Almost a week since my last post

I'm over stressing about time.  Our builders were busy during the past week working on a project for Ritter Sport.  And yes, I think its pretty cool that Ritter Sport, the makers of those fantastically yummy chocolate squares, are customers of our builder :)  But, S and a new guy came by the house at 2:00 to start working on our walls again.  I honestly don't have a problem with this, because not only does our builder have bigger customers than us, but it is damn cold again.  Poor guys. 
But, "S" and New Guy are both really nice and easy-going, and definately hardy too.  They focused on the master suite today, which turned out to be a big drama for quite a few hours. 
When I left work at 3:30, I gave Joern a call to let him know that I was on my way home.  He told me that the builders were there and needed my measurments for the master bath vanity.  The measurments were important in order to determine the placement of the cut-outs for our two recessed medicine cabinets.  Joern couldn't find what I had left for him, so I raced home as fast as I could.  Fortunately, I had another paper with my own measurments to give to Joern and "New Guy."  Adding to the fun, of course,was the fact that all of the paperwork from the Restoration Hardware, had measurments in inches.  Ugh, I hate when everything needs to be recalculated!  Somehow, I didn't totally trust my own measurments, so as soon as I got home, I ran off to print out a new set of detailed plans for the vanity. 
After a ton of measuring and calculation, and quite a bit of stress, Joern, "New Guy", and "S" all came to a consensus on where to squeeze in the medicine cabinets:

No worries, the medicine cabinets are actually espresso in the master bath.  This is just the one we chose

to use as the sample. 

Meanwhile, while Joern and "New Guy," continued to work on the medicine cabinet dilema, S worked diligently on the wall between the master bedroom and the closet. 

And, here is what we had by 5 pm today:



We're not sure if the builders will be back this week, or next.  Of course, it makes us a little sad to think that they may finish when we are in the US, but we can't change things. 

In other news, we received a letter from the town declaring that we, and the bank, are officially listed as owners of our property in the property register.  Yay?  Bleh that the bank is there too, but it  means that the bank is officially now our mortgage lender!

We are also expecting that our first checks will be cut to the workers tomorrow from our bank! It seems like this process has taken forever, but there were so many little details that had to fall into place before the bank could officially lend us the money. I  am so looking forward to actually being able to pay the bills that are sent to us from all of the people working on the house!

Some Valentine's love for our incredible team!

Happy Valentine's Day from the construction site!
It was an incredibly busy day on the house today,Mr. Builder,Mr. B,  plumbers, builders, roofers, and Joern!  And they all deserve a little Valentine's "I really love you all," in different ways, of course!
Here's a quick run-down of this very special Valentine's Day.
The roofers spent the day making the grid that goes around the entire roof.  This grid holds the tiles.

And they also covered up the exposed beams under the overhang.  They explained to Joern too, the purpose of the slotty metal pieces.  If a roof tile breaks, the water will run down the waterproof sheeting, and run out the slotty metal pieces, which will signal to us that there is something wrong with a tile.  Cool! 

Oh, and the roofers installed our skylight today.  It is small, but adds a ton of light into what is fast becoming my favorite place in the house. 
At 4:30 this afternoon, the roofers totally surprised us by starting on the roof tiles!  It is a little more brown than we expected (joke,)  they're just covered in dust from them cutting them to fit.  WAHOO!

Mr. Builder was at the house for a little while today.  He checked on the house, and moved his sign from the duplex next door over to our house.  Although I'm not the world's biggest advertisement person, I must say, I feel like we just stuck a Mercedes symbol on the front of our house.  I am very proud to have a Mr. Builder house!

Mr. B was also at the house today.  He needed to clarify the height of the floors, and deliver the message that we need to rethink our windows in the front of the house.  We had originally planned two doors on each window, but Mr. H (our window guy,) said that the doors would be too big and he could not guarantee the hinges on these huge doors.  We have a few options that we need consider now over the next few says.  Mr. B also delivered the news that we have to redesign the location of our electrical panel yet again.  Ugh.  It turns out that our original planned location, underneath the stairs, was illegal, because there must be 1 meter of space on three sides, in case there is an accident, that the electrician can fall without hitting their head of ceiling.  So, we move again.  It is remaining underneath the stairs, but will go behind a door that faces you as you walk in from the foyer.  I'm not bothered by it at all.

