Approximately 18 months ago my girlfriend and I decided we'd had enough of the UK and couldn't face growing old in a country over-run by unruly teenagers that terrorised the country; the police show no signs of sorting out the nuisance teenagers so we made the decision to build a home for ourselves and our children in Sardinia.
My girlfriend's family originate from Alghero in Sardinia and we spend most of our holidays on the beaches in and around Alghero.
Sardinia is a beautiful country, rugged and wild in places, inhabited by hospitable people, a great education system, touched by tourism but not over run but mainly it's a friendly place to be, where you all seem to be greeted with a warm smile and a friendly Ciao. The first decision we had to make was where to buy our land and build our dream home, in Alghero or further a field.
This proved to be easier said than done.
By chance we stumbled over an English gentleman who had lived in Alghero, Sardinia for the past 3 years and he was willing to help us get the ball rolling.
The Sardinians are wonderful people but there idea of where to live is completely opposite to that of the English, we want to live in the countryside with wide open fields and a wonderful view, the Sardinians cannot understand why anyone would want to live away from the hustle and bustle of the big city!
The building laws had recently changed in Sardinia, for the better some would say. To ensure that the building boom that is engulfing much of Europe didn't eat in Sardinia's beautiful countryside a law was passed that meant you could only build on land of one hectare or over, and this land had to approved to build on by May 2006. Following this, any building work had to be at least started by May 2007 or the application was null and void.
We started looking for land in August 2006 and despite many false dawns it took us until April 2006 to find the ideal plot, near a the small village of Olmedo approximately 12km from Alghero and 15km from our favourite beach.
The price was agreed and the legal paperwork was signed just in time to meet the government deadline. We were on our way.
We gathered together as many quotes for the build as we possibly could and in the end we chose a builder who wasn't the cheapest nor most expensive but he came highly recommended.
A huge hole was dug for the foundations and the first floor. In Sardinia and Italy it's usual to have the bedrooms in the basement as it's the coolest part of the house.
The next thing we had to arrange was the supply of water to the house. For this we had to take a trek to the local water authority and fill in a ream of paper-work explaining exactly what we would be using the water for. Every-thing you've ever heard about Italian bureaucracy being a long winded nightmare is also true about Sardinia.
After 35 minutes of speaking to the Sardinian water man he said he'd think about our application but that they'd already given too much water away that year and so it would probably be next year, we're still waiting to hear! And so to building work started without a water supply, luckily the builder had a couple more jobs to finish so the water issue wasn't critical.
So far we've had an access road built and the foundations dug, not bad for 18 months work! We're not bothered that the process is slow going; it gives us time to plan out our future properly. Don't for one minute think this is a negative piece; on the contrary it couldn't be more positive. It's more about the way the Italians do things, at their pace, which is what we want to buy into. It would be totally hypocritical of us to say we want to move to Sardinia for the slower pace of life only to expect our builder to complete our house in record time.
As I write the builder is just about to start work in earnest, watch this space for more developments.
