Our Bellavida Orlando Villa Blog

Bellavida update!

2007-01-06T23:14:00.000Z

Its been a long time since my last post on this site, I got into using the Mac iWeb blogging sofware, which was great until I broke the mac and when it was reformetted it wont load up the old blogs - doh!!!

So, back to this good old Blogger blog!

The house is nearly complete now, the carpets went in last week, its all painted, really went up quick, but there are some delays so it doesnt look like we will complete until next month.

Ill get some photos added asap, we have a new website now at http://www.bellavida-villa.com/ which has some, but ill try to get some on the blog.

Also need to see what all the upgrade options are about, could be useful!

Bye for now!

And we thought there would be delays!

2006-06-20T16:34:00.000Z

Well, we got an email today from PSH, looks like the build of the villa is going to be sooner that we thought.

We were expecting to get our new home about a year from now but it looks like it will be 6-8 months, and as our house is at the bottom end of the first stage, probably closer to the 8 months.

We were actually expecting the opposite, ie for the build to run over and take 15 months, but sooner is better, certainly not something we expected looking at posts of forums for other developments that are running 4 years late!

OMG Its hot!

2006-06-08T11:40:00.000Z

Just sitting here (in England), its June the 8th and after a month of really poor weather, someone has turned up the temperature.

In Orlando you have air conditioning, here we have NOTHING.

Still, shouldn't moan, at least it is nice, I can sit under the Gazebo and do some work, just need to go get a fan, create a bit of a breeze.

Adding a 'whats the weather like' page to the Eeyore website today, so you can see what the weather is like in orlando, hotter than here, but also cooler if you know what I mean.

Just thinking of all those guys out there, when you get to the road tolls, wind down your window and the heat hits you like an oven, I prefer it before May or after September when its a bit cooler.

All paid up - now the long wait!

2006-06-06T12:44:00.000Z

Just got confirmation from Park Square that they have all the deposits, so we are all paid up.

It’s been quiet for the last week, everything is now ‘specified’ and ordered so nothing much will happen now until we get over to Orlando in November to sort out the furniture for the house.

I’ll add photos and news as we get them, but I think it will be the ‘long quiet’ period people talk about now, just sitting and waiting for the builders to do their work.

Maybe it’s time to re-decorate our house here in the UK, give us something to do in the meantime!!!

More about the Resort

2006-06-04T11:44:00.000Z

First, ill appologise for all the posts coming on the same day, I wrote a lot while my mac was offline, so ive just uploaded them all in one go, ill try to do it better in future!!

I thought I would add a bit of info for the site today (as I ihave nothing much else to say!), and it might give an idea what the resort is like for those that havent seen it.

BellaVida Resort has both townhomes and villas on the site.

Obviously the villas are huge compared to the townhomes, but you have to drive down past the townhomes, then past the clubhouse to get to the villas, so they will set part of the theme for the site.

The resort should look Mediterranean with a Floridian touch, really get you in the holiday mood! The picture above shows the artists impression of the street scene in the townhome area - should be neat.

It will be quite a large resort with over 500 homes, so it should have quite a buzz, and of course its in a really great location!

There are some photos at http://www.eeyores-escape.com/blog/Photos.html of the town houses and the progress on the site so far.

It still looks like a building site, but its getting there.

The devil is in the details!

2006-06-04T00:28:00.000Z

Or maybe the devil is in the options list, but get it right now and our Orlando villa will be stunning, miss options off and the details will always bug me when i’m the house - it will just be like any other rental house, we really want this to be something extra special.

We have just spent an extra $ 1500 (taking us over $ 97,000 on options without even starting on the furniture!) on some more ‘details’ to get the house right from the build, maybe details we don’t need to do to get rentals when we are not there , but details in our eyes that will make the house right.

We have added built in speakers to the lanai, so we can enjoy music by the pool, and wiring and speakers for a surround system in the family living area.

Doesn’t sound like much for the money, but every house we have stayed in before has a surround sound system but all the speakers are at the front of the room, and wires all over the place leading to them. As for music on the lanai - nothing, we have had portable players.

Our house will have the wires all nicely hidden and integrated, the speakers in the right place for the right surround effect, and it should all be very easy to use and child friendly (no trailing wires!).

I doubt it will make an ounce of a difference to how well the house rents when we are not there, but it will make a difference to how we enjoy the house, and hopefully the details we are putting into the house will make our guests stay even more enjoyable and memorable.

The devil is in the details after all, or thats what we keep telling the accountant!

Where is your Orlando Villa?