Our plumbers were at the house today for quite a long time too.  They drilled some holes in the cellar walls for the air filtration system.  They also elongated the tentacle-like pipes for the air filtration system.  And, they installed a box for the outcoming air and one for incoming air.  The pipes run into the boxes, and the boxes into the air filtration system.

 Our interior builder, M, who is just such a nice, hard-working guy.  He worked on the cellar today, and all of a sudden, we have a full techincal room, and a clearly defined area for our built-in storage.  He also completed the small wall on the side of our foyer.  And right before he left, he started filling in the small hole that was placed for the electrical panel.

And last, but not least, the latest addition to our building team- Joern.  Joern spent a few hours today gluing the overlapping air barrier to the sides of the exterior.  It all looks beautiful and is now airtight.  Thanks Joern!

So there you have it, a crazy busy Valentine's Day!  I am going a little buggy now separating all of the photos into the proper folders.  Ugh!  But I'm not complaining.  Obviously, I feel a lot of love for all the fantastic guys involved in the creation of our house!

Wow, we had a weekend full of visitors!

We have finally had visitors come by to check out our house!  I guess we could say they were our first "house guests."
Our first visitor was on Friday, when Mr. Petermann , who lives in the neighborhood, came to visit.  He's in his 70s, and has known Joern ever since he was a little boy.  He came and chatted with us a bit about the house, and his experiences with home owning.  A little while later Joern's friend Fabio stopped by with his family.  I guess it was good that we stayed at the house site so long on Friday!

Saturday was also awesome.  A few friends of ours, Heidi and Julie, and their son stopped over for a while.  Joern's friend Georg also stopped by too.  They toured our "house."  It was really fun to be able to explain things in English, instead of passively sitting by listening to Joern explain everything in German.   We even toured one half of the duplex next door. What an excellent afternoon! 

And there you have it.  We've already had guests come to our house.  Two weeks into construction. Hooray!

Excavation, Day 5

Thursday, or Day 5 on the timeline, was quite an exciting day in our excavation experience.
The walls were made quite smooth and a lot of dirt was removed.  The result was a transformation from a hole in my in-laws' front yard to a very clear area perfect for a house.

The walls were smoothed down.

Day 4 rear corner of Joern's garage                            Day 5, rear corner of Joern's garage

And most excitingly, the entrance to the driveway was brought down to the level of the street!  Meaning, once the excavator moves, we could drive into our driveway!

Photos from day 2 (left) and day 5 (right).  The entrance to the driveway remained 3 feet above the street from day 2 to the afternoon of day 5.

Mr. Wolfram (the operator of the excavator,) and another driver also measured out the ground ensuring that it was level. 

As they checked, they marked areas that needed a little extra dirt, or digging, to ensure that the entire building lot was indeed level.

In other news, Mr. B also stopped by today, wearing his two hats, architect and project manager.  He dropped off the official, completed plans.  Mr. B also called the plumber, Mr. Haag, to meet with Joern at the building lot. Sadly, I wasn't there to meet with Mr. B and Mr. Haag, but Joern was. They discussed the placement of the pipes underneath the house, which were to be marked out the next day. They decided against solar panels, because the air pump is very efficient, and because we have a special situation with solar panels and our low-pitched roof. Also because when we would need the solar panels to help support the warm water (in the snowy,cold winter,) the solar panels are often covered with snow, or there is not enough sunlight to support the solar panels. Joern also gave Mr. Haag the plans from Joern's cousin, the structural engineer.  It turns out that the air pump Mr. Haag had planned will be at its limits for our house size.  So now, its back to the drawing board, Mr. Haag will offer a few options to make up for this problem.  They also decided that we will indeed tie the fireplace into the hot water system, this way, we will use the fireplace to help support the production of hot water on chilly winter days.  This does mean that will have to be a little more serious in our search for a fireplace, but that doesn't really bother me at all.

