The Club is in the best place to find a lover so the bar is where I go
Me and my friends at the table doing shots, drink it fast and then we talk slow
You come over and start up a conversation with just me and trust me I'll give it a chance
Now I'll take my hand, stop, put the van on the men in the jukebox and then we start to dance
And now I'm singing like girl you know I want your love, your love is handmade for somebody like me
Come on down, follow my lead, I may be crazy, don't find me, say boy let's not talk too much
Grab all my way snow, put that body on me, come on now follow my lead now
Come on now follow my lead
That's awesome guys, that's awesome, thank you so much, that was amazing, that sounded great
Oh goodness Ed Sheeran, watch out, I like someone that doesn't know their style
He loves it, he loves it
Guys thank you so much for being on the show, this is amazing, you are our first guest from Greece
Oh thanks for having us, glad to be here
Thanks for having us
And I love your posts, I love what's going on and first of all I love that you guys are doing what you're doing
and we're going to get into all that, we're going to talk all about that
But I just want to introduce everybody, so Greg is on the right side and then Crystal is on the left side right
And I'm just going to introduce everybody when they're watching it and they know who's who, right
And then I'm in the middle on my side, that's all it is, so you guys are in, is it pronounced Manny or Manny or how's it pronounced in Greece?
You explain it, the little peninsula on the Peloponnesian middle, like the peninsula there is Manny
That's what I thought, I thought there was a little bit of a Greek thing, yeah totally
So I didn't want to butcher it by saying Manny, you know what I mean, it's not, it's Manny
Alright so we've got the two guys, their Instagram handle is the number two guys.in.greece
And we're going to have this chat, which I've got a number of questions to ask about you guys building or renovating a 200 year old house in Greece
Both, both, yeah, it's a build-in of renovation too
Yeah that's right, you guys are expanding it, so it's like, are you both from, where are you guys originally from?
I grew up in Vancouver, but I'm a third generation Greek in Vancouver, so with heritage I have roots down in the deeper into Manny
From Sparta and Corinth as well
So I came out here, I served in the military and ended up being in Calamata and we would come out here for vacations all the time
And Greg fell in love with Greece too, and we went out here, even though he's full straight up Canadian
100% Canadian, from Vancouver as well? No actually from a little small town, Cambridge, Ontario
Oh you're in Cambridge? I'm from Cambridge, yeah
Not too far from the studio, we've had some trades from Cambridge come in and record shows in the studio, so it's all good
Fantastic, cool
So there is a Canadian connection, there's a Canadian connection going all the way to Greece
But I knew that there had to have been some sort of family connection to that area of Greece, right?
And that's basically where it started kind of thing?
Yeah, sort of, yeah, I basically when I was in the military I got transferred down to Calamata
And Calamata is the closest city to the Manny coastline
Right
And so I loved it here, got a little apartment and I went vacation here
And when I met Greg I would bring him here to vacation in Greece
And the way we ended up here is we came here in 2020 to try and hide from COVID a bit
And we went on a little road trip down the Manny coastline and Greg saw all these stone towers and stone buildings and he's like
Are you gonna buy me a stone house? You're gonna buy me a stone house?
Yeah, there's actually something, I mean I've seen stone houses in Canada, like they exist but they're not the same
There's something magical about a stone house here and it's just, especially along the coast here, it's literally the only kind of style it helps you see
But it doesn't match what most of us think about Greece, you know, with the white houses and the concrete or the, you know, the white and blue, like rooftops and such
From the island, so it's a very different rustic kind of look, which I fell in love with, I think it's amazing
So basically you had the light bulb moment first, so you came up with the idea of why not tackle this that we've never done before
Yeah, I, exactly, I don't think we intended to buy something that was this in need of love and repair
But I mean, we're, I like to think we're young, we don't have a huge cash flow, so picking up a house on the side of a mountain for the price we did
It was totally overgrown
Abandoned for 40 years
Yeah, like a jungle, like an absolute jungle, so you can imagine most tourists coming in to see this place
We're just like, no, not touching this, and then we looked at it and we're like, we could cut these trees, that's fine
And we fell in love, the house was like full of old artifacts, like the old like old loom and all the things like in the old the hope chests and stuff
From back in the day and the view was just amazing, and then the style, the house the way it's built, it is very specific to the Mani Peninsula
The way they would build, it was like a fortification, the way the towers, the tiny little windows up top was for protection because the families would actually have vendettas against each other
To attack each other and stuff, so there's some pretty aggressive history, but Greece is very out of that part of the history as well too
That's what I loved when I started looking at some of the videos and images, I mean because I'm a Soryan, right? So I'm from the Azores
And that's why I'm so intrigued by what you guys are doing because it's on my list of things to do and I'm trying to figure out how to do it myself
But when I looked at your place and what you guys are working on, it's very similar
We have lava rock that we do and a lot of the homes are built with lava rock, but then you start getting other homes that are parched and they're stuckle
And it's white and you've got the terracotta tile, shingles and everything like that, so it's like, it's so similar
And that's why I was loving it and every time I was watching some of the content, I wanted to basically just transport myself right in there
Because I can see the narrow roadways, I can see the difficulties, but also when you climb all those little steps and you get to certain heights, you turn around
And you basically see things that you do not see anywhere else in the world, that's what I loved about it
Yeah, so you guys, I mean, but you guys are not construction people, you're not like, you don't have the know-how
You weren't
Okay, but now that's what I'm saying, I'm getting to that, you guys are becoming that
Yeah, I got a little bit of the construction property holdings bite from my side, my family
My mom, grandmother, uncle, everyone's realtor
And then my parents, like my dad was into construction all that, so I experienced that with some of our stuff in Vancouver
So I was like, it's not that bad, we can do it, you know, and we tried to do a little bit of our research, we found an engineer before buying it
But just, you know, realtor's in Greece, that's a whole other project
So that's what I wanted to get into this whole world, like was that, let's start from the beginning, was it a challenge to actually purchase the property?
Was it a challenge to just get that ball?
You guys are both laughing, right? So it must have been
So we purchased real estate in Vancouver and
It's very streamlined
Obviously worse
Yeah, like we just knew what to do, it was easy, here, I could never have done that by myself
There is absolutely no way, just in my own world, I mean, maybe it's navigatable by other expats and other people visiting, but it is a very different experience here
Everything was controlled by a lawyer
Like most, there's still a family-oriented culture here, so all properties belong to a family who has many children and many grandchildren and many great-grandchildren and as soon as one passes away, you're having to put those pieces back together and really, I mean, this happens in Canada as well
I think, like, when we bought the property, the real estate agent didn't know how the property worked, there was this wonderful line, we saw maps of this place, there was this wonderful line going through the property, we never questioned it
The realtor basically was just like, give you a deposit, give you a deposit now, like you're gonna lose the place, you know, give you a deposit, and luckily we had a great lawyer and the lawyer was like, whoa, everybody hold up, like, let's do our research
We're not giving a euro and Greg, very emotional guy, I love him to death, but very emotional, he's like, we have to give our deposit, we're gonna lose the house
Get rid of the Canadian side of way of doing things, right?
Yeah, so I was trying to get you to remember, I wanted this house
Yes, I get it, I get it
So I'm trying to be like more of the, like, let's be logical, I'm working with the lawyer and our lawyer did all his research and he actually found out that it's not one property
It was actually two properties, and the second property was actually in multiple names with the owner and his daughter, and the second property was declared an unbuildable land, unusable land
And there was also an illegal extension onto the 200 year old stone tower with another stone extension, and that extension was never declared, it was illegal, and it also was right on top of the middle of the two property lines
So it was a bit messy, but I do have to, you know, we've heard horror stories in Greece of like eight, ten years for paperwork and sales and things, our lawyers were awesome
They got everything sorted out within about two and a half months over Christmas from like end of October till early February 2021, and we got it all figured out
And also when the way they did the paperwork and all that was that the first property was able to absorb the second property so we would be able to gain the FSR on it
So it would be deemed buildable, which was great, because otherwise it would have been useless to us, and where we're doing the big extension now is actually technically where that second property was
So luckily for the good planning and all that, and then when we went to go, the old contracts when we sat there, I don't know if you saw on our Instagram but Greg did a little timeline, we had like 38 pages of signing documents
I saw a little bit of that, yeah
Yeah, the contract is all old school, so it's literally like this property, neighboring by this person, this person, which has a big boulder on the northwest side, and a wooden oven, and a 21 cubic meter water reservoir, so it's all descriptive
Written word for word to describe, there's no picture of the property, it's a description, a full novel on the property
And then fast forward to 2022, so we have that part of the contract, and then there's addendums to the contract because now it's 2022, Greece is like fully jumped into the new age, it also had 54 GPS waypoints attached to that description from the previous contract
So it's like this whole package to make sure that this is our property now
Right
So in Mani there, the town hall, I mean how big is the city or how big is the village? How many people are there?
