Kitchen update, and progress towards the tiles

This weekend, we were allowed to take the cabinet fronts home. I figured it would be best to bring together as many of the kitchen elements as possible in order to make a decision.  So, I brought a bar stool into the house, and put the bar stool, floor sample, and paint chip card all together with the cabinet fronts.  Turns out, we were surprised by the outcome:

We agreed that the high gloss was MUCH nicer with the gray beiges that I love!

On Monday afternoon, we went back to the kitchen showroom.  It isn't fully completed yet, but we did make some more headway.  We decided for the high gloss cabinet fronts.  We also discussed our options on the built-in wall.  It turns out that our coffee maker may not be the same size as the oven/ mircowave.  If they are not the same size, we will have a symmetry problem.  The kitchen guy offered a suggestion of a plate warming drawer.  The good about it is that it would balance out the two appliances on both sides of our "breakfast prep center."  But, putting it under the coffee maker is a bad idea because, you'd have to run all around the island with plates of food, and, of course, its 600 Euro.  Joern had an even cooler suggestion though, he asked if we could do a stainless steel drawer underneath the coffee machine, that we could line, so that Joern would have a little drawer for coffee grinds from our KitchenAid countertop espresso machine.   This would be a good solution, because well, Joern is a little bit of a slob when it comes to coffee grounds, and as long as we clean out the drawer once a day, it would be a very clean looking solution, plus solve our symmetrical problem. 
We also discussed the material for the exposed cabinet bodies.  We have quite a few exposed cabinet bodies, especially when we enter the kitchen from the back door or come downstairs.  We also have exposed cabinet bodies in the "breakfast prep center." The two options are high gloss or matte cabinet bodies.  We decided that not only did the high gloss cabinet bodies look better, especially with the lighted shelf in the "breakfast prep center," but also helped to solidify our decision to go with the high gloss cabinet fronts. 
We still haven't made a decision about the drawer configuration, but we will have our final meeting with "Kitchen Guy," next week.  We have until the meeting to decide on the drawer configuration.

Also, this past Tuesday was the last day of tile preparation.  It was a busy day in the house, with all sorts of new and exciting changes!
The plumbers came to install the shower in the children's bath:

They also delivered, but did not install the shower floor for the rinse-off shower in the cellar:

And very excitingly, they installed, although not completely, the bathtub!

Cute tile guy was also super-busy on Tuesday.  He fixed our cellar stairs!

Although it is hard to tell from this picture, fixing the stairs was a huge deal.  These three steps had huge height differences, so that the first step was about 3 inches high, the second was about 8 inches, and the third, was close to 12 inches.  Obviously, the human brain, nor the body, does well with such varied heights in one set of stairs.  Once it all dries, he will tile over the stairs as well. 

You can also see that the Estrich (concretish material,) is darker at the top of the stairs than at the bottom.  This is because "Cute Tile Guy," also applied a primer for the tiles.

Well, this week certainly got off with an exciting start, but I can assure you, it got even more exciting from here on out.  But, that will have to wait for another post!





Some updates

Well, since it has been almost 3 weeks with no post, I'm sure you have all figured out that Joern did not update while I was gone :(
But, at least I'm back now, and realtively over my jet lag and heat-induced pregnancy miserableness. 
There was actually quite a bit of work completed in the house while I was gone.  I guess the best way to go over everything is to break up the descriptions by trades.

Electrical:
The electricians started back last week to work on connecting the electrical panel. 

And thanks to a good organization system:

it went from looking like this last week:



to this today:

They also installed more in our "command center":

Don't ask me to explain much, but one is for the radiant heat and one is for the fireplace.

Builders:
One of the interior guys from Mr. Builder's crew was back last week to build walls.  I know, our walls were built long ago, but we still needed a few things:

A little hard to see, but they built a wall around our wall-mount toilet in the cellar.

More walls in the master bath because we have a wall-mount toilet, and a mini-wall around the toilet would look dumb.

A wall around the built in parts for the bathtub faucet.

A wall between the shower and washer/dryer in the kids' bath.

Plumbers:

Not too much right now with the plumbers.  But, the heat pump has been working to dry the flooring, and the air filtration system has been working for a few weeks too.  The air filtration sounds like a very distant airplane in our rooms.  Interesting. 

One thing the plumbers did was to finish off the mechanical room.  They labeled all of the pipes:







Plaster/ Stucco guys:

Probably the biggest deal was that first layer of stucco was applied to the outside of the house two weeks ago. 

                                Its a little hard to tell, but the house looks lovely now with one continual surface

instead of being broken up by the joints of all the bricks.

