Outside, Inside, its all looking different

Its been a busy past few days in our house.  We've had the stucco guys, painters, "Cute Tile Guy," and Joern hard at work.  Today is Friday.  The stucco guys finished the stucco on the first and second floors on Wednesday.  Today, the painters came to paint the exterior of the house.  From far away, you can't even really see the stucco, because we chose the finest stucco available with the highest quality.
Here's what the house looks like today:

Its tough to see the bumpy texture from far away, which is good.  I am NOT a stucco fan, and would have prefered anything to stucco.  But, Joern said it best today when he said, "we really took what we could work with, did the best we could, and have created as close to an American looking house as possible."  He's right. 
Here's how the house looks close up, you can see the texture of the stucco:

Okay, this is an extreme close-up.



                                   This picture was taken about a foot away from the house.

                                   You really have to be up close to see the texture- Hooray!

Its also  really hard to tell from the picture, but the exterior of the house, minus the garages / entryway, is finished!  The staging is set to go next week!  Wahoo!  I can't wait to see the windows again from the outside.  The stucco guys and painters will need to come back to do the cellar entry-way, but I am very happy with what we have already.  The goal was to complete all the areas where the staging was needed as soon as possible, because we have been paying weekly rent for the past month. 

 

Cute tile guy is done tiling the majority of the cellar.  He has not done the triangular shaped part of the foyer before the two steps, but the entire rest of the hallway and the media room are now complete.  Cute Tile Guy explained to Joern that the difficulty was in lining up the grout lines in the two rooms evenly, because we have two doorways, so the grout lines need to be even between the two rooms the entire length of the house.  The tiles are kind of difficult to photograph, because they are shiny, and such a light beige, but here are a few views:

Here is a view at the bottom of the stairs.

Media room

The upper-part of the foyer, and the hallway.

What I love about the tiles is that the don't stick out.  It is such a huge space, that if the tiles were too much visually, you would get a headache.  They are really neutral, so we can use many different rugs in order to pull the space together, if I feel like we need rugs.  I also love that they reflect the light.  If we had gone with a matte finish tile, the light that we have to play with, would just get eaten up by the matte finish.  These tiles reflect the light so well, they add to the brightness of the space.  It is really hard to tell when you walk in to the entryway, that you are, in fact, in a cellar, which is just what we wanted. 

I'm really excited to see what next week has in store for us, tile-wise.  I think that Cute Tile Guy will start with the foyer, and the stairs, maybe?  I know his plan was to be done tiling by the end of next week, but I don't really wsee that happening.  Its okay, we planned for this, which is why we told the plaster guys that they should expect that the house is ready by the last week of September. 

Joern also worked on a surprise this week!  I'm not quite certain how long he planned this, but I have so say, so far, it is really cool!  Joern has planned to install LED spotlights in the overhang underneath the roof. 

Here is a rough idea of what his project will look like:

But the cute guy won't always stay up there, just the light :)

And here is what it looks like at night, (please excuse the crazy angle of the picture)

Joern plans on installing 4 on each side of the house, which works well, since the house is a square.  He spent about 3 hours in a shop here that I refer to as the "Geek Shop."  After 3 hours, he called me to tell me his plans for the lights.  It was important to me that the each side could function independently, because, I can see how the back or side could annoy our neighbors, but I think that the front illuminated would look fantastic, and feel we will want to illuminate the front most often.  So, Joern very proudly told me that the lights will run independently on each side, and that they are remote controlled.  Oh, and this is the coolest- our IPHONES will serve as the remote control!!!!!  I'm sure there will be some other way to control the lights when IPhones are no longer in, but it is so cool!  This way, we can turn on our lights when we aren't home.  Joern currently has plans to run the lights off of a photo-sensitive cell, that turns the lights on at dusk and turns them off automatically when the sun rises.  But, we have the option to turn the lights off with our phones.  I only have a little apprehension to something that automatically turns on for the entire night as soon as it gets dark only because I will forget to turn off the lights, and I don't necessarily want to illuminate the whole house all night, but I guess we'll figure out something!

Joern has a lot do finish this weekend, because the staging is going to be picked up on Monday morning at 7:00 am, so the lights need to be installed by Sunday evening.  It is exciting though, I'm sure this weekend will merit another post! 
See you soon!