Oh, it's not even called a village
It's not even a village actually, it's a settlement
That's what I figured, okay
So I mean, is it like someone's been keeping a track of all the homes there and what they've done to them and how it's been
There's actually a village deeper into Mani which had the archive paperwork, so our lawyer had to like drive down the coastline and it's a very mountainous region
Actually Greece is 80% mountainous, a lot of people don't realize that
So our lawyer had to drive all the way down, retrieve the paperwork, go redeclarate the paperwork at this like office at some village, another 40 minutes down the coast to a bigger village that was housing that paperwork
Okay, so now you guys own the property and now
We own it on the paperwork and digital stuff too
Okay, and now you've got this home that's been nothing for 50 years
Yeah
And obviously parts of it fallen apart, I mean I saw you guys rebuilding the one wall there, I know you guys talked a lot about the tower
I don't know how far along you guys are with the tower or where the work is, I saw some of the renderings
But now, I mean what did that feel for you guys when you first took ownership of the property
And you guys walk into this house and the amount of history and now what you guys want to do it for yourselves, right? How does that feel?
Incredible, actually it's funny to look back now because the amount, we instantly were like this is our new home, we can't live in it, it doesn't have heat or running water
We don't even know where the toilet would flush to and yet we swept the floors
We went to the hardware store
We knew the place, we started, we went to the hardware store probably for the first time in our lives to buy like actual hardware
Like sorry, actual equipment to like cut trees and you know it was a weird experience
But we did it so that we could walk around the property and actually start to explore it a little bit more
But mostly just to be able to be on it without a tree poking you in the face
So we got it to a point where we could walk on this to find out that we had an arborist come in and like wipe out all the trees
We were laughing because we were like, the amount of work it took us the weeks and weeks of shopping and cutting and scratching ourselves with
Yeah, it was wild to have this guy just in two or three days just clear the land
Was it difficult? Because I mean these were very mature olive trees that you guys were cutting
Yeah, also because the settlement is actually on like a little caldera like so it's sort of like a bowl shaped
So a lot of the trees for 40 or someone is they were fighting for light so they were like 40, 50 foot tall olive trees going on a 45 degree angle
So the arborist was like we have to cut these back significantly they're dangerous
They're like the weight on them, you know, you're gonna be ripping out walls because our property actually has 11 layers to it
So like so they were like just really going down and we were so sags. It was so magical like to just Greg actually recorded a video of just standing there the day before they started of like the birds chirping
Just hearing like, you know, the you could hear like in the far distance and like bouncing off the other mountain is like the bells from the goats the sheep herders can hear the birds chirping
It's just it's really cool. It's really magical. It's a different kind of quiet up there. Yeah, so we cut these trees. I mean the birds came back. Don't worry like we didn't we didn't injure too much of the habitat
They figured it out the next season but yeah, it was it was it we had to do it. It was and now we got firewood for years. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
So you guys get that so now you own the property. It's somewhat cleaned up. Yeah, you got to get a designer. You got to get an architect now. None of that started yet.
No, they came while we were doing our little cleanup. We thought we were all great. We brought the engineer and one of his architects from their team and they started doing like
But their lasers instead of measuring the property because they've never had actual plans and in the on the ground floor there's like the mountain protruding into the house, you know, the walls are like 80 centimeters thick.
So they had to do the whole like survey and everything to be even create the original plans before we could even start planning anything.
I don't want to get ahead of ourselves but I want to I want to you guys to describe a little bit. What's the finish house going to look like.
But I still want to stay in where it's at right now because I have I'm very respectful of what was built. Right. But I know that you guys are going to give it care.
You're going to modernize it. You're going to give it its flavor today, but you're still going to stay true. Like I'm hoping you guys and I'm not even demanding and I'm just asking right but I'm hoping we're forced to anyways.
Yeah, so the government starts getting involved and because there's a lot of that stuff and I guess with communication as well with the laborers and I know that there's rules in Greece about you have to let them know who's working or how many hours they're working and you have to pay them a certain amount or like there's all these funny rules right.
Is that exactly the case too.
Yeah, so a little bit of like a quick synopsis is like we started making some plans. We got super excited about doing an extension because Greg and I when we cleared up a bit of the property and when the arbors cleared we're like wow this view this view is insane.
Yeah.
And a little bit this settlement is actually right above Castle Cafe bar where I proposed to Greg back in 2016.
Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm totally I forgot.
It's happy anniversary. Like last week wasn't it.
We.
Yes and no technically or no.
November 5th.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, congrats.
Congrats. That's all.
Thank you.
I totally forgot.
I was like, what am I forgetting?
Sorry.
Yeah.
So, sorry.
Yes, Chris, as you were saying.
Yeah, so it's just like that view and we have so many layers for our property we're just getting more and more excited about the views to Greg and I like you know what we don't need we don't have that much money so like we want to fix up the house and we want to go up a little bit just to get a little master bedroom just something you know.
So the first one they came up with us was actually in the front of the tower doing in more of like a kitchen and then an extra bedroom a bit higher up with a rooftop patio like great I'm just truck review.
And then that got X because the tower existing tower is illegal for the height limits.
It's illegal in a sense that if we were to build it today, we would not be able to.
Yeah, right.
So grandfathered in now.
It's okay.
The house is not going to be touched.
It's just if you were to yeah, we could not reproduce that house today.
Is it because the neighbor the neighbor would object to it.
No, just that the actual the physical the law because you can't go more than 7.5.
That's why okay.
And you're right.
The neighbor next to us there we are like next to our neighbor.
We could probably a small then or human could go through the two properties but to house there's a 2.5 meter rule now.
Yeah, so we can't we can't construct anything within 2.5 meters from from our neighbors.
We're still going to go up a little bit.
So yeah, that first that first idea got X because it was too tall couldn't touch it.
So then we said okay, well we'll go back.
Well we can't go back where that illegal extension was we were going to put a bedroom above that but we couldn't touch that because that extension was within 2.5 meters of the neighbors got it.
And then the solution was let's go further back and then we're it's all free rains we can go up 7.5 meters from that natural land, which was already like four layers up, we'll get even better view.
So that's how we ended up having the long stretch and then the tower.
And that's why we're excavating is because behind the mountain, it was mountain like the mountain began as soon as the house ended.
So, so in order to build this tower.
That's where all the cord drillings happening that you guys are doing right to just break the rock there.
Absolutely.
But then is it traditional that you guys break the rock and then keep the rock and then use the rock.
It is more so this is actually unheard of now.
You know so if you if you were to go to a stone build anywhere else that's not, you know, remote like we we are on the mountain side.
It's not too remote. It's just because we don't have a you can't drive to our house.
You can't bring a tractor there.
But if you were to look at any other builds, it's they're doing a concrete, you know, structure, brick around and then they're they're doing this exterior like stone wall where ours is about what three four feet of rock.
Oh, like our walls are 80 centimeters and in the new tower there are 60 centimeter walls.
Wow.
So they're a stone, right. So no, no concrete is actually being used to build the structure at all.
This is all just the old way the only way that they would do it in the back of the day.
The only concrete they're using right now is is a belt around every I think it's every three meters are going to put a concrete belt around the around the the tower and and that's just to keep it to give it extra as it goes up.
They're going to put a band.
Oh, really? Yeah. And that's just that's from the engineer. That's just signing off from the engineer just for structural purposes.
Yeah.
What was the reasoning why that one wall was bowed out? Is that just no maintenance on the wall or over the time?
Or was it?
Yeah.
So the previous owner actually had not created a new entrance.
And when creating new entrance, they threw in some like cinder blocks and stuff like that. So it wasn't really it wasn't structured kept as well.
And then the roof was collapsing from above as well.
So, and then the actual the mortar and like this, the bonding binding, what they did was actually they so the stone was from the property back in the day or from the neighborhood.
And then the binding equipment was or the actual cement that they use was actually taken from the earth. Mix with sand mixed with clay and water.
So over the years, it just became weaker and weaker as opposed to now we're so on the old structure, they're actually like pressure washing, cleaning it out, scraping it out and then re cementing or injecting when they need to and then in the new tower,
it's obviously going to be with their cement bonding with the stone itself and then the belt every 1.5 meters going around. But it's you won't see the belt.
It's like within the wall.
Right. It's the core. It's the inside of the wall. And then it's just you keep in the stone is still because you want to keep it traditional looking.
Yeah.
Actually, when we I believe we, we were the ones they chose to sell the property to because they were working in other in other directions as well or at least that's what we were hearing but we asked for original photos of this house and anything they could give us to show us what the original
state of the house look like because we have absolutely no intention to ruin the exterior. Internally, we need a modern home like we want to feel like fresh and clean but from the outside standpoint, we wanted to bring it back to its natural way.
We have mud like I don't even know what layers existed anymore. You know, it's it's near impossible to tell just from the 40 years of growth and
we were shoveling out like eight inches of like mud from just decomposed leaves over the years and stuff and then we're like, wow, we have a patio we have time.