Those are the latest updates from the house.  We met with Mr. B the day I got back from the US.  He walked through and measured the moisture of the floors.  It is imperative that the floors are dry by the beginning of September, which is when "Cute Tile Guy," is set to begin tiling.  Mr. B also informed us that the tiles will be delivered this upcoming Friday- wahoo!  We discussed the status of the parquett flooring, which is turning into a major production.  Most excitingly though, he proposed a TIMELINE!!!!!!

So, we're looking at about 2 weeks for the tiles, which will bring us to late September.  Then, the plaster guys will come in to do the second layer of plaster, and paint.  This brings us to early October.  The parquett will be installed in early October.  Then, the plumbers will come in to install the fixtures, and the electricians will come in to install switches and lights.  We should let the kitchen company know that we're looking at mid to late October for the kitchen installation.  And then, he told us the most exciting news- the kitchen is pretty much the final thing before moving in.  This means that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  That light will appear in NOVEMBER!  We really should be in before Christmas and the baby!  Hooray!



Plugging along

Last week and this week belonged to the plumbers.  They are preparing to lay the radiant heating! 
Turns out that despite its strength for construction, the concrete is really inefficient for radiant heating.  In order to combat the inefficiency of the concrete, the plumbers have been busy laying insulation.  I don't think I have ever seen such a highly insulated house before!
The plumbers started last week in the cellar.  Since its the cellar, they began with a moisture barrier.  Once the entire floor was covered with the moisture barrier, the plumbers then covered the entire cellar floor with one inch of styrofoam.  The most amazing thing is how tedious a process covering the floor with insulation can be.  The insulation comes in sheets, about 3 ft. long by 2 ft wide, which need to be cut to fit close to perfectly.  It was like the floor was tiled with styrofoam.  By the end of the day on Thursday, our cellar was beautifully tiled with styrofoam.  And then, the fateful question posed by Joern to the plumbers:  "Can you drill a hole from oustide the house into the cellar?"  Joern has a grand plan to run a wire underground between his parents house and our house, to connect to our central house computer, as Joern will then be able to work at his parents house on our computer.  This goes with our anit-WiFi stance (not because of electro-smog, but because WiFi is annoyingly slow,) plus it would take a really strong signal to communicate between Joern's parents' house and our cellar.  So, before the day ended on Thursday, a beautiful hole was dug into the top of our cellar for Joern's cable. 
On Friday morning, Joern and I headed to the bakery to pick up breakfast, and we left my cousin, Elizabeth at the apartment to sleep.  When we got back, Elizabeth was awake, with news, Joern's dad had called, and said there was a "small problem with the house."  Turns out that no one bothered to cover the beautiful hole, and we had quite a bit of rain on Thursday night.  The plumbers arrived on Friday morning to about 1/2" of muddy water filling most of our cellar!  They need to pump out the cellar and remove all the insulation and moisture barrier, so that everything could dry out! 
This is now what our cellar looks like:

A little sad, because this was much farther along last week :( 

The plumbers decided to ensure proper drying, that they would begin this week insulating the top two floors, and then returning to the cellar last.  Poor guys.  But after two days, there was some major progress.

Our foyer, filled with insulation

We found out that the radiant heating tubing does not lie on top of those styrofoam tiles.  Nope.  Another layer of styrofoam, about another 1/2" thick, covered with a rather thick plastic goes on top of those styrofoam tiles!  So, we have at least 1" of styrofoam insulation between our concrete floors and the radiant heating!  No hot ceilings in our house!  Here is a good view of both layers in the kitchen;



The styrofoam tiles on the bottom also had to be cut with a special burining tool to create channels for the pipes and tubes running along the floor:

And this is what it looks like when installed on the floor:





In some cases though, it would be too much work to cut out the styrofoam.  There is a special material that is used like a "grout" between the tiles to create a tightly insulated cover, which they also used to insulate around the longer pipes:

As of last night, most of the first floor was completed and the second floor is finished:

                                                                 Living Room:



                                                                     Master Bedroom:



I even found a surprise when I walked into the master bath:

We have a bathtub!  It will be installed within the week, as it must be installed before the Estrich (the untranslatable concreteish layer that is poured over the radiant heating,) which is set for next week!

I realize that the progress isn't overwhelming like it was during the building phase, the interior isn't as easy to notice the changes.  But, now I realize that every time something is completed now in the interior, the house begins to look more and more like a home!



