Beyond the blueprint: Hillside patio retreat.
What do you see when you look at this unfinished building in the picture above?
A house?
A concrete structure?
Or the beginning of your dream house?
Everyone sees something different.
In this new series that I’m sharing here, I intend to share my view on the possible options for creating the house of your dreams, starting all the way from a simple concept.
Imagine that you have bought this site. In your head you’re already creating the layers of how you want it to become.
With a building like this one, there are many different ways to make this look fabulous.
For example: finishing up the concrete work with a white stone, roof finished, windows and doors installed, that will make the house livable now. Something like this:
And when this happens, the real story can start.
Bit by bit, the house can be filled with your story. The things you’ve collected, the memories you’ve made and the dreams you’ve carried with you can slowly find their own place within these walls. And after a few years, it might start looking something like this:
Now, it’s becoming a part of your life. And a day in there could be going something like this:
The first rays of sunlight slowly find their way through the bedroom window as another new day begins
Yawning softly, as you open your eyes, you get up and open the window to step onto the terrace overlooking the warm, sunny Mediterranean landscape.
After a few refreshing splashes of water, you go down to the kitchen to have a wonderful breakfast at the patio.
Working from home here could be the best possible option too. You open your laptop, check your mailbox, reply to some of them, and catch yourself daydreaming when you look outside your window.
And the most beautiful part of this is that you can even work outside from time to time too.
By noon, you prepare yourself a simple lunch. Afterwards, you take a little walk around the garden, checking the olive and orange trees to see if their fruit is slowly getting ready for harvest.
When the afternoon starts to move slowly towards the evening, and the sun is shining at its brightest, you head back inside to finish up your work for the day.
A small trip to the village. Getting the groceries for tomorrow, chatting with the locals, having a drink at a nice terrace,… it’s all something that is definitely possible.
And when you return home in the evening, you prepare yourself another wonderful meal. Perhaps some tapas this time, enjoyed outside as the heat of the day slowly begins to fade.
Eventually, the sun disappears behind the Mediterranean horizon. The lights around the patio begin to glow, the village grows quiet in the distance, and you sit back for just a little while longer.
Tomorrow will probably be another ordinary day.
And perhaps that is exactly what makes living here so extraordinary.
That is the beauty of an unfinished house.
At first, there isn’t much to see. Concrete walls. Empty openings. Bare terraces waiting for someone to give them a purpose.
But a home isn’t created by concrete, windows or furniture alone. It grows slowly, through ordinary mornings, late evenings, memories and all those little things we collect along the way.
So perhaps the next time you come across an unfinished building, don’t only look at what is standing there.
Try to imagine what isn’t there yet.
Because beyond the blueprint, there is always a story yet to be written.
Note: all pictures used in this post are AI generated.