Interior Design Tips by Jennifer Ungar

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Interior Design & Renovation in Israel by Jennifer Ungar As anyone who has made Aliyah knows, the way business works in Israel is not the same as the way it works abroad. Even though I had plenty of prior experience in business in chutz la’aretz, there was a huge amount to learn when I started my company here. After all, it’s a different country with a different culture, business practices and expectations. Here are a few examples of how building and design just work differently here. You can thank me later for finding out for you the hard way! In Israel, they work with an entirely different system of building. For example, the ramifications of building walls from poured concrete rather than Sheetrock are not to be underestimated. Using Sheetrock, if you want to move or add an electrical outlet, it’s no big deal. You seal up one spot and cut open a new one. Extend the wiring, pop in the new outlet, and you’re done. Not here! If you forget an outlet, you are looking at big shekels to literally carve out the concrete to move the wires around and insert a new outlet. You can’t even hang a picture on the wall without finding out what kind of nails to use or the wall will just crack! But in my opinion, the biggest difference is in mentality. To an American it can seem that Israelis just don’t get it. This reminds me of when I went to buy a whole turkey (for Thanksgiving!). Unbeknownst to me then, it’s next to impossible to buy a whole turkey here. After arguing back and forth in my broken Hebrew, the butcher was getting exasperated. “Giveret, you cannot fit a whole turkey into your oven,” he insisted. “It’s too big!” With a big smile I told him, “Don’t worry, I have an American oven.” This time he also laughed and replied, “Why didn’t you say so?” Moral of the story: If you want the size of oven you are used to, you need to know that “standard” in the U.S. is not “standard” here. And this goes for virtually everything! Small ovens, small washing machines, small furniture