Monday, Monday

Well, thanks to our brief interlude to spring, our roof is now complete, and the plumbers came to install the air filtration stuff last week.  But, winter has, sadly, returned, and we were certain that the freezing temperatures would mean that no one would be working on the house today. 
Joern decided to drive me to work today, because my car just went through "open heart surgery," and he wanted to make sure it was okay.  As we rounded the bend on our street and looked up at our house, we were so surprised to find a truck from Mr. Builder at the house!
It turns out that Nice-Builder Guy and Interior-Builder Guy were at the house all day working on our interior walls!  Sadly, we didn't get back to the house until 6:30 tonight, so it was already dark by the time we got to check out the day's progress.  Fortunately though, since the house is still a shell, my car lights were able to illuminate a large part of the cellar and first floor from the driveway. 
The builders pretty much completed all of the cellar walls now.  It is crazy, and beautiful downstairs.  I cannot wait to see our finished entryway!
But for now, this is how it looks:

The entryway from the front door.  According to the electrician, this is "very American."

                       Entryway and media room as viewed from my garage.  It is quite spacey down here.

Some of today's work.  The half-wall on the left will be home to the electrical panel.

The builders completed the doorway into the hallway.

This is the wall that forms the shower/rinse area in the bathroom in the basement. 

The toilet and vanity will be on the other side of this wall, and the cut-out

is for the recessed mirrored cabinet.

And to our total surprise, the builders also worked on first floor walls too!

Looking into our pantry through the pantry door.

                                   Looking at the wall between the kitchen and pantry from the kitchen.
                                That hole in the wall will be the location of the controls for the floor heating.


The builders also worked on the wall between the living room and the unassigned room.  

Okay, I have to admit that the living room looks markedly smaller now that the wall is in place, but, I'm pretty sure it will still be a nice living room. 

Its supposed to be pretty cold outside tomorrow, so I am kind of hoping no one comes tomorrow.  But, if anyone comes to work, then hopefully, Joern will provide plenty of tea like he did today!



                                            

The Big Cover-up

At 7:30 this morning, as we prepared to leave the house, we received a phone call:  Joern's dad called to say that the roofers were there and that Joern needed to be there ASAP.  The plan was that Joern would help the roofers today to install the vapor barrier.  I am not sure if it is an air barrier or a vapor barrier.  But, a vapor barrier is a foil installed to prevent moisture from entering the house through the air.  Today was exciting though as it was the first day that Joern actually worked on the house.
We had just enough time to snap a picture of Joern all dressed up in his work clothes, Marty McFly "life vest" included!

Frustratingly, I took Joern's cell phone to work today, because I couldn't find mine.  This caused two unfortunate problems: 1) Joern couldn't take any photos while he worked, and 2) I couldn't call Joern during the day to ask him about the goings-on.  So, I was in for a huge surprise when I came home today.  But, I'll save that for the photos. 

Here is what Joern had to say:
"When I got to the house first we [the roofers and Joern] rolled the air barriers from a huge roll.  Because the roll wasn't wide enough,  we had to use three lines of the barrier.  You also have to leave about 1 1/2 ft. of foil overhang.  We then had to use a special tape to tape the pieces together.  The tape is necessary to keep the barrier airtight.  I also had to tape around the exhaust pipes for the bathrooms so that the roof was totally air tight.  The builders then started to build the roof.  They started with the main frame, with large beams, that they installed around the perimeter of the house.  The roofers installed these beams directly in the concrete.  The roofers then  installed the other beams of the main frame, while I began to install the insualtion.  We are using rigid polyurethane foam tiles for insulation. I had to cut some tiles using a huge knife and a saw to make them all fit properly. We sprayed a special foam insulation between the seams of the tiles to create a tight fit.   Then, I drove to the butcher to pick up food for the roofers, while they continued to work.  After their break, the roofers continued attaching the beams and I continued with the insulation.   This work continued through lunch time.  After their lunch break, they attached a metal band in the form of an "X" over each side of the roof.  These bands provide tension to keep the beams together.  Once this was complete, the roofers then wrapped the fame with a special material that is felt on the inside with a special waterproof coating on the outside.  Now that the roof is wrapped, the roof is watertight.  The roofers then began installing wooden slats that run lengthwise down the roof, these will form the grid that will hold the roofing tiles.  The roofers came from the Swabian Alb, so our roof is really Swabian.  There were three roofers, two employees and the owner of the company.  The owner was very German, everything had to be in the perfect place and if anyone even put a tool back in the wrong spot, they got in trouble. But they were all nice and enjoyable to work with.  I had a lot of fun and I am excited to work with the roofers again on Monday." 

