Surprise!

I called Joern during my lunch break today to ask him for a house status update.  This has become a lunch break ritual since the beginning of this school year, it provides me a little "pick-me-up" during the school day, plus, it helps calm my deep desire to be home watching the house change daily.  At 12:00 today, Joern told me that the builders were working today, installing steel mesh.  We discussed that this stage could last a few days, and we both hoped that the weather stay above freezing until the ceiling could be poured.  I hung up the phone satisfied that the house just may be completed by the end of the week.
Imagine my surprise when my phone rang just as we started "quiet time," with the kids around 1:15, and Joern told me that the concrete for the ceiling was on it's way to the house!
The builders started pouring around 1:30 this afternoon, and were finished by 3:30.

Mr. Builder arrived to take some photos.  You can also see the orange air filtrationon tubes under his feet.

Joern got a little "artistic" with the photography.

                                         

                                                              

                                                             

The last batch of concrete.

And now, the exterior of our house stands, completed. 

Obviously, we had quite a reason to celebrate today!  Mr. B also called Joern to tell him that the carpenter, who will do the roof, will be coming in 2 weeks!

The ceiling!

Today was not necessarily the smoothest of all days.  First of all, this is what we woke up to this morning. 

Yup, that's snow.  Just a little, but enough to make me feel bad for those poor builders, outside in the cold. 
And then, well no big suprise,  my car is in the shop again.  So, Joern had to drive me to work, which meant that he missed the arrival of the ceiling.  He also missed the first half hour of installation.  Fortunately though, Joern was able to see a good portion of the installation of the ceiling.
Here, the builders are lowering the portion above the back bedroom.

To help keep up the morale of the builders, Joern bought some food for break-time, and brought them some tea.  During break-time, Joern ran in and snapped a few pictures.  Here is the house at 9:30 this morning:

After the builders returned from their break, they got to work cutting out the hole for the attic stairs. 

By the afternoon, the entire ceiling was completed.  The house definitely looks more like a house now, and of course, we are thrilled!  We just have to keep our fingers crossed that the weather holds out until they can get the concrete poured.  Then, it looks like time to wait for the spring thaw. 

Tomorrow morning at 8 am

Tomorrow morning at 8 am, our second floor will no longer look like this:



Because, the pre-fab portion of the ceiling is being delivered tomorrow morning!  Of course, we're both a little sad at how much darker our upstairs will be with the ceiling on top, but we are so much closer to completion than we were three weeks ago!

I really need to get back into the daily blogging routine, since December was pretty much a bust in terms of house building.  I should have posted yesterday though, because this week, just like last, the builders again made great progress!

Yesterday, the builders continued working on the load bearing walls.  They completed the wall that makes up the border between the stair well and bedroom #2.

Silly poses come pretty natural when your house progresses along so nicely!

The builders also continued working on the wall for the master shower, which is now above my head.  

They also completed the entire wall for the master suite!













Standing to the doorway to our bedroom!

We also noticed how different our view to our neighbor's house is now

 Compared to the same view from September:

 

