A very quick update

Since I have a lot of laundry to do, and some vaccuuming, I will just write a quick update on the house. I will do a more thorough job in writing about it hopefully during the week.
Since receiving the building permit, we are now waiting for the "Rote Punkt," or Red Point which allows us to actually start building. Mr. B needs to register himself as our project manager, which will allow us to receive the Rote Punkt. We've also met twice again since the beginning of the month with Mr. B. We've worked on optimizing the design of the house. We've moved around a few walls. In the cellar, we've enlarged the rooms, and reduced a little width in the hallway. We also enlarged the mechanical room by removing the wall to the toilet room. It may seem odd to have a toilet and shower (for rinsing purposes,) in the mechanical room, but Mr. B suggested that we place our heat pump and water tank in a way that it can be covered by a curtain most of the time.
On the first floor, we've added one meter to the dining room, and removed the shower from the first floor bath. Although it would have been nice, it will give the bathroom a much more airy feeling, as the shower really made this bathroom cramped! We also changed the design of the window in the kitchen and widened the door from the kitchen to the side terrace.
Upstairs, we redesigned the children's bath, optimizing the space, which will also give me room for my Pottery Barn sink console and some shelving space for the laundry supplies. We also worked on the design of the master bath. Mr. B gave us a few suggestions for the bathtub. He did talk us out of making the shower too big, but I'm not totally convinced on that one either. We also made the hallway in the master suite a bit smaller, which gave more space in the walk-in closet. We eliminated two windows, one in the bedroom behind the bed, and one in the bathroom. It is fine.

The blueprints are complete, and Mr. B has started the paperwork for estimates. The paperwork is huge, he fills out an enormous booklet with explicit details on the house to send to builders, excavators, etc. This way, all contractors give us an estimate on exactly the same terms, which allows for a fair comparission.

We've also booked our container. We are going with a US shipping company. Turns out, summer is high season for shipping, thus, not the cheapest time to ship. We've chosen to self-pack our container, and have two hours to pack the container, before incurring an hourly rate for packing. Ugh!

Lastly, we also booked our tickets- hooray! We'll be home from July 5th to the 20th. A nice long time!

Our architect meeting

Well, I first posted about our meeting with the architect and structural engineer in narrative form. It is really long and dry. I've decided to redo the post as a list, to make it quicker and easier. So, here goes.
We met with Joern's cousin, Stephan the structural engineer, and Herr B, our architect on Thursday afternoon. Herr B is now finished with the first set of blueprints, as is Stephan finished with the structural analysis. The meeting was to pull things together.
We moved floor by floor discussing the house. The major discussions focused on the placement of the insulation for the concrete slab, and correcting the uneven planned roof on Joern's garage.
Foundation and cellar:
- choices for insulation for the concrete slab were either underneath the slab and on top, or simply all on top. There are benefits to both, but in the end, we needed to go with insulating on top of the slab. We could not insulate underneath the slab, because there needs to be some elasticity in this procedure, and since we are building on a hill, elasticity is not so ideal.
- the 2 car garage (or Joern's garage,) had a roof that was two different heights. Because German law requires in our situation, that we have a green roof on part of both garages, as we are building our garages directly on the border with our neighbors. There are different types of green roofs, and evidently, the first, and not-so-great, architect planned 25 cm. of grass on the green portion. 25 cm of dirt allows grass to grow, and we would be required then to mow the roof of our garage! Bleh! We chose instead to have a more self-sustaining, less labor intensive roof covering. Plus, this allows for the roof to be evened out, and to Joern's pleasure, to have the height of the ceiling in the garage increased. This is most exciting to Joern who dreams of having a car lift in his garage.
- garages will not be insulated.
- the concrete slab will need to be reinforced against the pressures of the hill.
- the house will be built with Ytong blocks. Ytong's many advantages include ease of use, good insulating properties, sound absorption, and protection against fire. It is a well-used building block here.
- the entry foyer in the cellar continues as a discussion for Joern and myself. The architect suggested a large skylight dome be placed on the front terrace of our house. Doing this would bring tons of natural light into our foyer, as well as prevent us from using this terrace. We're not sure what to do here.
First floor
-we moved the door of the office over a bit. As was planned origianlly, you would have to trip over the sectional to access the office. Glad we moved it!
- electric Rolladen. German houses most often have Rolladen, which are metal roller shutters, simialar to security blinds. Joern likes them because they completely black-out a room, which will be a help when we try to put our kids to bed and the sun is still shining brightly! They are also quite effective against the sun in the summer. Last, I like that the electric ones provide an additional measure of security, as the rolling mechanism in electric Rollanden locks. I am already a little nervous about staying in this big house all by myself if Joern has to travel. Anything to increase the security helps!
- the electric Rolladen will be partially on a central control. I didn't want to control all, because the view from the upstairs bedrooms at night is beautiful, so I don't necessarily want to close all the shutters at once.
- interior doors will be extra high. Normal interior doors here are about 6.5 feet, but we chose doors that are close to 7 ft. high.
- we gave Mr. B the blueprints for the kitchen, which were completed by the kitchen studio. He will work these in to the official blueprints.
Second floor
- Mr. B suggested we visit a bath showroom to select fixtures that we like. This is called "bemusterung." Building companies here have a "Bemusterungscenter," where you go to chose from their options. We love that our "Bemusterungscenter," is every store in Germany, and even outside Germany if we choose!
-Mr. B feels like the children's bathroom is laid out strange. I agree. We will meet with Mr. B again next week, and he'll offer us some suggestions on how to improve the layout of the bathrooms.

The meeting lasted over 2 hours, but we accomplished so much! Next week, we'll meet with Mr. B to finalize the details, so that the official plans can be worked out.

A tiny little ray of light

We will have the blueprints on Thursday. Joern spoke with the architect, who set an appointment to hand over the blueprints to us on Thursday. We will also be meeting with Joern's cousin, the structural engineer, on Thursday as well. According to Mr. Architectle, it takes approximately two weeks to get estimates from builderlds. Really, we could get started soon. BUT, I'm trying not to get my hopes up. At least we will be getting out blueprints.