We're like excavating ourselves. Yeah, little archeologists. So how long have you guys been at it for now so if it took about two and a half months just to get the paperwork out of the way and then the first day of demo to now and then what are you guys giving yourself budget wise timeline.
How long you figure before you guys get your completed home.
And then we just I'd say about four months to land proper designs with the engineer and architects of the team. Because we're going back and forth no we can't do this yes no yes no, we actually have to have three meetings up with the property but it's a team of like 15 people up there because
they're like yep it's going to be a metal structure with stone on the outside, like how Greg was saying or it's going to be cement but one a tiny stone path stone path, there's no way to bring a rig with these big metal beams to actually build a metal structure.
And there's no way to and it was illegal to pump past a certain amount of distance with a cement pump. So the only way was, well, stone and we're going to excavate to use this part of the property anyways we're going to create the stone and use our own stone.
So we had a company from Athens come these stone scientist things they took cores out.
They tested our stone to make sure it was good. And then that was the drawing submitted the paperwork for what's the word in English for the permits.
And everything got halted. We hit our first roadblock. They wanted more photos.
So our engineers tried sending like the ugly photos of the inside and stuff, and they're like no no we want more. And they deemed the house archaeological.
Really who's doing that? Why are they doing that?
Just because of the age and it's protected from like it's a historical place there was a major battle against the Ottomans part of the freedom of Greece right by it. So it's a local like historic spot.
And yes, since it was deemed archaeological, we now like we're all hands off it's what they told us what to do.
So we had plans like some like beautiful windows with like nice balconies looking out that like nope, nope, nope, nope, you got to stick to the era.
So budget went up almost 100,000 Canadian.
Yeah, so it is the difference between being able to use like metal shutters. Now we're forced to use wood.
They can't look like wood. They have to be wood.
The interior can you can you do what you want to do on the interior still or you hands are tight.
Yeah, interior is fine. Yeah, we can do anything as long as the exterior is the traditional way.
And it has to be a Byzantine style clay roof with the extra scalloped underneath.
Could you not like I mean we've done this here in Canada. Could you not have a oops moment and maybe some rocks kind of came down and now we can't we have to put a bigger window now.
Could you not kind of do that Greek mentality.
I'm just saying.
That's old school Greece we tried that.
It didn't work.
That's old school Greek like that would work.
I tried with our engineer and he's like nope, nope, they've gotten so strict here because of all the years of all this illegal stuff that if you do anything wrong, it must be torn down and you'll be fined annually until it is remediated.
Okay, that's serious.
Not worth the risk.
Yeah.
Okay.
Everything's hardcore by the book.
So what did you guys really lose. I guess you lost some larger windows right but aesthetically like on the outside you were already going down that path it was going to stay this way.
Yeah, so we were never going to touch the.
Actually, that's not entirely true. We were hardly going to touch the tower that is in place now. So that was going to stay as it was. I mean, we did lose the ability to use metal shutters and then the choice of windows.
Where we've taken a window so that wall that you saw that was buckling and needed to be replaced.
It actually worked in our favor because we wanted to build a way to get out under the patio.
So we were moving the front door anyways.
So it worked out but the size of that door that we had originally designed since we knew we were going to do this anyways.
We had a larger we wanted like these French doors to go under a beautiful patio and now they're just, I mean they're still going to be French doors.
It's going to one from two meters down to one point two meter door.
They're just smaller.
Yeah, almost half the size.
So it's less like because when they knocked out that wall we were sending in the house and like you see the adjacent mountain and you're just like this is insane.
Like you're just like let me stand here and look at a mountain in my face.
Yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
I mean I gotta ask you guys is there a little bit of resistance because technically you're Canadian but there's still some family connection there or not.
I would just say just the sale.
That's all it is.
Yeah.
The sale the owner was an old captain an old captain of sailing captain and he had two contracts in place before and he toy them up and then when they said to us when we put our offer and we were like,
hey, we love you.
It was uncomfortable for me.
I could not handle it.
Yeah.
Gotta get rid of the Canadian.
We went in and we're like, Hey, here's our offer.
You know, we've fallen in love with this place.
And if you have any photos, great, you know, and they came back and they're like, look, we said the price is not negotiable.
We're not accepting anything below asking.
However, since you're a young couple and you're Greek and from here and you engage in a lot of different ways,
you know, you can look and from here and you and you love the home and you want to to like treat it like your own will gift you X amount of euros.
And they lower the price and Greg was jumping up and down.
He's like, Hey, great.
And I was like, No, we're not done yet.
Like, can I, you know, we message back or like, great, we appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
However, at this point in time, our financial situation is what we offered.
That's what we can afford.
And that was true at the time.
And I said, we're leaving back for Canada in like three days, four days, you know, just let us know.
And they go back to us in two days and yeah, we were able to purchase the prop or get the ball rolling on the property purchase.
And then, yeah, so I was shocked.
I was literally floored that this worked.
It worked because I think the previous owner just saw something, right?
It's no different than any other property, right?
He probably had a feeling.
He just said, OK, these guys will take care of this house.
And that's what he would probably really looking forward to, right?
So it's kind of good.
Yeah.
And so it's a 200 year old house.
So has it always stayed in the same family?
Was he the last surviving member of that family or was it, do you know of?
Oh, he bought it back in the 1950s, 1960s.
OK.
So I don't know if you saw on Instagram, there's Kiri at the sea.
Yeah, she's like our neighbor.
She's like this 95 year old lady.
There is a photo on her Instagram.
Oh, you need to type this out.
OK.
Is she the window like a window lady?
She's always there talking to everybody through the window.
No, but we do see her often and I don't speak a lick of, I mean, I'm learning Greek,
but she only speaks Greek and it's, she just thinks that if she just continues to speak to me,
it will eventually work.
It's just so sweet.
But one day we see her on the side, she's coming up the path and she has this two strings holding an oven.
And we're not talking like a small, easy bake kind of like oven.
We're talking like an oven bigger than her.
It's on the Instagram.
It's my favorite photo I've ever taken here.
It's unbelievable what the lady does.
So she doesn't live in the settlements anymore.
She, her kids are down the mountain towards Calamata and she's scared to stay by herself,
but she walks up and hikes up and down the mountain every day morning and night to water her garden,
to give her plants. And the one, it was when we were first cleaning up the property in those first three weeks.
I'm like, Greg, Greg, grab your camera.
He said, what?
I'm like, there's a lady with an oven on her back.
So he missed her.
And then like two hours later, she was coming back up the mountain.
So Greg has a photo on our Instagram and she's there with like, like this,
the Mani women are very famous in Greece.
Like you don't piss off a woman from Mani.
There's a big, big, deep history, but she told us a lot of the history about the house.
Who built it and everything and how, you know, so we, we found out from her that all of the settlement was built by donkey.
She owned these donkeys and would lend them to, to those who were trying to build.
So yeah, like donkeys made this little settlement up there. It's wild.
So how long you guys now have been at it since you guys started? How long has it been now?
We officially received all the permits, archeology, everything was good December last year.
So it's been 12 months, but then we had to wait because the stone workers, it's not that popular anymore.
So we had to wait for the team to finish other projects.
So we started on the island.
Say again, there's only one team on the island of stone mason's.
Yeah, there's, well, there's only one that our engineering team like recommended.
Wow. Yeah, there was like two or three.
But there are so many jobs because it's not that like it's not a common art anymore.
And so we were waiting for them.
We started in July, beginning in July with the excavation.
And yeah, we started about a month and a half ago now actually building like we played the foundation.
Yeah.
We're a little behind on our Instagram.
Yeah, I was curious about how far along you guys have gotten.
And then when are you guys predicting to be completed when ideally if everything works out?
End of next year to be getting of 2024.
That long.
Yeah.
You just based on your earlier time and trying to figure things out and get all the paperwork and get everything already.
You figured that it will take that long.
Is it because it's going to be difficult to get the people to do the work?
They've been pretty good. I think it's just that big of a project and so everything has to be carried up this path.
There's no other way to bring like every bag of cement, you know, every tool.
Can you guys raise some donkeys?
She don't have the heart to use a donkey.
Like I could never. How dare we?
But yeah, I mean, maybe, maybe if we get desperate to the donkey, we'll have to step in.
So how's that? How's that experience of speaking with the old tradespeople there and their skill?
I'm assuming everybody there is just Greek or they are there a few that speak English as well.
Trades, trades wise, the workers.
So generally speaking in in Greece, English is very easy to find.
You're always an earshot of someone who can who can at least somewhat speak the language.
So tradespeople on the other hand are the hardest to to to, you know, have a conversation.
Why is Chris's laughing? I don't know why.
Funny before I'm thinking about, well, I'm just going to say so Chris is a pilot.
He leave me.
Oh, so then you got to figure it out.
Okay.
I'm here for two weeks by myself of the month and that doesn't stop construction.
So so I'm still out there doing my best.
I've learned a lot of Greek because of tradespeople and I've learned that Google translated literally your best friend, but it doesn't work all the time.