So tired!

Now that we've actually started, I should be posting close to daily.  Unfortunately, last night, I didn't sleep a wink!  It is 8 pm now, and I am absolutely exhausted!

The digging went well today, despite the crazy heavy rain and wind we had today. This morning, the top of the yard had been scraped off.  By the end of the day, there is a definate hole about 6 feet deep.  It is huge!  I'm also so glad that I finally found a pair of wellies that fit, because without wellies, I never could have walked into the mud and checked out the excavation today!

Joern said that there were about 14 truck loads (trucks with double trailers by the  way,) that drove back and forth with ground  today!  So, the total so far is 14 double trailer loads, and 6 single trailer loads! 

Looking to our neighbor's house on Friday

Looking at the house from the same spot today

The container is now history

With only a few casualties, like Georg's elbow and my camera, the container is now history!
With everything tentatively worked out in Hamburg with customs, the container arrived at Joern's parents storage warehouse yesterday at 12:30 pm. I wish I could find my camera, so you could see the picture of how the truck was loaded. Two 20 ft. containers were loaded on the trailer, with someone elses container behind ours. Our first question: How on earth were we going to access our container? Once the driver maneuvered the truck around to the loading bay (yes, there is a loading bay, not like the experience poor Joern had loading the container,) we realized that our container had been loaded on backwards, so the driver just angled the trailer, and we could open the container from the front.
After a little pomp and circumstance, Joern's father popped open the seal, and we got to work offloading. Joern's two friends Georg and Marc came to help. I can't even begin to describe how different the offloading experience was from loading in Connecticut.
In all, it took about 3 hours to offload the container, and then another 2 hours to get everything into the two rooms for storage. The loading bay is in the back of the warehouse, and Joern's parents' storage is in the front on the other end. It was a lot of work, and a lot of planning, but it worked quite well.
We also started unpacking all of our furniture in preparation for customs to visit this morning. Let me start out by saying that I am in love with our furniture! The china hutch is like something out of my dreams! It is HUGE, and matches the table exactly! It is so very beautiful! The chair from Crate and Barrel is so grandma-y, and beautiful. It did suffer a little mishap, and some of the material popped out from under the piping at the bottom right corner, but I'm sure that can be remedied. The living room couch is a beautiful medium brown, buttery leather. It is so soft and comfortable. Not too soft, but not Germanly hard either. Our barstools are beautiful too. We unpacked the two bathroom vanities, they're both perfect. The medicine cabinets all made it with no scratches. Our bedroom dresser did get one nick in the front, but it also has some big damage on the side, but that happened when we bought it. Good news, is that this damage showed to customs today that it was used and not newly bought :) We had everyone sniff our cedar lined dresser drawers, and Georg even said that he could fix the damage!
The only item that broke was the lid of our beverage dispenser. But all in all, everything weathered the voyage just fine.
This morning, it was back to the warehouse at 9 am, to meet with someone from customs. She wanted to inspect the items to ensure that they were indeed inherited. It was pretty nervewracking, especially when she asked to look in a bunch of boxes. Not that there was anything bad, I just didn't enjoy having someone thumb through all of my things to determine if they should or shouldn't be taxed.
In the end, it worked out fine. She was with us for about 30 minutes, and everything was fine.
We are just waiting for a bill from the shipping company, for the time the container was detained in Hamburg, but it is mostly history.
After the customs agent left, Joern, Joern's father, and myself drove two SUVs and one station wagon, all completely full with packing materials to the waste center. We filled up two bags that were about 5 ft. long and 4 ft. high with styrofoam. They had us put the packing foil into a special bin, because they like to store it for people who come and ask for packing matierials. We had at least 50 boxes. It was insane. But again, now its all done.
No more worrying about the container. Now, we can focus on the house!