This week I spoke with Åsa Suta, one of the families who took a big step in 2021 and decided Mallorca is the place they want to call home from now.
Attila, her husband is a recognised furniture designer and carpenter. He holds since 2013 the Royal warrant as one of very few that deliver to the Royal family in Sweden. Attila has always had a dream to renovate a house abroad from scratch and furnish it with self-designed furniture. Åsa works as a development manager and enjoys trying new things. Her motto is “if there is a will there is a way.”
How did you end up living in Mallorca?
With 3 children 8, 14 and 16-year-olds, a Swedish school was necessary to be included in the plan and with the family’s 4 dogs, space and garden was another.
One of Attila’s customers said that it was hard to find good-looking, quality furniture in Mallorca and said that Attila should open a branch here on the island. “We liked the idea of Mallorca and the kids already read Spanish, so it was a good fit. We had only been to the island once before, so it was a bit crazy. We started looking for houses and areas with the help of local house hunters on the island. For the autumn holidays 2020 we travelled to the island and visited the Swedish School. We also looked at 14 houses and many areas to see where we wanted to live. We settled on an area that we all thought was nice, wide open streets and views of the mountains. It was Sa Planera in Marratxi. It is a Spanish and International area.”
One of the houses they looked at in Sa Planera had a rooftop terrace overlooking Palma Bay. The family stood on the terrace enjoying the view when Attila spotted the house next door. An overgrown garden and the house had both doors and windows bricked up, but they liked the proportions. Now to find the owner and make an offer is not so easy in Mallorca as in other countries but fate intervened and one day it appeared on the Idealista house sell website!
It was a house owned by the bank and previously occupied. It had been empty for 7 years and needed total renovation. The Suta family made an offer on the house without having seen it themselves. After a lot of back and forth about the purchase, it was in the middle of the lockdown, they agreed on a price with the bank. The purchase finally went through in February 2021, by which time Attila had been sitting in a hotel room for 10 days waiting to sign papers, each day postponed due to various reasons from the bank.
Attila had his whole team with him, so an hour after the papers were signed, they started tearing out everything in the house. He was then on site working on the construction. The rest of the family moved down at the end of July 2021. Åsa took care of everything at home in Sweden with kids, hobbies, dogs, house, full time job and planning the move at home. It was quite nice once we got down to Mallorca, everyone had been working very hard in their part!
What was the most unexpected thing that happened since you moved here?
The scariest experience was when Åsa was driving to school one day and a bunch of kids threw rocks at the car, for no apparent reason. She went after the gang and took pictures of the kids. “Later in the evening we heard there was a gang in the street outside the house and when we went out they had thrown a glass bottle at the front of the house. The police did nothing, they hardly responded to our report. We felt very exposed and helpless. Not be able to communicate well in another country was very challenging. It was hard and very unexpected that something like this would happen in your own neighbourhood.”
What are you looking forward to in the future?
The first goal is to get the house and garden ready! We still have some work to do and this spring we’ll be building an outdoor kitchen and tidying up the garden. Then the house needs to be decorated, there’s still a lot to do. The next delivery will include a new dining table and chairs designed by Attila, which will be fun to see. We have our outdoor table as a kitchen table right now. Then we are looking forward to a summer with a finished house, and some time to actually enjoy it, get our friends over and just enjoy the climate and our project!”
https://www.attila.se/
https://www.instagram.com/sutafamily_moves_to_mallorca/
https://www.instagram.com/attilasuta/
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