We also had

We also had a surprise visit from our architect / project manager yesterday.  Normally, he visits the house on Wednesday, but he was in the neighborhood yesterday afternoon, so he decided to stop by.  It worked out well because it was right as Joern and I were coming home from work.  It has been a long time since we both were able to meet with our architect, so it was nice to do a walk-through with him.  Of course, it all started off rather strange, when Mr. B entered the house and seemed a little surprised that we had not yet cleaned the floors.  Really?  Germans sweep out their houses during construction.  Wow, I never expected that one!  Obviously, we are a little upset and embarassed that no one told us earlier that we were in charge of sweeping out the cellar.  Okay, we are quite embarassed.  I am starting to think that there should be a book about building that all people building a home receive when they sign with a builder.  It would cover things like home builder etiquette, Richtfest "rules," etc. 
But once we got past that, the walk-through went quite well.  Mr. B was satisfied with our new stairs.  We clarified the repositioning of the wall in the mechanical room.  Upstairs, Joern said that he would like to push back the living room wall 40 cm. into the guest room.  Then, Joern and Mr. B both laughed at me about wanting a guest room, to be a guest room, complete with a bed.  I think it is a cultural thing, but sheesh, what is so bad about a guest room?  Afterwards, we went up to the second floor.  Everything looks great, except as of yesterday, the builders had no clue where the cut-out was going for the attic door and stairs.  It was good that Mr. B was there, he was able to clarify it with the builders.  Since the pre-fab concrete ceiling has already been ordered and made, it is too late to have it cut before installation.  But, if it is in fact, not in the ceiling, the builders can cut it out before adding the steel mesh and pouring the rest of the concrete.  We also discussed with Mr. B our experience with the bath showroom.  He also gave us some money saving tips and hints. 
Despite the few "jabs," it was overall a very worthwile visit.  We were able to clear up quite a few items, and were happy to hear that he was pleased too.

The builders worked hard today, completing all the interior walls that need to be completed before the ceiling is installed.  They also put up tons of metal supports in anticipation of tomorrow's big event.  Sadly, I am having trouble uploading any more pictures.  So, maybe tomorrow I will post pictures of the before and after shots of the second floor!

Well, that's all for now.  The word for the day is anticipation.

THEY'RE DONE!

Well, there you have it!  The exterior walls are complete!  The builders started reinforcing the window openings in preparation for the ceiling, which is obviously on its way next week.  I stopped by the house this afternoon at 4:30, and since the builders had already gone home for the day, so I decided to check out the house in the daylight.
I probably spent an easy hour in the house.  Which is crazy, as I was all by myself.  But, first I checked out all the walls of the house.

The front window of bedroom #1, supported and waiting for the ceiling.

Standing on the balcony!

After checking everything out, I walked down and looked at the first floor.  As I  toured the first floor, I realized that the builders installed special brackets for attaching the interior walls.  That was a big "ah-ha" moment for me, because I realized that you can really get an idea of the rooms now.  Woah!

Please join me on my little "home tour of the second floor." 

If you look really hard, you can almost make out a little line, it is about 2 block witdths from the left.  That's where the master shower ends, and bedroom #2 begins.

You can see the brackets better in this picture, they are on the left, very close to the edge of the picture.  See, they form a line.  That's the wall between the walk-in closet and the master-bath.  The window is in the master bath.

The brackets are visible on both sides of the window here.  These are the walls of the walk-in closet.

The brackets for the walls of the master bedroom are visible at the right and left of this picture.

And here is the completed house:

And here is the current view of the next door neighbor's house, with the exteior plaster (Außenputz.)

It has been an incredibly exciting week.  If the weather holds out, it is almost certain that next week will be just as exciting!

Light on words, heavy on pictures

There's really not much to say today.  The builders were here, the exterior walls of, wait, THE ENTIRE HOUSE, are almost complete. Maybe we'll be wrapping up the exterior construction soon.  But, for the happiness of my Hong Kong readers, I have quite a few pictures!

 Rear (north facing,) wall

                                             Corner of second bedroom (maybe guest room)

                                             The unfinished wall, there isn't much left to be completed.

                                                Somehow, I get the feeling that the crane won't be there much longer.

Insulated box for the shutters

The insulated mechanism for the manual shutters.

Reduced the posts in the first floor

The kitchen windows

View from our back yard

View from my In-laws' balcony.

CELEBRATORY 200th POST

I wonder if the builders read my blog, are counting the number of posts, and decided that today would be a  big day.  Or maybe, just maybe, the building gods are reading my blog.  Whatever, today is Post Nr. 200.  In celebration of this very large number of posts, something really big happened today on the house.  But just to keep you all in suspense, I will tell you the story exactly as I experienced it.

