Renovations in Israel: a Tragic Comedy

People say that life could be divided into good periods and bad periods, but these are the bad periods that leave you with many good stories to tell. This is one of such stories.

Six months ago we bought a house that was almost perfect.  All we needed is an extra unit (room+ bathroom) on the roof and new stairs, all 50 of them. The owners' style was classic and modest but a bit outdated for our taste, so we thought why not fit it to ours: add some color and light. People warned us, joked about their experiences and pointed to the couples that divorced after the renovations. But we thought - it is a small job, we have a contractor and a designer in the extended family, we can trust them, we would tell them what we want, give them the keys and two months after we will move in.

Five months later, double the budget, exhausted and not quite happy with the result, we are still not living in it.

From the very first day, our renovations turned into a tragic comedy.  The actors are:
- Black kippa contractor that appears at the site once a week, usually to pick the check. Not much can take him out of his balance.
- Russian immigrant project manager that hourly rushes in-between all 6 of his construction sites and is easily inflammable. He screams daily that everything is a BIG AND IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM, but cools down shortly and does it.
- Two to four Arab workers that have been working with our contractor for 20-30 years, some since they were 14. They live on the territories and have to wake up at 4 am to stand in line for a border control in order to get to our house at 7 am.
- A wooden stairs expert that behaves like a prima donna and is hated by all of the above but paid by me.
- Two joyful AC experts (black kippas as well) that seem to like everyone and be liked by everyone.
- A cousin designer who is patiently ushering us into her idea of what we need.
- A carpentry shop that is making what we should have bought at IKEA many months ago.
- An Arab carpenter from Nazareth that did a quick and reasonably priced job but he doesn't acknowledge that there are many different shades of white in the inner part of the closet he built for us.  For some reason he is not very much liked by the Arab workers from the territories.
- A door expert - it is still unclear whether the character he is playing is good or bad.
- Five town hall personas that I visit weekly to get all the building permits.
- A person at the National Institute of Standards that showed me that even standard fees are negotiable.
- Neighbors, that include a powerful ex-wife of a local celebrity and an unidentified photographer that sends us pictures of the garbage our workers leave behind. Among the neighbors are those that are happy to see our renovation delays since they could use our free-for-now parking spot, and those that seem genuinely supportive comparing our renovation saga to theirs.

Scene 1:
First planning meeting in the newly purchased house. The contractor, who is also our relative,  realizes that he made a big mistake, but it is too late.  He promised us, we promised him, he is our brother-in-law and intends to keep it this way. We start working together.

On a second meeting our designer suggests that we made a big mistake. Everything here is either modern or country style. But we want retro, plus an orange-and-brown kitchen, plus keep the blue Belgian windows. "Your taste is so different than mine. Why did you chose me?"  Well, she is also our relative... We are trying to convince ourselves that she is a professional, she knows better and we should listen to her.

We are shocked to realize that nothing works smoothly without our micro supervision. I leave all the consulting jobs aside and show up daily at the house managing the project manager and the project.

Tens of bureaucracy steps.  Among them, taking pictures of our bomb shelter and proving to the Home Front ministry that it is up to standard. In my purse is a 5-inch screw from the vent tube of the bomb shelter and I am hopelessly trying to find where to purchase 3 more of those so that our Arab workers can secure them. By chance I notice that screws in the playground have the same print on them. No, I didn't unscrew the playground.

We realize that we do not have a measuring tape with meter marks at home - only inch-marked tapes. We use inches and convert them to cm on our iPhones.

Scene 2:
A few months later.
The newly purchased meter becomes the most useful item in my purse, credit card is the next. Through trial-and-error we seek experts in various fields. The experts didn't always like each other and we find ourselves mediating the tension. Every two weeks the contractor sends our project manager to a few days off at home to recuperate his nerves.

We finally agree with the designer that orange-and-brown kitchen may get tiring soon and switch to a white and gray-wood-print pattern. Few weeks later, unable to find the right gray, we give up to the simple white-and-oak.  Even the carpenter is shocked by our change of heart.

The planned small job has slowly turned into what seems to be an infinite spiral. There are many more parts to this house than what we thought. Floor panels that no one has noticed before suddenly become a major issue. The designer explains to us that ceramic floor should have stone panels as ceramic panels have an un-interesting edge. I spent a few weeks searching for the right panels for each room. Panel tips have weird names such as bird beak and alligator head.

I discover the stores and prices and shocked to realize that half of our budget should be set aside for building materials (stone, windows, carpentry, sanitary equipment etc). We learn that no one likes to pay the 18% VAT tax on work and goods while we are used to being good citizens.

We are losing sleep, walking around angry and irritable. There are moments, when I am hoping Iran will bomb us now and free us from this renovations nightmare.

Scene 3:
A few more months later.
Iranian intelligence has undoubtedly spotted the disaster of our renovations, and afraid to inherit them, the Iranian president is starting to broker the peace. There is no escape for us from the renovations project but to pull it through.

Things are starting to come together but there are problems everywhere and we are starting to just ignore most of them, anxious to wrap it all soon.  We learn that we can disagree with our designer and still be friends. I happily sidestep from the color white and buy a bright red lamp but the designer allows to hang it only in the kitchen. We still want painted walls but the designer thinks it is too simple. She suggest a wall-paper. It is too expensive. Walls stay white. We buy ceramic panels with a flat tip. We now know how things should have been done but it is too late: never again will we repeat such adventure.

At the basement entrance we have a row of 6 light switches.  It takes up to 12 tries to turn the desired light into a desired state because each light could be also controlled from one or more light switches spread throughout the basement.