Vaccuum and electrical

Since we have another week or so to go before the plaster guys come, this week is all about finishing up any rough work. 
Have I told the story of the 110 V outlet yet?  OMG.  So, when we first met with the electrician, Joern brought up that we needed place in the kitchen to store our step-up/ step-down transformer.  The electrician jumped on that and suggested instead that we put the transformer in the cellar, and run cables up to the kitchen from the transformer and install 110V outlets.  He told us only to buy outlets when we were home, which we were very careful to do.   When Smokey Old Electrician (may I please shorten this to "Ol' Smokey?")  was in the house last week he informed us that we had a problem: the boxes for German outlets are circular, and our US outlets were rectangular.  Talk about putting a squareish peg in a round hole!  This sent us into a little craze about how to fix the problem easiest and quickest.  The plan was to order the boxes from the US and pay the ridiculous amount to ship abroad, because well, we needed them.  At the end of last week, Ol' Smokey came to us with a possible solution.  In the electrical catalog, he found an outlet that was I guess, multi-voltage.  all we needed to do was to change out the plugs on all our 110V appliances.  We weren't too excited about this idea.  Then, on Saturday night, Joern and I were barbecuing at the house, and I decided to look through the electrical catalog.  My reason was to see what the electricians were paying their suppliers for light switches.  As I thumbed through the catalog, I stumbled upon a two-page spread for export appliances.  Yup.  Export.  Their supplier has outlets for British appliances, Chinese, and- American!  Joern will talk to Ol' Smokey tomorrow, and hopefully, we can fix this mini mess.

But, the electricians were at the house today, and they worked on wiring outlets and switches on the first floor.

Electrical in powder room.

Switches for the stairs to the second floor and for the kitchen.

And, the plumbers were back today!  To install the pipes for the central vaccuum!!  They installed most of the pipes for the vaccuum, and only need to connect the pipe from the cellar to Joern's garage, where we will store the vaccuum.

The blue pipe running from the guest room area to the fireplace is for the vac.

I am very excited about this feature, a toe-kick pan for under the kitchen cabinet. 

Connection for the hose upstairs.

A very long pipe running along the media room.

Hopefully, we see the electricians tomorrow. 

This week's work

As I posted on Wednesday, we have been having a few problems with the electricians showing up.  We understand that they are busy and have a lot of projects going at once, but as Joern said, "We feel like he labels customers by prority: A,B,C, and D, but we're E."  Joern and I both feel strongly that we don't want our workers to be under pressure, this leads to mistakes and not caring.  I would much rather have them take their time and do things right.  The electricians worked Monday, Tuesday, and a tiny, tiny little bit on Friday.  I'm sure they're doing a good job, but it is only frustrating when it means that the plaster guys can't come in next week to start plastering the walls.

Despite all this, I am happy to see that there is progress being made.  It is very nice to know that the rough plumbing is all done now, including our last minute addition of our central vaccuum.  And despite the very drawn out procedure, the electrical is getting there.

We didn't visit the house very much during the week, and when we did, I didn't have the camera with me, and I was too tired to really focus enough to realize that I needed to take pictures.  But, I found my energy by Friday, and I was so excited to get back on track.

It would be nice to split up plumbing and electrical, but that wouldn't really be possible without a lot of cropping.  Honestly, I'm not up for that much work right now.

Here is what our house looked like after another week's worth of work:

First floor

Kitchen.  Outlet boxes have been installed.  Straight ahead will be the outlets for the built-in oven and the refrigerator.

                                         Kitchen sink area.  Outlet boxes for both 220 and 110 Volt.

Water pipes for pot filler and possible water connection for fridge.  Electricity for oven and

range hood.

A proud homeowner and his kitchen.

Electrical running to the fireplace.

Water pipes running from the fireplace.  Electrical running the length of the living room and dining room.

Wires running through the walls in the guest bedroom.

Looking into the guest bedroom.  Orange and black tubes are for electrical and computer network cables.

There are ELEVEN switches and outlets here.  This is the control for our exterior shutters.

On the wall to the right of where all the tubes enter the wall, there is a rectangular cut-out, this is for the central vac.

Second Floor

Children's bath, hookup for washer and dryer, and water for shower.

Water pipes and electrical.

                                    Connection for sink and farther back, for the second "1920's" toilet.

                        Probably the job of the elctricians, the floor underneath the waterpipes was chisled out
                        at intersections of water and electrical.

Master shower.  Controls and water connections for massage shower heads.

Water hookup for bathtub.

The master bath plumbing and electrical, completely roughed out.

Attic

Vent for the children's bath.

                                        Vent for powder room and maybe water in kitchen.

Cellar

Looking down the stairs.  Boxes installed for LEDs along stairway.  Water pipes running out to garage.

Another view of water pipes from mechanical room to Joern's garage.

Water pipes in Joern's garage.  One tap in the far corner, behind our already present mess.

                                          Another tap installed in the front corner.  Why do I see Joern's garage becoming
                                          a man-paradise?

OMG, cables, cables, cables, waiting for the circuit box.

                                        The ever growing pile of drilled out hole debris.  

Hopefully, next week will see the completion of the electrical, so that the plaster guys can get started.  Maybe it isn't such a bad thing because we shouldn't have the pipes installed for the radiant heating before our upcoming Richtfest, on June 11th.  We'll see what next week holds in store for us and the house!