It's not the greatest.
Yeah, but you've got to this.
You've gotten this far and and you're thinking, yeah, the story with a plumber in the center.
Oh, yeah.
Something simple like this.
So here in this house in this we've done a renovation here in this condo that we're in right now.
And I was working with a plumber while Chris was away and he didn't speak any any English whatsoever.
Just not not even he wasn't even like able to repeat after me.
He wouldn't do it.
He was not happy to do so.
I use Google translate to ask him to put the sink because the sink was smaller than the the unit.
I was just sitting on the vanity and I needed it to be in the center.
He was giving me a choice.
It could be offside to it could be to the right like left or right.
And I was like, no, I need it in the center.
I Google translate and he just started laughing.
But I said it to him so I translated and I read it to him so that I could practice my Greek.
The translation I asked him to put it in the center of the city, like not not the center of the unit of the city center.
You know, so it's not a not a perfect science.
But he understood he understood.
And that's the point is that although it's always a good laugh, the words like, oh, yeah, I understand why you why you said that.
That's weird.
But I'll put it in the middle.
So what's the what's been the biggest challenge so far right up until this point until you guys are officially starting construction now with the foundation?
What what have the I guess what would have been the biggest hurdle?
This the other than the language for for my end of thing, I think if we're just to speak about the construction, it is it is the excavation of that mountain.
What a, you know, we were we were told at the beginning, it was going to be a short time three weeks, maybe.
I think we were working on that mountain for almost three months.
Wow.
And it took a very long time. So, you know, when when you're looking at the surface of the mountain, and they started using the machines, it was great rocks were flying.
They were creating, you know, like amazing boulders that we could use for the for the house.
As that stone got deeper.
It became harder and harder.
And what they were creating was gravel.
And you can't use that in the house.
So it was rubble.
Yeah.
And they they hit a point where they're like, yeah, we can't we can't do this anymore.
Our engineers basically just called it like we had planned, if you remember from the renderings on the other side, there was like a patio on the new tower on the other side, like, yep, no patio.
It's done. Yeah.
And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, like, let's get informed decision.
Let's talk to the stone workers like what's a projected timeline to extend what's and but our engineers, they know we're like, you know, very budget tight.
So like wall across too much black wall.
Now we're here.
Let's figure this out.
Yeah.
So that would be the second biggest challenge, right is the working with with trades people who are trying to make decisions in your best interest, you know, that this what they're thinking, but instead we're worth the type of people who give us all of the options and let us decide.
Yes.
You know, so for them to say, yeah, you're not getting a patio anymore. Sorry.
We're like, no, no, no, hold the phone. Like we want to like if this is going to be an extra 10 grand.
That's our decision.
You know, if it's worth it, we'll do it.
In the end, we actually said yes, we want to do it because we gained real estate from it.
You know, it gave us an entire office in the in the tower by doing so.
So we continue to excavate and it held us back what three weeks.
Almost a month.
So who came up with the idea of the core drilling with that expanding concrete?
Was that the engineer?
The stone working stone guys.
Okay.
Yeah, that's pretty clever.
I don't even know if they do that here.
If they actually need to do that, if we're just going to machinery it here, but I was looking at that and I was going, that's kind of clever because it actually works really well.
It was wild actually.
Like the felt like a science experiment, but just I didn't get to watch them actually like do the drilling and so I was working while this happened.
So it was kind of sad about that.
But just going up there, they were done an hour and a half before before I finished work.
I went up right after and the it was already starting to set and already starting to crack the rock.
It was, it was wild.
Yeah, I've never seen anything like it.
I wanted to get an idea.
What's the square footage?
Well, here, here I am in Canada and you should actually be talking square meters.
What's the square meters of the original house and what's the square meter of the new house?
How ambitious are you guys going?
Yeah.
The original house was 176 square meters plus the that wine cellar, which was about another 10.
So 186 in total.
And then the with the extension, we're going to be just around 275 with that extra office.
So just shy of 3000 square feet.
Right.
That's a good size house.
Yeah, well, especially for in Greece.
In Greece.
Yeah.
So you're inside of a mountain right next to it or in a mountain. Yes.
Wow.
So that's very ambitious.
That's very, very ambitious.
Yeah.
We're, we're, it's actually funny because like, so we're living down Calamata, the closest city to where the settlement to our houses.
And we're out for dinner once and like this one guy at a restaurant jumped up and he's like two guys in Greece.
And we're like, what?
What?
It's like, I follow you.
It's like, hi.
What are the odds?
I mean, you're coming up to the final celebrities almost.
So, okay.
Do you guys want to walk us through what the new house is going to look like?
And, and I mean, I'm already loving the wine cellar.
So what else are you guys planning on throwing in there?
You know, for a drawing.
Yeah.
So how do we describe this?
So,
Where do we start? Yeah, so when you when you first walk into our basement, so there's a door at the side of this house
When you first walk in it, I mean it was just an open basement
We're turning this into like an entertainment area now Greek summers hot as hell
No, it's not. Oh, it's not. You go under you go underground is where people go to hang out
Now that I've climatized a little bit. It's hot
the
Yeah, so downstairs will have a little bit of an entertainment area
Um, just to just to relax
We're planning to turn what was a kitchen in the basement into a just a small bedroom
And that's where the wine cellar is attached to so they're gonna repair that wine cellar. It leaks right now
We're gonna repair that wine cellar and and make use of it actually so
May even try we found grapes on our property. So we may actually try
Creating our own wine one year. How many vines how many vines you guys have?
Well, we were sad because there was this big vine where we're actually constructing the the tower
So it got destroyed. Maybe it'll come back. We'll find it. I don't know
It might it might still be there
But while we were standing there one day we're like holy there's there's vines coming down over these streets
Great, so it's great somewhere up in the mountain coming down. So and we actually ate some this year
They were they're quite good back. So yeah, we'll take a stab at creating our own wine if they survive
If not, we'll we'll just plant some more and do it ourselves, but what I'm excited is for we got 22 olive trees and
Yeah, last winter we went to our friends property and we helped harvest the olives and then take it to the press and everything
And right that's what I'm really excited about to go back to the house the
When you first walk in there's there's actually no way to the second floor
So you leave the house to come up the stairs outside to get to the top floor of that house
So we're building a staircase as soon as you walk into the home to to get you to the second level
So we don't have to go outside anymore
So that'll get us to to connect the house all together
As far as the living room we're just yeah, we're trying to keep it all open
As much as an open concept as possible
What's getting added into the main area of the house is a we're adding a washroom just before the kitchen
So that'll be interesting with wash we have a we have a couple things happening in the the tower right now
We have a planned bathroom in the new tower that we're building and they're they're a little bit worried about
Making sure those pipes flow downhill, which seems very important to me
Gravity, you know doesn't it work that way?
Yeah, well, I think it's we're on like some super flat land right now, and I don't know
I don't know if that was an oversight or if
you know that
Maybe you guys can always get an injector. I mean
That that could that will work automatically
Yeah, just what they were talking about adding like an extra pump or something for the shower
So basically like back here in at home if you were to underpin a property and your
Waste line is lower the new waist line is lower than the city
You would put in a pump an injector and it actually shoots all of your waste upwards and then out
So I'm assuming that it's available there. Yeah
They were talking about that for the one potential shower in the new tower
See that was the only thing that wouldn't have the actual proper
Khaleesi that proper
Angle that they require. Yeah
Yeah
So all this all this construction stuff's all in Greek
I know to translate it. I trust me. I would be lost too
I mean we try to figure out if I saw the parts on the top site. I would be able to just point to it
I would just that right there that right there that goes right there. That's good
Yeah, you think you know another second language until you're renovating like this apartment that we're living in now
We renovated last summer and like things I had to learn was like
Baseboard I would never think to know the word baseboard in Greek
I just like random
Or like the little things that you put in between tiles the the spacers. Yes a special word for those like right
Yeah, what is the Greek word for baseboard?
So fat oh pee
So fat oh pee it
So fat oh pee oh so fat the pee okay. All right. That's a pretty long word for for baseboard
But now that we know it as cool. Yeah, is there's quite often actually is there shoe mold on the baseboard no shoe mold
No
So I wanted to get an idea so what when you guys were coming up with the design was it originally from you guys and then you
Were just off loading all the design ideas to the engineer and the architect and then they would kind of translate it for you
And then come back and go okay based on your bucket here. This is what it's gonna really look like I
Think what you described as the ladder is what they wanted us to be like is like they wanted us to just tell the story
They go back and ask oh yay. That was great
Um, Christos is not capable of that. He's very involved and I
Would say although their hands made the three could 3d conceptuals and built this AutoCAD drawing that we can all now enjoy
You know it did I was Christos going like move that wall move this window
You know, it's a yeah, it it was good though
I think I think we we had a lot of great debates
Yeah, a lot of them like sitting in the engineering off the engineers office and just you know, we would we would dream big
They would try to scale us back of course, right? Like, you know Pinterest, I guess has ruined
Lives for many many people in those positions. Yeah
You know, we're showing pictures of like
What like 16 foot pieces of glass and like we want half of our stone exposed
But glass to be you know to be the corner of our of our tower
so we could you know, it looked broken almost and
That's something we stole from Pinterest and then they're like absolutely not and
We didn't get to say this but our house has to be
They have to be able to prove it's a plus energy
I was gonna ask you guys about that because you're conscious of that, right?
