We have been living in Paraguay for four months now and have settled in well, we don’t want to go back to Germany. The last few months have been very busy with our landscaping and planning for the house construction.
Once our plans were finished and approved, we finally started the construction of our house in Paraguay. Initially, we didn’t think that so much time would pass before construction started, but things always turn out differently than planned.
Own house design
We actually wanted to have a house built with a standard plan. However, we were lucky enough to be presented with a great floor plan at the end of last year, which we liked so much that we wanted to create our own plan for our house.
The floor plan was perfect in this case, as it had three rooms of the same size and the living room and kitchen combined in one larger room. The only thing that bothered us were the two external doors for the storage room and the laundry room.
However, I came up with a good solution and was able to remove both external doors, making one room out of the two rooms and accessing them via our bathroom.
But that was just the start of the planning. We drew in windows and doors, the positions of the air conditioning units and created a separate plan for the electrical installation in our house. In each of the bathrooms, we wanted to have a niche as a storage area in the showers, as well as a separate wall as a dividing wall and so on.
At the same time, we selected matching tiles, faucets and sinks. However, it will take some time before these are installed.
The concrete floor slab is finished
Construction started just over a week ago. The floor slab has been finished since Friday and now we are taking a break for two to three weeks until the bricklaying work continues on our construction site.
It’s very interesting to see your own house being built, which you’ve only seen on paper or on screen so far. It remains exciting and I will monitor and document the progress.
Until then, we will continue to live in our apartment. We now also have a minimally equipped kitchen and can cook for ourselves. We usually go shopping in Caazapá and about twice a month to Villarrica to a larger supermarket.
We bought a car at the beginning of the year and are therefore also mobile as a family in Paraguay. The apartment is quite small for four people, but we are very close to our construction site and already have great neighbors around us. We have to make good arrangements, sometimes it is exhausting with the children in such a small space, but time will change and we can look forward to our own house more than ever.
We are slowly starting to design the garden, what do we want to plant where? We have enough space on our 2500 square meter plot to let ourselves go crazy. I think we’ve positioned our house quite well and a carport is to be built next to it. We are still in the planning process and will have this calculated soon.
Our wastewater system, a three-chamber septic tank, will be installed in front of the carport. To the right in the corner of our property is the lake, which we share with three other neighbors. The rest of the property is therefore still free for planting and other ideas that we are sure to come up with.
Our children would probably also like to have a small playground with a slide, swings and climbing facilities. Maybe dad will have something to climb on in the garden too?
Have your own furniture built in Paraguay
We are also already planning our furniture, as we are having everything built in the carpentry workshop according to our specifications as far as possible. We have already placed the first order for a sideboard, which we can use in our apartment.
The other plans are all to be built in a similar and coordinated style. We will also be adding cabinets for clothes, beds, cupboards for the bathrooms, kitchen furniture, etc. We have already ordered terrace furniture in Asunción, as we wanted to use it on the terrace of our apartment.
The container shipment has arrived
Our boxes from Germany have now also arrived. We have already unpacked some of them and stored them in the furniture in the apartment. We have temporarily stored some of the boxes elsewhere as we will only use them in our own house.
Sofia’s running bike has finally arrived and she’s really enjoying riding it here. Unfortunately, she hardly had any opportunity to learn in Germany, but here she got the hang of it straight away.
It hasn’t rained for a while, so it’s very dusty at the moment and we are cleaning almost every day. It’s still nice and warm at over 30°C during the day, which we really like. At night it is already cooling down to 20°C, but this could change again before winter starts here soon.
We are looking forward to the winter in Paraguay, it will be our first winter in this country. I will certainly write another update about our house construction in Paraguay soon, so check my blog from time to time to make sure you don’t miss anything. See you soon!
Best regards Sebastian