Lesson 5 in Traditional Serbian Rural Architecture: The Moravian House and its Interior

After looking to the entire homestead we gave a close look to the house and its interior.

The house hasn't been touched since Deda Velimir (my husband's grandfather) and Baba Jelica (my husband's grandmother) died, but it was kept always tidy and nothing was really damaged.

A nicely decorated entrance door leads directly to the kitchen. The layout correspond to a classical plan that is often found in the typical Moravian house (Bondruka Style).

Directly from the kitchen there is a bigger room on the left (living room) and a smaller on the right (sleeping room). In the back an access to a little corridor that would lead to a bathroom and another small sleeping room...only that it was not finished.

I quickly measured up the rooms to think about the layout a t home.

It would not make sense to change it radically, as I wanted to maintain the typical, very functional and self-evident plan.

All the beautiful memories of the ancestor's life we found in the house could not really hide the problems that we would have to solve if we decide to renovate it.

As an architect I saw a good potential (good structure, an intelligent functional layout and an outstanding position of the house) but I was wondering how to handle the downsides (obsolete power supply, almost no water, the back of the house not finished, old partly leaking roof and insufficient insulation on walls, windows, roof and door).

Speaking with my father-in-law Aleksandar that runs a building company, we spoke about possibilities, solutions and estimated costs.

With these informations in mind I jotted down a small drawing of what the new layout could be: keeping the front as it is, amplifying the back and enlarging the terasse.

The terasse is really nice and is covered and it makes completely sense to make it bigger!

At home I started researching about more details on traditional rural houses, on construction details (difficult to find...) and on house interiors that would serve as orientation and inspiration.

Whatever I found, I copied down in my moleskine sketch book and collected neatly all the information that could serve me for the future renovation. 

My husband and I decided that we would take the big work and efforts to remodel this house: his father would support us with work and know-how, I would make the plans and details and my husband would organize all the building material in the surrounding and make the paperworks with the authorities to get water, electrical power and eventually to buy the nearby property that belongs to a cousin but would make a good place for the vegetable and fruit garden for us.

I took a last picture of the house before we would start to transform it!