Yeah, yeah, and the energy prices here insane compared to Canada
So that's one thing we were really sad about we were really pushing really fighting to have all the exposed stone on the inside of the house
We love that and we're not allowed. There's no way we tried to like, you know putting an air then get a than a glass wall
Something no no the only thing we got is if there's any internal walls
That have both internal rooms were allowed to have the exposed stone there. That's the only thing we got
What's the reason why you're not allowed to keep it exposed?
The European Union energy ratings on the house have to have a certain amount of heat
Heat loss calculations. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, okay
But can we go back in time when they kind of stuck a fork in the road regarding the historical angle of things?
Could you not use that as leverage and say we're kind of trying to I don't know
I don't know. I'm just saying like you can't ask us to be
Historical and then tell us to be updated mechanically like we gotta have a compromise here
Give us one wall. Give us one wall exposed. Yeah, I don't know
I'm just trying to say one a slight compromise in the basement in the basement
We got a bit of like a like a fake crack of like the
White it'll go plaster it'll be plaster and then it'll
Extend away trying to make it look like it and that took that was like a good hour where we like our engineering team
They're like good cop bad cop, which is kind of great because you see them sort of like debate each other and like challenge each other
Which is great and then the the
Architect lady that was doing the plans she had like the nice finishing touches on things like we're like, yeah
This is you know, and then she's like well wait like if you're gonna walk in this is you know, she had just the extra
So very very yeah awesome, but yeah a lot of good cop bad cop and then us trying to
Talk to one of them separately or whatever to get them to talk and to make things work. Yeah
So what are they? I guess how are they?
Let's let's talk a little bit of boring
Mechanically speaking what are they asking you to do now?
I mean because you still have to I guess technically heat the home and you also have to a see the home
Or you're not allowed to a see the home. So how is that coming along?
We're still in the process. So either it's gonna be splits
In the rooms or we're going to there's the one downside to it is because we're gonna keep the vaulted open
Ceiling in the existing home makes it difficult to do
60 30 months a
Heat pump. Yes for the whole the whole two towers. However, it would be exposed
Like the metal all the piping. I know which looks like I haven't decided quite on that what we're what we're going to do
Yeah, you could encase it in stone
But that's just more stone work
Yeah, and wait and wait. Yeah, we're lucky that we also we're gonna have a fireplace
In the main tower and then in our bedroom upstairs the Grandmaster bedroom. So they're letting you build a wood burning fireplace
Yeah, yeah, that's totally good here. We also have a wood a wood oven outside on the property to make like bread and things like that
Yeah, see I be I'd be challenging it
But then again, you're challenging a system that's gonna
Constomp on you when you're there, right? I'd be challenging it because fireplaces are the worst thing you can do when you want to try to
Be energy efficient like it's it's very pretty. It smells amazing. I personally would love it
But it does hurt your overall heat loss. It hurts your energy efficiency. It hurts all of that
But if they're allowing that why can't you allow the stone?
I would keep on making an argument for the stone
But you guys know the government they're better than I do you don't want to piss them off that much to the point where well
We'll just put a stop on this
Or take Greg's PR card away, which is even worse exactly, right? So then it's like one guy in Greece one guy in a boat
You don't want that
But so where is all I'm just trying to get an idea of where you guys I guess
All the finished material all your I guess you're you're hard with flooring your tiling your cabinetry
Where is that all coming from is that all you guys are keeping it all in house on the island?
Is it all coming from Greece or you guys looking abroad for that?
We're lucky that Calamata is because there's a brand new highway that connects Athens to Mani
So we're very close like we're within 20 minute drive into Calamata
And because that's a decent city that there's a lot of the chains that has all the Greek stuff
so we can get we can get the fancy Italian like
Taps and stuff for the bathroom and the finishings and then you know the Spanish tiles in the porcelain and
you know the Greek solar hot water tanks and
And then there's the Greek my card where the kitchen companies for the mill work and the and the closets
And we had like with this apartment. We had like a little like dry run almost
So we have a lot of contacts already and and everything
Yeah, so is it also true that
Even if you guys do most of the work yourself, you still have to log hours. Is that a fact with Greece construction?
Hmm, I haven't heard of that they
We're not physically doing any of all we have to do on our end because it's controlled through our engineers
They are they're they're doing
They're doing some extra stuff that we're not fully fully aware of but we have technically Chris and I are listed as their employers
So therefore we had to buy insurance for them
Every day that they work it has to be declared
So we're paying something happens. Oh
We're paying like their CPP and their Greek equivalent of like CPP and EI
Contributions, so we're like declaring the amount of people that come their hours
Yeah, and then we have to at the end of the month pay a bill to the government for their hours and for what they do
Right and then their
Like their workers comp as well. So
So there is that kind of there's a little bit of a gray area
I guess when it comes to physically whoever's doing the work and how it's all you got to buy by the rules, right?
Like there's all these little today make you aware of these rules or you guys just discovered them as you break them
But both
That's how I would do it. I would discover them as I break them. That's it. I didn't know right play that card
It would work for a while
This lap on the wrist. Yeah, I was doing like we like we knew in the whole budget and stuff
But like our engineers were like all of a sudden like oh, we need your tax number and you're like
Logins and we're like, well, yeah, I'm coming back from Canada in a week. No, no, like we got to pay the first bill in three days
I'm like, well, what bill like so it was included in their big budget
They gave us but then like explain like we're gonna have to do this every month
So that was a little bit of a learning process for us to like go in and navigate online banking for these government associations and stuff
and with these like verification codes and everything and
so
I don't want to get too much into your business on the financial side, but is this
project for you guys
Is it more or less expensive to do it in there than it would be in Canada?
Oh, it's a good question. I
would say now let's factor in the view and the environment and the mental health and
longevity and the happiness I guess
And the happiness like factor all that shit in there. All right. Yeah, let's let's just say all all in all in like purchase
Renault is everything
The cost not the value after but the cost everything will be less than a
Apartment downtown Vancouver. Wow
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, but
Yeah, the the view alone the property the house when it's done like we're gonna put a pool in it's gonna sleep 12
It's gonna be like a Greek villa
You know with our olives and our grapes and our lemon trees and everything. It's wait a minute
They're putting it putting a pool into
Yeah, they're they allowed that I don't understand how they allowed that
Lupo
Yeah, we did the Greek thing
It's a compact pool like a prefabricated pool. Yeah, and if it's a prefabricated pool
It does not have to be included onto the permits. It only has to be included on to the final
occupancy permit
So then we're good with that
So we don't get this beautiful infinity pool that we wanted it's gonna be a prefabricated one
But then we're gonna encase it in like stone after to make it look more part of the property
You could be creative and with certain stonework and the way the pool is positioned even though it's a prefab
It could look like infinity if you're kind of creative a little bit. Just take a little bit of effort
That's all yeah, I got a look a bit more into it and
We've been on our Instagram game trying to find some like cool pools on properties and stuff to
Make a plan. I love that you guys are using and I know that a lot of the traits that I did see on the feed
They were mostly of the older generation because they're that's who's doing the work
But I love that you got guys pulling up plumbabs and they're using old-school tools and and I love that they're building a
They're restoring an old house with that same old technology
That's been tried and tested how many decades centuries and it just works, right?
I mean is that are you guys in awe when you see them show up on site and they're
They're pulling out these things that you're like, what is that? And I don't understand how that works. They're a laser. Yeah, no laser
Even like just picking up a stone like we're seeing a big pile of rocks
I'm like, okay, cool and the one like one of the workers like picks up a stone and
He grinks takes a hammer to goes one two three four and he puts it and it perfectly fits the spot
That he was gonna place it on this new wall and I'm just like
My well even the things that they are thinking about that we probably wouldn't be like the the original house that original tower
Where they've rebuilt that side of the wall we've had to you know break down
The stone that they're they're putting around that area is all old stone from an old house somewhere in Manny
He went and he found it
Without even asking us he just did it because he knew that's what he had to do
Whereas all the cornerstones for the new house, they're they're actually carving them out of marble
to try and make them look like not a
Freshly cut stone from a perfectly like a line saw, you know, so it's
It's fascinating like the the things they they do and the things they think about to keep the look
It just I wouldn't have considered it. I wouldn't have thought about it. You know, it would just it's true
And across my mind. Yeah, I mean, it's nice that I see I see some of the younger generation there paying attention
But it's I love the consistency because all of them were not wearing any kind of safety goggles or any kind of safety protection
Listen, listen, I've always been there. Trust me even as a kid and even me as a side. No, I'm not I'm not criticizing
I'm just saying I have these are old you all should wear your safety goggles. I know but they were chipping away
I was fascinated by the stone. I was like look at this guy
Carve out this stone and then put it in a spot as if that's the spot this stone belonged to
Right. Yeah, mind you you're gonna be wearing an eye patch next week
I don't I get it but that stone looks beautiful right where it's at, right?