I came home from work today at 4:00.  The whole way home I considered my plan: would I drive home and then come back to the house at 5:00, or would I stop at my in-laws' house first, waste some time there, and then check out the house at 5:00, after the workers left.  As I rounded the bend in the street, I quickly learned that the town made my decision for me.  The street in front of my in-laws' driveway is now completely closed off.  This is the result of the project to replace the pipes under the street that started in late summer.  We learned about this project at the same town council meeting that also included the vote for approval of our house.  We have been dealing with the road being semi-mostly-closed for the past few months, but it was always open to people who live on the street.  Why on earth did the street have to be closed today, when I am "manning the fort," while everyone else is in Hong Kong?  I had the option to drive onto our private road and park in our driveway.  But, there were tons of workers everywhere, and tons of cars on our private road.  So a very annoyed Allison drove home, and called Joern, and grumbled about the town and the road closure.

I finally overcame my inner "pig-dog," which is a German slang term for that internal creature responsible for laziness, and headed back over to the house at 5:30.  Of course it was dark, so I carefully pulled into our driveway.  I guess I should have thought more when I realized that all of the steel mesh that has been residing in our driveway for the past month, was gone.  But, I didn't really think about it. 
Using my iPhone for a light, I carefully made my way into the house.  The first really big thing I did notice was that the plank that was used as a way to get from the foyer up the nearly 2 ft. rise into the house was gone.  All of a sudden, there were makeshift stairs!

I never knew that it would be so incredibly exciting to move from a piece of wood to a much more stable situation!  But the surpises were long from over.  As I entered the house, I noticed it was even darker than usual.  Strange.  Then, I looked straight ahead of me, towards the stairwell. 

The saddest was that I was there all alone, and I couldn't really have a conversation.  But, there was a lot running through my mind, like, "gosh, wasn't there just a wooden ladder there yesterday?" and "huh, I wonder what is on the other side."  So, I ran as fast as safely possible (there are still quite a bit of "things" laying around all over), and found this, most beautiful sight before me:

Which is a HUGE difference from yesterday, and the past two months:

Despite the desire to sprint up the stairs, I called Joern.  I walked up the stairs with him for the first time, Joern was on my ear, but he was there.  I can't believe what an incredible feeling it was to walk up our stairs.  My friend Stefanie commented a few months ago about the picture of me walking up to the first floor from the cellar for the first time ever, with a very simple, but poignant statement, "Imagine how many times you'll be walking up and down those stairs."  I wish Joern and I could have taken the first trip up our steps together tonight, but we were as together as we were going to get.  I think I said something like, "Oh my gosh, you have no idea how wonderful this is," and maybe "this is amazing!"  Then, we walked "together," around the kitchen wall and headed up towards the second floor. 

The second floor was not as easy of a climb as the first floor.  I actually had not been on the second floor unti this past Monday.  You may ask "why?" until you imagie that this ladder perched another floor higher, with a few boards underneath it and some metal "toothpicks," below to support the whole thing.  Well, now, I can run and up and down the stairs to the second floor with agility, speed, and most excitingly, security. 

The stairs are much wider than I expected, which is wonderful.  It is so funny because last night, I was just worried about the width of the stairs, as they are completely walled in.  I was thinking of how we might feel "trapped," on the stairs.  Hah!  They are wide and beautiful!

On the second floor, I found that the builders continued working on the exterior walls today.  The wall of the master suite, is now completed, and the insulated box for the shutters has been installed.

Window in walk-in closet



I also had the realization that our upper level is almost all window.  Here are some other views of the second floor of the house.

Master bedroom

















East wall, shared between bedroom #1 and bedroom #2

Moving down to the first floor

The "Air Filtration Monster"

Steel mesh for the ceiling waiting in our back yard.

The stairs down to the cellar.



A comparisson so you can see the thickness of the floors.        



A few views of the house

From the driveway

 
From the In-Laws' balcony.