Every second night one of us is having renovation nightmares. We are still married but drained and pale. Our kids couldn't hear any more about the house project. They are not interested in seeing its progress either. Our son spends two weeks in the US and on his return suggests we go back there. "But what about the house?" we think.

Our friends decide to forgo renovations on their house, likely influenced by our experience. A neighbor describes her nightmarish 4-year long renovation at a block party and we feel good.

Ohh, the real estate.

I have not been writing in a while because in addition to the regular crazy family routine we are very busy figuring out where we should live in Israel. Our rent is expiring in a few months and it could be nice to move into something of our own. We like the area of Ramat ha Hayal that welcomed us this year but not sure whether it is the best for us. Like a pendulum we are shifting between wishes of a bursting life in a small apartment in the inner city to the ideas of relaxing, serene lifestyle in the suburban villa.

 Tel Aviv is luring us with its offerings. It is a self-proclaimed city that never stops and indeed many cultural events are happening here daily. One may say that it is mostly for adults, but here it is: the main Tel Aviv library is offering fiction and comics-writing classes for kids. Tel Aviv opera has a summer camp where kids can sing and sew. Last summer on many Tel Aviv intersections you could spot a piano chained to some pole, inviting everyone to dip their hands in.

 HaBima square is an amazing place for roller-skates, and Tel Aviv promenade has been named one of the top 10 in the world. When I started writing this in August, Tel Aviv had a White Night celebration with many mid-night events throughout the city: an earphones party in the Rabin's square, opera marathon in the Opera building, a set of short intellectual lectures at the University, midnight run in the Yarkon Park and much more. But is this stimulation good for today's already over-stimulated kids? Do they need this cultural exposure or calm? Many times after school our kids are running to their rooms to relax after the screams of school. Is it safe for the kids to wonder the streets of the city by themselves? And we, can we manage with the impossible parking of our large American cars into the tiny street parking spaces in Tel Aviv? Can we downsize our belongings and personal space so much that we can fit into a small apartment?

 Or perhaps we should go to the suburbs. Own a piece of land, breath fresh air, inflate a pool for the kids, have enough space to host a large family event. Not hear any neighbors. Safe and relaxing atmosphere of a village where kids grow by-themselves in the wild. But why then some houses we saw have metal bars on the french doors leading to the porch/yard? Why even in suburbs most people still drive their kids to/from school and after-school activities?

 As you see, we are rather confused. But the largest of all problems is the real estate cost. With the salaries that are on average 1/2 of the US salaries, real estate here is 2 times the US cost. In the US million dollars is a very large number, somewhere out there, with the infinity. Here million is something many people count their mortgage in. At first you laugh in disbelief, you think you will figure something out, you decide to join the protesters that demand social justice, you hope the prices that rose 50-70% in the last 10 years will finally start dropping down. But then you look right and left, you see everyone managing, and know that you must, somehow. Surprisingly, we are much more adaptable creatures than we think and after just one year in Israel our kids are already OK with potential options of sharing a room or moving into an apartment.

As always with Israelis, necessity is a mother of invention. A few of the people we met bought small and old first-floor apartments, renovated them, got permits to dig in same size basements (under the apartment building!) and divided the yard surrounding the building between the tenants.


Most of the people immigrating from the US come to Raanana or small towns (yeshyvim) a bit North such as Tel Mond, Zicharon Yakov, etc. Like in the US, real estate prices correlate with the quality of public schools and general cultural level of the population. Real Estate site, Madlan, recently posted ratings of all schools in the country. However Israel has much more diversity everywhere. We rent in a quite expensive area where an old 2-bedroom apartment goes for $600,000 and a 4-bedroom house for $1,300,000. Still, I am saddened to discover teenagers leaving kids' park filthy in the evening, large dogs running unleashed, few mothers smoking cigarettes next to their kids at the playground and school so unorganized that even the animals in its wild corner were tragically attacked one night by the neighborhood dogs. I should devote another post to what we learned so far about Israeli schools. There is a lot to admire and a lot to feel enraged about.

Real Estate Agents and Transactions.  We have met a few excellent agents in each city, but the rest are comically unprofessional and paranoid. Most are competing for the same houses so they are ridiculously secret. They screen you on the phone trying to sniff whether you are another Realtor pretending to be a client and just trying to steal the house from them. When they schedule an appointment they rarely tell you the name of the street and the house number - you meet them at the closest corner. Many didn't know the size of the house they are offering to sell, number of the bathrooms or the school district.


And even when we thought that we found one "professional agent" that seems knowledgeable and reliable we realized another major problem - most of the agents are dual agents representing a seller and a buyer simultaneously and receiving 2% from each.   They are obviously more loyal to the seller with whom they are surely having a deal rather then the buyer who is probable. We almost bought a house recently realizing in the last second that there is a large electric pole-hub in the corner of the yard. The agent didn't think of pointing this to us even though electromagnetic radiation have been a concern for the current tenants as well as all potential buyers, and tests have been done.

When selling our house in Boston, we were required to move all our junk away, clean the house before any showing and get away from the house avoiding any personal interaction with the potential buyers. We read stories about apple pies placed in the oven to seduce the buyers with the cozy smell. Here, searching for a place to buy, we see snapshots of family life as it is, un-edited: owners are almost always present in the house, sometimes we see kids still in bed or in their pajamas, pots with deliciously and not-so-deliciously smelling food simmering on the stove. We learn from the owners everything that agents are incapable of telling us about the area, schools, parks, building plans and neighbors. At the end the system works out. The process is tedious, time consuming and occasionally frustrating but we discover what each area has to offer. And the fact that we get confused more and more means that they are all pretty good.