And they were all doing that so that's where the consistency is it but you're kind of out if I was there
I'd be cringing I'd be like oh put some goggles on put some goggles on please. No, I know
Those working working with the stone inside but also during the excavation process
He's out there with an excavator at a mountain and there is a stone of all sorts of shapes and sharpness
flying everywhere
Yeah, little beach umbrella
Smart he's a little iced coffee. Yeah
And he's getting the job done. He's totally getting the job done and he's enjoying life. He's enjoying life
That's why I love about it. I wanted to ask you guys
What was some of the funniest things that you guys found on the property when you guys started opening up certain wall?
I know that there was a whack of
Scorpions I'm not a fan of scorpions to begin with myself
You know even though they're tiny as hell, but they move quick and they've got two big claws
But I mean were there interesting things that you guys found where they're like little I don't know containers or something. I don't know
We we did find and I hope he's never gonna hear this show, but the previous owner we did find his
man cave stash of magazines
That was
What you got the centerfolds really wow 1970s Greek playboy
It was quite tasteful to be honest. Did you guys ask the average to come back to trim that?
You're onto it
I can only imagine man. I can only imagine. I'm sorry. I mean they're dating. That's funny. You guys found that stash
Yeah, we found some like it was uncomfortable not not funny or weird, but like bullets
World War two bullets. Wow. They found
We also found a cool little what the butter the other like piggy bank that was buried. Oh, yeah
There's really cool little metal. We don't know if you shake it. There's something in it
But we're we don't know how to open the damn thing. So no, no, no break. Don't we also had
Books we're like so it's really big contrast with the playboys
We had like this muddy like stuff, but we also had like Bibles and church books from 1899 and 1920
Well, you got to commit the sin and then you got asked for forgiveness, right? So
Yeah, right
One of the coolest things I'd say the previous owner called us about a month in well through when we were cleaning up the property
About three weeks in and he's like, you know what I really like you guys
I know we haven't physically met but
You know, I like you guys and I really like how so excited he's like I'm gonna tell you a secret about
The history of this home and we're like what and he's like okay
So and he was trying to explain to me like walk over here walk over here. He's like I found I
Found a present from the from the elders from the old Greeks
And I was like, well, what what do you mean?
And so I'm and I'm walking around on my phone and so I hang up the phone tell Greg
I'm like we need to go back to the hardware store and get it like a chisel and a hammer or something
so he told us that he was fixing the property he found a cave and
During the Turkish occupation and then the World War two with the Germans and stuff a lot of Greeks took their gold coins and would hide them in
Different places in the walls and caves and things
So he actually had found a stash, but he obviously took it
But he goes, you know, just to you since you guys are interested. He told me sort of where it is
He's like if you see I just cemented over the little access point to this cave
I left a gift in there for someone to open it one day. So I'm like Greg right now. Don't tell anyone
We got to go like get a chisel get a hammer. We drove to the hardware store came back
We're sitting there like on our knees like trying to like tick tick tick away at this
We created a hole maybe like six inches by foot foot my hand in with my iPhone
We were so excited Greg at first like this guy's rassing you know, I was like no, he's not he's not gonna
Just say that like just send us on a goose hunt. So we end up going down. There's a cool little video
We haven't posted it yet, but like we're trying to take our little like solar panel like light to shove it down there on a
String Greg puts his phone in and we find this cave. It's probably like a
Cubic meter like it's huge big
And he left the gift he left in there was a teacup and a saucer
At the bottom of this cave
So but it was cool because no one he found like he found
He didn't say exactly what what everybody said, you know, there was a gift I found from the from the elder Greeks and
So obviously, you know, you hear stories people finding gold coins and all this and yeah, that was the gift he
He left. Are you guys are you guys still digging?
We had a couple caves
Actually, that's that's interesting. So we we found these caves while they were excavating and now we've changed our design in the tower to
Even though it's underground
We have built a window we're building a window so that that cave can always be seen
So we're not because otherwise our house would be up against this cave. You wouldn't see it
So now we're we have we've put we put a window there so that we can light it
You can see the stalactites and the stalactites. Yeah, it's pretty cool
Now does that make you guys feel obligated to leave something there when you guys are building and cover it up
And then let the next owners
I don't know
Or maybe leave the same tea cup and saucer, I don't know
You know, I I've thought of all these weird things to do to the house. So like I was even like
I'm morbid. I'm maybe more morbid. You're you're nice
I actually was like we need to go and buy like all the Barbies from this like
This store over here and put the heads into the you know, so when they tear down all the plaster walls all these heads
They're stuck in the stone might as well melt them while you're at it, too
So they could be partially melted and then put it in there. Yes. What we did put into the walls is
Right when we started they so they laid the foundation tradition here in Greece
Is actually you it's an old Greek pagan tradition before Christianity is you would actually slaughter rooster and spill the blood on the property
That was for good luck for building. So our engineers are telling us, you know, a little Canadian Greg here is like
Oh, hell no, I'll bring chicken suvlaki to the job site
We can pour the juice from the box
So we fast-forward and went with the new
2000 year old the Christian way and we had the priest come up and do a holy water to bless the whole nice, too
Yeah, so we did that little service and then the he takes some basil and dips in the holy water
and then like uses it to sprinkle the holy water everywhere and
So what Craig and I did since they were just starting to build the walls
We ripped up the basil and shoved it into the walls. We're like, oh well, I guess it's a blessing. Good luck
Yeah, or it'll grow we'll see
Hopefully it's not a problem. Oh, I wanted to ask you a bunch of other stuff too as well
I still got what haven't you guys told us about? Oh
I'm just gonna try I mean outside of I mean first of all the food there has got to be amazing
The food is incredible. Like I'm just I'm just I can almost smell it here
Like I mean, it's got to be amazing
No, like it's all and I know that I saw some of the festivals that you guys were walking around and that's what I miss
About my own small town in the Azores as well
It's just you see the same faces you have similar conversations. You just kind of carry that
Conversation over and over and you add a little bit to that story and you keep on going and then you enjoy food
You enjoy wine you enjoy everything and that's why the value of the house there versus the value back here, right?
Very envious very envious, right?
Well, and and we live in Kalamata like the major city here is Kalamata
So any olive you've ever picked up is likely to be a Kalamata olive
Yeah, so we're we're very well known for the olives and for the oil and
I mean, I've used olive oil in Canada
But you you very quickly here learned that Canada actually
Probably receives the bottom of the barrel oil from from Greece from Italy from wherever it either goes to a loop or it comes to your dinner table
the like
Chris says caught me
Like over the sink pouring oil into a piece of bread like bread bread is now just a vessel for oil
I just really if it was acceptable in the social society we live in to just eat the oil
I would I cannot believe how much I discovered olive oil to be a
Taste of that. I like I adore it. I I want it all the time. It's weird
So when are we gonna see two guys in Greece olive oil bottle show up on the shores of Canada?
Yeah, let's let's get our trees healthy. I'm just saying I mean, it's not a bad idea, right to get it there
You've got the supply. It's right there. Yeah, it's true
Yeah, we've harvested one one year one season. So we've learned to learn to the trade. Yeah, we did
Are you guys itching to do some of the work yourself or you guys are just like hands off and just let them do it
Let them take care of it
We are actually pretty hands-on. I mean we
Um, we're not touching the stone. I mean structurally I need that house to withstand all of the things including earthquakes
So we we opt out of touching anything that's structural and electrical and probably plumbing
Um, after that, I'm happy to get my hands dirty. Um, because it's most likely not going to make something break
Or injure somebody. Um, you know, so
So, yeah, those those are the areas we'll probably stick out of but uh
Yeah, when it comes to two other things, yeah, we're not
we're not like
Not painting not, you know, sanding things down. That's fine
And in fact, we've never really had the opportunity to do it, right? So it's uh, it's
It's exciting. It's exciting to go to a hardware store and like actually need something
I'm not there to just walk around like I need something like we we bought a chainsaw. I bought a chainsaw like I was like dad
We have a chainsaw like
Do you know how to use a chainsaw?
