Demolitions have just started, so there isn’t much to see yet. Apart from the obvious great big ruin which is supposed to be our house, but let’s just leave this elephant and never, ever speak of him again.

This should be a bedroom one day, with a lovely large skylight looking out on the green fields of Flanders:

This is my bedroom. Will be my bedroom. Unless the wall falls down, in which case my bedroom will be a nasty cardboard box under a nearby overpass:

Another view from what should one day be our bedroom window:

More photographs as always on my Flickr set.

Categories: Construction, Photographs
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Regional television station Robnet reports that Lubbeek and four surrounding villages have an unemployment rate of merely 3%. That, according to the Robnet news report, means that everyone able to work is, in fact, working. Figures just released by the Belgian Department of Economy (or FPS Economy, SMEs, Independent Professions and Energy, if you want to be verbose about it) also lists Lubbeek at number 6 on a list of Belgian towns with the highest average fiscal income per resident for the tax year 2004. The average income per resident was €17,964 per year, a decent increase on €16,681 for the tax year 2003. Lubbeek clearly has enormous potential for the future, with a stable and affluent populace to grow on.

Categories: Lubbeek
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Against all expectations, the first phase of construction is slated to start today. In a staggeringly short time, we (OK, Ilze) found a contractor and arranged for him to start on the demolitions work.

While I have a thousand Readers Digest-type How To Pick Your Contractor articles clamouring in my subconscious, Ilze merely saw someone at the supermarket wearing a t-shirt advertising a construction firm, accosted the gentleman there and then, and enquired whether he was in any connected to the company on the t-shirt. He was. Would he be interested in our construction project? He would. Might he be available to start in the immediate future? He might.

He had a look at the site, took a few days to draw up a cost estimate, and as I type this he and his crew are presumably doing something destructive a few feet away from the windmill.

Categories: Construction
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