nor windows, although it is evident that they had been previously installed. We found the door broken and on the floor, and the windows were taken. My first thought was to buy the doors and windows and arrange the interior for a temporary stay until I get a building permit for the complete reconstruction and expansion of the building. I wanted the house to be 10 x 8 meters in size, so I had a plan to expand the existing building.

The interior of the building discouraged me a bit. The basement was divided into three rooms. The first entrance room looked the best, it had enough height, although not too big, and the size to stay in it. But entering the other room was for the “dwarves”.

The second room was entered through a passage only 1.6 meters high, and the room had a total height of only 1.8 meters and did not look promising. The upper concrete blanket was of poor quality, so the influence of weather and salt partly led to the “leafing” of the concrete through which the reinforcement could be seen. The lower concrete blanket didn’t even exist, so my dreams of a temporary stay vanished like a tower of cards.

That conclusion was self-evident when I saw that someone had alienated all the electricity, water, and drainage installations, so it seemed that more money and time would have to be invested for the temporary stay than I had originally planned. I wasn’t sure if it was better to demolish this building and build everything from scratch or try to reconstruct and expand it based on the existing basement. What do you think would be better? Demolish or reconstruct?

On the way home, a rather strong south wind was blowing, so Hektorović climbed up and down, creating discomfort for Dona, who was shaking like a whip, and I sank into my thoughts as to how to proceed.