Never used one in my life still haven't and it is out of the box
It's just now hanging on the trunk of our car because we started construction. There's nowhere to store
And I was driving on the chainsaw in their truck. Yeah, we look we look great
It's one of the two guys in Greece and a chainsaw. Yeah, it's wild
Uh, what else? I have a bunch of questions. I want to I'm I'm assuming are you guys the first in your circle of friends that have done this
Or have other people in your circle of friends that have done this or considering this
Our really good friend chrissa here, um did something similar
where she's restored an entire um
Historical home in the center of Kalamata. So I mean she's originally from Vancouver as well came here married
A Greek man and and now has a beautiful
four-year-old four-year-old daughter and
She's she's like everything ducks
So she's done it. She's uh, she's been through the exact same thing. So actually a lot of the trades people we've met
a lot of her
Learning um has she's passed it on to us. So she's she's really been um helpful in this process
And she got held up with the like
Our house was deemed archaeological hers was deemed historical which was even worse because there was more committees to go through
So hers was three years for permits and ours was only six months
We also have to thank co vid the one positive thing
Yeah, which forced Greece from the paperwork to the digital age where permits became digitalized during co vid
Um, so I think that also expedited our our process
I was actually looking online and and the Greek
Process of permitting and everything is very similar to the canadian way
There's a lot of very similar stages
Everything's pretty much on the same kind of level and on stages and how you do things how you prepare things how you build things
It's just you're in a a different part of the world. That's all it is
Um, I was gonna ask you guys
Do you can you be a tourist and do what you guys are going through or do you need to become a permanent resident?
You can um anyone can purchase property in Greece
There are some parts of Greece where you cannot purchase that like bordering like the trickish border where it's a bit protected
Um area where foreigners can't purchase
um
But yeah, anyone can purchase as long as you get a tax number and uh, you're declaring the money coming in
Um, there is the golden visa program. We've actually at the bank bumped into some other canadiens from Calgary down in Mani
They bought a pot of lamb built a house during the golden visa program. They have no connection to Greece
No, nothing. They're straight up canadian as well. And they're just loving life our next door neighbors are from ireland
Um, our little settlement is a lot of uh foreigners actually a lot of expats
You know 315 days a sun a year fresh food vegetables. I was swimming at the beach a couple days ago
You know in december
Sorry mani. No, I'm just saying why not might as well
Yeah, right. Are you guys I'm curious are you guys uh, I mean you you're just getting started. I would say the hard part
Uh, you got the next 12 months
I'd love to have you guys back on the show when you guys have it finished and and show us and give us a tour
That would be amazing to see it
But are you guys still over the mind like let's do this again?
Like are you at that point or by the time you get to the end? We're never gonna do this again
It's an itch. It's an itch. You're like
There's you know, we so we renovated this condo
Knowing what we would go through in the house. I mean, we haven't finished the house and nor have we even started thinking about
fixtures flooring colors all that I mean we we have these 3d mock-ups which we're we're gonna try to stay true to but
um
We I'm already looking at property
Those can't
Can't stay off the real estate website
I'm good that we recorded that crystals because I want to see in about a year's time
If that's going to still be the same thought process, right?
All depends on how much money we spend on this place
But that'll all go out the window the moment you're finishing you're sitting there and it won't matter what that amount is at all
Right, it's going to be more about what you guys feel emotionally to that house and what you guys have done for that island
And that property and everybody else that's had that property, right? So I could still see you guys looking at another property and starting all over again
Yeah, it's uh, actually even even the surrounding area around the house that we're in
It's it's beautiful, right and like people there's places for sale in this whole area like, uh, you know, so
Also in the the side of the mountain where we are it is the first village of mani
So it's sort of like borderline mani borderline calamata and it's called verga
Is the area and the area of verga they've actually stopped giving building permits
So
If there's any pieces of plots of land that have already have a building permit those are going up in value
Yeah, because you can't just buy a plot of land and then submit for building you have to have some existing building permit
Um right now. So it's always the reason why they stopped them
Um, just too much. There's lots a lot of villas going up
It used to be all just like all nature and stuff and forest land and you know agricultural land
And it's now like there's some gorgeous villas and homes being built and hotels like our there's only a
Three kilometer drive up the mountain. But now we passed by two five star hotels
We have that beautiful castle bar nightclub where I proposed to greg. Um, you know, we have like
um a couple
Bars up there restaurants in the little settlements where we are if you take the stone path up
There's actually a little tavern over there where they have the wine from the mountain the olive of the mountain, you know
like the full traditional
village da verna, um
It's uh
It's sort of booming. Yeah
Come in and it's a weird village way like yeah
But I don't know it's I love the village life. I totally love the village life, right?
It just I me personally I've gotten so sick and tired of Toronto in the last few years
It's just I think Toronto's just chipped away at me too much
And I'm tired of being chipped away that I'd rather go to the village life, right?
It's so different, isn't it like the
Your what matters to you changes, you know, like your the material world slips away all of a sudden
It's uh, it's not so much about buying things and and owning things. It's more about community and and
You know being outside and connecting with people and fresh food and
Uh, you start to care about things you don't find yourself caring about in this other life that we knew very well from Vancouver
Yeah, um
You're not scheduling, you know coffee dates with friends two weeks from now. Like yeah, like it's this is not the way it works
You know the people here in Greece and you can probably say the same for your people and in the Azores is like they
They will have five euros to their name left after they've worked, you know all the month
And they still want to buy you a coffee
They will not let you pay and that's their last five euros and they're like it's like from like they need to go home knowing
They've done something and they'll even give you the espresso cup and the saucer so you could take it as a gift if you want
I know, I know
I love that and then and then like Vancouver, you know, Toronto
It's unlikely people even know their neighbours, you know, they're you're in an elevator and you put your head down
And you don't say hi to the person next to us. It's something I've I've I've learned that
There's there's this thing we've forgotten about in Canada and in North America even, you know that
Yeah, it's it's sad to see our next door neighbor here at the apartment. We're living in now like we weren't even moving in
Yeah, we're still renovating and she lives in Athens and this is like a summer home for her
She's like, oh, come here. I was like what she's like here are the keys for my apartment check on it. I was like, no, no, no
No, like I know she's like no you guys are good boys. I know like there's the keys to my apartment
You know, once in a while just check on things when I'm not around. I'm like, no, no, I don't feel comfortable like we don't
She's like, no, it's okay. I'm just like, uh, okay. We're like we have your keys now. That's weird, but uh,
But it's not it's not weird. It's not. Yeah. Yeah, it isn't I want to I want to ask one last question before I get into the
12 questions of construction, which will be pretty entertaining. I think um, I want to ask you guys
Uh, can you guys describe the kitchen that you guys are going to build as detailed as orientated because I want to get a sense
If you guys are
And I'll just say it making the mistake of bringing a Canadian kitchen over there and I hope you're certainly not doing that
This is interesting. Uh, yeah
Well, well, can you describe as much detail as possible?
Just please tell me that you're not doing any shaker cabinetry or doors or white kitchen or like anything
I'm looking at a picture right now. It is
But it's not shaker is it can't be shaker
What is shaker shaker is a framed and a square edge on inside
Okay, so you guys did bring Canada over to Greece there. All right, okay
Full disclosure. We didn't get a choice of the cabinets. Why?
Why didn't you guys get a choice? Why wasn't that allowed?
It was just to bring the kitchen to life so we could see it. Um, you know, it was it was it was a first
I just loved that Chris was in the beginning was talking about tile from Spain and then you know like uh
Wood from so and so and all these different places and now uh, cabinetry from Canada
Uh
Yes, yes the in in the kitchen what I was pushing for was to have that stone wall
Stonewall island and that we haven't and then my other thing I was pushing for was our hot water tanks
Because here in Greece we get 315 days a sunny year in Kalamata. Um, so we want our solar hot water tanks
So we don't have to pay for hot water. Um, and our architect she did the mock-up
Uh, we're looking on the second screen right now. She did the the mock-up for it
Um, but in all reality, we're gonna be bringing the company Stoza. They're in Kalamata. They're an amazing team
We worked with them on this on this uh apartment and we're gonna get their
Their feedback and their expertise. We already saw some of their cool things like I know I was amazed by they have this super cool like
at uh french, um
Where you have where you cook the pots and pans I can't think it's an induction or you don't induction cooked up
Okay, but the center but the center of it is the exhaust fan and it's like this down. It's a down draft
Yes, yes, it's a down draft the eyes gravity and it blows my mind
And then you purposely want to create smoke so you can see that smoke go down instead of go
Yes, 100 like I just want to boil the water for the sake of just be careful
Just be careful about the routing of that exhaust fan because it's a lot trickier than doing a traditional way
That's all just be careful when you're doing the cabinetry and everything like that because there
It takes up a lot of space on the back end of the stove, right?
So just factor that in remember that right because I've done it a few times and it's uh
It's like parking a coffin behind the stove
You know what I mean? It's such a big component and it's just annoying and you got to try to hide it, right?
So but it's a very cool. I like it because I I hate staring at something right at eye level
Uh, when you're cooking or like you got the hood there. So that's why I like the down draft
But you got to get you got to do it properly. Yeah. Yeah, fair enough. No fair. What's the countertop gonna be?