2006-06-04T00:24:00.000Z

Found a neat website today for anyone who wants to rent, or buy a villa.

The url is:
http://www.hightower-realty.com/community-locations.htm

It basically has a map where can move over the resort names and see exactly where the different rental villa locations are.

Pretty neat, you can see exactly which communities are just off the 192, and which are off on the 27, or on the smaller back roads.

Ive added a villa location map to our website as well at http://www.eeyores-escape.com/location.html - Ill get a better one up later, but it gives an idea of where everything is.

Working on the website

2006-06-04T00:23:00.000Z

OK, so it may be a little premature, but it takes so long to get a listing in the search engines these days, and so many people are asking us for pictures of the house I thought I would start work on the villa website.

It will just be a shell site for a while yet, with basic information and no pictures, but it should grow over time.

Obviously it won’t be of much use to anyone until the house is built (who wants to read about a house that isn’t built yet!), but it’s all good fun and it helps us get an idea of just what we want to put into the house.

The web site will be at http://www.bellavida-villa.com/ but we have also registered http://www.eeyores-escape.com/ as we quite like that name for the villa, we will see how it grows on us, or not as the case may be.

Ill spend more time on the site over the coming year, plenty of time to fiddle round and mess it up!

All signed up....

2006-06-03T17:55:00.000Z

Well, the contract checked out, so we signed on the dotted line (well lots of dotted lines actually) and sent it back in the Fedex envelope provided.

The same day, the US mortgage rates went up, thats life!

Found a picture of the site in mid April on the web, looks just like a building site, but apparently they are putting the roads in now, I guess its a month later and a lot can happen in a month. Our house should be on the left of the picture, backing onto those trees.

We are told the build should take about 6 months from the date they start, so if it takes another 5 months to put the roads and services in, puts us on schedule for a April / May 2007 house warming party!

You never know, the roads could be finished sooner, and they could build our house first, so Christmas could happen, but then again the contract allows the builders to take 2 years, so we could be looking at May 2008 just as easily.

Just looking at villas in Cumbrian lakes for our trip over in November, looks like this is one of the closest existing communities to the site along with Terra Verde and a few others.

Is is a contract, or a phone book?

2006-06-03T17:02:00.000Z

Got the contract through this morning by Fedex.

First thoughts were is this a contract or a phonebook, Yellowpages eat your heat out, but when you go through it, it wasn’t that bad, Timi at Park Square had been really efficient and sent two copies of everything, a home owner manual, some more legal papers on what you can and can’t do on the BellaVida Resort, so the actual contract is probably only about 30 pages long.

The options list seems to have grown even longer, there are a few on there that seem to have appeared by magic and a few that were missing (like the larger pool!), but this just seems to be a mix-up, and the builders have faxed me new, correct pages.

There are a few samples in the fedex bag as well, look like counter tops and parts of the pool, but im not sure at the moment, I guess it will all be in black and white in the contract.

Off to read all the legal stuff now, we have 7 days to send back the contract so better make sure it right now or live to regret it later.

Andy

Taking the Bellavida Plunge!

2006-06-02T23:57:00.000Z

We have finally gone and done it!

We have been looking for the ‘perfect’ Orlando villa to buy for the past 2 years, and at last we believe we have found it at Bella Vida!
Lee at Kingdom has been superb at helping us find a villa - very, very patient, and it looks like it has paid off.

Bella Vida seems to mean Beautiful Life in Italian and the resort is going to have a Mediterranean look with formal Italian garden and an ‘impressive’ entrance.

So, after looking at the plans, and the site, and the plans again, we have finally taken the plunge and put down the deposit for the largest home on the site, the 6 bedroom Belaire Beach.

At 4185 sq ft under roof, it’s larger than the 7 bedroom villas we have stayed in at Formosa Gardens and they were huge, so with one less bedroom and 200 more sq feet this one should be spectacular!
Our plan is to have the best 6 bed villa in Orlando, so we have managed to add over $130,000 of options at the moment - ouch! Quality apparently costs, if you want the best you have to pay for it. It will be the only 6 bed villa I know with 7 toilets, but it should be worth every penny (anyone renting it when we are not there will be getting a bargain!).

I guess if we were just doing this for rental only we might cut the corners a bit, but where would the fun be in that and it would always bug me, I can imagine being there and thinking ‘we should have gone for the larger pool’ or ‘why didn’t we pay for a better lot instead of being overlooked’

Instead I guess in the meantime i’ll be thinking ‘why did we add so many extras?’