The roofers obviously completed way more than I ever expected them to in one day!  They will come back on Monday to finish the frame, and on Wednesday, they will install the tiles!  I am so excited that Joern also helped with the house.  Somehow it makes the whole house a little more personal because now we can say that Joern helped to build it :)  Thank you dear Joern for putting in a hard day's work  for our future home!

The roofers left around 5:00 tonight, so Joern and I decided to take our daily tour of the house.  One of our favorite builders, was at the house this morning, starting on the interior walls.  He completed the perimeter of all of our interior walls.

                                             The pantry is much larger than we had imagined.

                                                                      Powder room

                                                          The unassigned room off the living room

                                                The one wall between the kitchen and dining room

                            In our cellar.  We have some logistical issues with the location of our circuit panel,
                                                        we'll see how it gets fixed. 

Our technical room/ bathroom.



Then, we walked up our private street to look at the building disaster that has become the mulit-family project near our house.  On our way back, I noticed our house, which is looking rather nice:

When we returned to the house, we went upstairs to check our our new attic.  Before we got to the attic, I decided to look out the bedroom windows to see what the overhang looked like from underneath.

I love that you can see the wood!

A close-up of the overhang.  You can see the beams, water barrrier, and the metal that is part of the gutter system.  The plumbers came today to install that metal strip. 

And then, we finally made it up to the attic.  I can see that in the right weather, my attic is going to be one of my favorite places in the house!

A new phase- the interior (Innenausbau)

Carrying over the surprise factor from yesterday, today was really no different.  It was another day full of house surprises, and it was yet another huge day, as we began another phase in our house building story.  Today, the builders started the interior.
Before today, there are a few "house building facts" that I learned:
1. After the ceiling is poured, the house needs to sit for a few days, and nothing happens.
2. The interior walls are installed after the roof is installed.

I learned the first "fact," through our own personal experience, and the thought never occured to me that the house was sitting because the ceiling of one floor became the floor of the next.    The second "fact," came through watching the duplex next door to us being built.  The interior walls of the duplex were installed a few weeks after the roof was completed. 
Obviously today, my "facts" were proven completely wrong.  The builders were back today, and they started on the interior walls!

Joern emailed me today at work, and told me that they were working on the cellar stairs today.  Don't ask me why, but I thought that meant the stairs from the cellar up to the first floor.  I had no idea what I was in for when I came home:

These are the stairs from our foyer into the cellar.  Just three weeks ago, there was a wooden plank!

The builders also chalked out the interior walls in the cellar and first floors:

The walls of the mechanical room.  The future home of our heat pump, water tank, and air filtration. 
This is also the home of our rinse shower for our muddy shoes, muddy dogs, and muddy kids.

The block closest to the front of the picture is a wall in which Joern is planning a built-in cabinet!

Our PANTRY!

                                        Joern in our kitchen.  There is a little line perpendicular to the chalk line,
                                                          which marks the one wall in our kitchen. 

                                          The wall for the living room/ bedroom is marked out.

                                                                      Powder room

Joern clarified the cellar wall with a plumber today, to ensure that it the technical room was indeed large enough for the behemoth that will be residing in our technical room.  We also clarified my error in understanding.  The roof will not be started in two weeks.  Nope, the plan is that the roof will be COMPLETED in two weeks!  I really hope that the weather will be a little warmer than expected, but as long as the weather holds out, we're set to start our roof next week.
Oh yeah, next week is only in two more work days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This weekend's plan is to work on the Richtfest, which we have decided should take place after the windows have been installed.  According to Mr. B, the windows take 6-8 weeks once they are odered.  I am not exactly certain when or if the windows have been ordered, but hopefully, we're looking at our Richtfest in 8 weeks or so!  Thank goodness, because there is a lot of planning to do in preparation for such a gigantic event!