I would show you the picture of the kitchen. No, don't show everyone
No, I want to see one of you guys get closer to finishing it
But I just wanted to get an idea and I wasn't trying to insult you guys about the shaker shit
It's just like I hate that if you've heard the show before everyone knows I hate that I can't stand that
It's just everybody does it shaker and you're like the square we're looking over like oh my god I hate this shaker shit
I just met you guys and I'm and I'm insulting your house that you're building in Greece man. I apologize. I totally apologize
What what what what color what color countertop are you guys doing?
Well, I'm gonna let you guess actually since you've done so well
Is it white marble
No, what is it? What is it?
What is it's like a gray like slate granite and it's actually a two-tiered
With a the second tier is a white like Korean white marble. So that's nice
Yeah, so there's the the island of the the middle of the kitchen is two tiers
So it's almost like it creates a bar
On it, but there's a lower half where your sink and your your stove would go like
I'm not sure if the sink's going there actually but
We can't actually see it in this photo, but I think it's it's either the oh, yeah, it is it is there
It is there
Yeah, so so she's got this like nice designed island, which we didn't even ask for we never gave her any inspiration for this
this just threw
Uh itself into the mix and we were like, yes, this looks this looks Canadian. We're in
We were like big windows stone wall. That was that was our requirements on the kitchen
We did say that like we we love to cook. We love to entertain. Um, so the kitchen's the most important place
Although she drew this for us. I
It wouldn't we would never end up here. It's you know, it
I would need to learn more about what this is. You got time you got you got time to change it
You got lots of time to modify it and then
Make some other suggestions or things like that, right? So
All right guys, thank you so much. I want to do the 12 questions of construction. You guys ready for this
Yeah, go for it. Everybody that's been listening to the show. Please check them out two guys the number two two guys dot in dot grease
Uh for 12 questions here you go. What is your favorite construction word?
Oh, it's I've already forgotten it. Isn't that bad? Um
Is it is it what's that bob thing? Oh the plum bob the plum bob
Hands down plum bob. Who who named this thing?
Um, I'm guessing bob or robert could have been a robert. I'm not sure
Chris, so
I have to say kufo mata. Oh kufo mata and that kufo mata. It's like the doors and windows and uh
Yeah, I don't know what the work exact holes of the house
Like no like the the the doors the windows of the home the openings although like okay
The openings with the metal surroundings for the for the glass
I don't know. I don't know how to talk. They're the trims the track
I would say trim or the casing the true casing casing. Okay. Yeah, thank you. Uh, what is your least favorite construction word?
Uh
No delay
So basically you guys said no delays. All right. What what turns you on in construction?
Oh stone. Yeah stone
the actually
I never thought cutting stone could be so sexy the like
Watch I could sit there all day. I could be late for work because I'm watching this excavator like
Sounds now terrible drill into the into the rock
Now you're getting a slow motion. Let's cue the music. No, there's lots. There's lots of double entendres in construction
That's why we're in construction. We love it. All right. We totally love it
Yeah, but are they cutting it? Are they dry cutting or wet cutting it?
It was dry. Um, it was a jack. You like that's right. That's right. Remember. Yeah, I didn't see any hoses hooked up
I guess maybe like a hose from the ocean and then they kind of
Siphon it out or something they're using that but nothing like that. What turns you off in construction?
Scorpions, no
I absolutely hate dust. So on the same note of cutting rock, which is super awesome
I'm the fucking mess
It sucks like um, especially stone. I have ruined all my shoes. I have you know, I'm I'm the idea that comes to a construction site in a new pair of
Nikes, um, you know the uh, yeah, it's I hate mess. I'm not very good with it
Order some grisports. They're from Italy
They're right. They're super comfortable and then you won't ruin them. They'll last forever. Yeah
Uh, what is your favorite curse word gentlemen?
Oh
Could be in Greece too drake. Sorry
Go ahead. I have to think for a sec. I I actually swear a lot in gree- in greek. Sorry. I swear a lot in greek. Um
In when we say damn it, it's a calm ramoto ramoto. Like uh,
Ramoto. Yeah
It's like damn it. Like uh, fuck. Yeah. So maybe fuck is my I would have to say, uh, malakis menno
Malakamis thenno
Malakis menno so malaka directly translates to like I've heard that way
Oh, yeah
um, and it's like uh, uh, you're like getting mad at that thing like you're
like fucking wanker thing
What is your favorite vehicle in the entire world while you guys are living there you're not really dealing with vehicles but
Oh
Can we just say that christos and I have only owned
Volkswagen like g guys and gulfs
For some reason it's not where we met
Yeah, before we met we arrived together in each other's lives with he had a gti at a golf
They're literally the same car and I already owned a golf here in Greece when I was in the military
Yeah, so we're with a golf again. It's just I'm gonna I'm gonna throw it out there
In unintentionally, we love the the gti golf thing happening with Volkswagen
And it's another story teaching Greg to drive standard on that mountain. I learned standard here in Greece. Yeah
You never drove stick before ever
Never no flash on a mountain christos. That'd be a little that'd be a little scary. Yeah, like it's rolling
Like I haven't heard it's rolling rolling back. It's still rolling back
The whip lash now we're still doing there
Yeah
They met a screaming like a little girl. I like
Yeah, third third gear was scary at one point
What is your least favorite vehicle in the world?
Oh the tourist minivans
Oh, okay. Yeah
Yeah, especially like parking up because we don't have much parking by the house, right?
Yeah
So all of a sudden you get these like german tourists show up and they're like big minivan things and they're like taking up like four stalls
On this side of the mountain can't even get a donkey past them. Eh?
Yeah on a hairpin turn too
What's yours, great
uh probably
So we have a lot of um
The the incorrect not politically correct way to refer to them as gypsies. So don't put this in your recording
but uh roma roma, um
They they tend to drive these beat up
Rusty falling apart trucks
And I I am not a fan. I am not a fan and they don't wear seatbelts and there's too many people in these cars. This is yeah
Uh, what's your favorite or sorry? What construction sound or noise do you guys love?
Oh
This is a good question
A sound uh noise either or
We haven't heard it at the house yet
But I do love a nail gun. I remember when we were building our house when I was a kid
I have to say it's the so we recently put up um or we they uh our stone team
Put up a slide so that they could bring concrete down. Um
Uh the sound of the concrete
Like splashing into the wheelbarrow is such a what a fascinating noise
It's interesting that you say that because a lot of people hear compared to the porta potty
Oh my god. Yeah, well now you just ruined that for me. That's literally your next question is my least favorite sound. It's also this
What's your least what's what's sound or noise you guys hate?
So I hate I hate the sound of uh tile being cut
Yeah
This is this is bad like the the grinding of tile. They're it's awful
What do I hate
I'm gonna have to say um
When they were using the jackhammers to go through our walls to rewire the walls in this apartment
Um, that was super annoying super lot. It was almost more no
I expected the excavation of the mountain to be this horrendous noise
But it was actually surprisingly a very
Interesting just like dick dick dick dick dick dick dick dick. It was not that bad
But I just had the jackhammer on the in the walls of the apartment going through like the uh bricks
It's the the reverb in the concrete. It's the box. Oh, yeah, right? You've got the mountain. You've got the air. It just it dissipates, right?
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. It's so hard. Uh, what profession other than your own would you guys like to attempt one day?
Oh
That's good
If I were to quit being a pilot and money wasn't an issue it'd be a bartender
I have this weird dream of owning a pie shop. I've never made a pie in my life
But I just feel like people selling pies are just they look sweet and savory pies or just sweet pies
Any pie any pie. I mean like let him make a pie first before we get what?
Profession would you not like to do?
Oh
Working at a Greek bank
100% they're very pleasant there. They're very happy go getters
No, right?
That's that's like that's like stepping back 300 years in time going to a bank in Greece
Wow, yeah, they laid the original stones of the house, huh? I know right?
Is that both no, Greg what's yours? Yeah? Yeah, I don't I don't know what would I not want to do?
I probably you know what I couldn't do I could not I could not be a fisherman or do anything on a boat
Um, love being on a boat. I would just be sick like I need to see the shore
So couldn't work on a cruise couldn't work as a fisherman in the middle of the sea not gonna happen
Last question if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at those pearly gates?
Oh, fuck. Yeah
I think that's what I'm gonna say I'm pretty sure and it's gonna be because of all the incredible things we did here on this earth
Like it's gonna be a high five moment. Mine's a bit more PG like welcome. You made it
Pretty much means the same thing
Gentlemen, thank you so much. Honestly a blast talking to you guys. I know it's late there and it's it's afternoon is here for us
But thank you so much for being on the show and sharing and uh, and I definitely please keep posting
I love seeing the updates. I love seeing what's going on there and uh, you never know
Maybe I'll catch a flight and pass by in surprise and check it out for good because I'd love to take a look at it
I love that kind of stuff. Love it. That'd be awesome. Please do you're welcome anytime
And yeah, thanks for having us letting us tell our story and even reminisce a little bit about
What it's like to do what we're doing. We don't give it enough thought. So that was that was nice. Great. All right. Thank you
Thank you, Angelina. We are out of here
You