Paint's finished, tile is almost there, and the floors have started!

The plaster guys, who happen to be the painters too, came back Saturday and finished painting.  On Monday, they came to clean up.  All of a sudden, the house was completely transformed.  Since the plaster guys were back in the house, it turned into a total pigsty, and it was really hard to imagine how the house would look without dust and junk everywhere.  The floors reappeared and the windows were revealed again. Its kind of amazing.

Tile Guy also came back on Tuesday night to work on the powder room.  Thank goodness he agreed to at least redo the tiles that poor Joern had to remove.  Even when it wasn't finished on Tuesday, it looked so much better!  From this:

To this:

And then, he came back on Wednesday night to finish up the tile, and to install the cap tile, in the powder room. 

Tile Guy still has some work to do.  Most importantly, the grout must be completed in the powder room, so that the plumbers can come in next week to install the plumbing fixtures.  He also has some work to do in the foyer, as he couldn't finish the tiles until the front door was installed.  But that isn't such a huge deal, it won't have an effect on our moving in anyway. 

The most exciting change in the house was definitely yesterday.  If I wasn't sick, I would have braved the pouring rain and freezing cold to go see for myself.  But the good news is that it will all be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.  The guys from the parquet company started installing the wood floors!  They started with the top floor, and finished the master bedroom, hallway, and the office. 

The good news is that as of today, we won't be covered in dust anymore, like Joern is in the above picture.  I'm ready to say "goodbye" to the dust and so ready to see our house that much closer to becoming ours.

Okay, so I love the floors!  I can't believe how they warm up the house.  And yes, it looks ridiculously American, but since there are 1 1/2 Americans living in our house, that's fine by me :)  As soon as I walked up the stairs, I felt immediately at home.  I can't wait to see what the first floor looks like when the floors are in!

We also got news today from the garage door company:  the garage doors should be in next week!  For the first time since forever, the house will be closed off.  No more worry that someone could walk into the house and walk off with whatever. And even better, no more freezing my butt off in the house! 

I hope beyond all hopes that either the plumbers or the electricians will be available next week to start the finishing touches.  Maybe its because I'm the daughter of a plumber, but I cannot wait to go to the bathroom in our house- and wash my hands there too!  I knew that this was all very exciting, but didn't realize just how exciting it was going to be to get to this stage!

Painting Day with a surprise!

Yesterday at our house was a day of gigantic changes!  By the time I got home from work, almost every room had been at least painted once.  The pantry was even complete! 
Here are some views of our house as of yesterday afternoon:

Living room

A test patch of gray in the powder room.

Pantry- completed

Master bath- I can't wait to uncover the tile!

Children's bath

Master bedroom

Erbse's room!

I'm really pleased with all the colors!  I especially love Erbse's room and the master suite.  The owner of the plaster company fell in love especially with Erbse's room.  He kept saying, "It looks so beautiful, but it isn't very German at all."  But he kept coming back into Erbse's room commenting how beautifully the blue came out.  I have to admit, this room will look especially rich with all of our espresso wood furniture!  And I love that the master suite really looks like someone splashed hot cocoa all over the walls, its so cuddly, just like a big mug of hot cocoa!

I was a little surprised with the paint in the kid's bathroom, but it isn't going to stay this way very long.  This room will be covered halfway up the walls with white beadboard, which will cut down on the shocking blue in the kid's bath.  I was also a little sad when I saw just how light the walls are in the great room, but then I realized it will get darker with the second coat of paint, and the wood floor and all of our dark furniture will pull the light away anyway, so maybe its good that we have only lightly beige walls in the main living spaces.  

We had one more big surprise happen yesterday:

That's our front door!  I think it looks nice, but I don't really think I'm in love with the door handle.  Of course, we realized that no one ever asked us what we wanted for a door handle, but it will stay for now. There is so much glass, that I feel a little naked when I stand in the foyer.

Its amazing when you build a house how time passes.  Some days, and weeks, time seems to go nowhere, it feels like you will never get to move in.  But some days, like yesterday, a ton of changes happen at once, and you start to realize that the structure that began as a giant hole in the ground, is slowly becoming your home.



Prep work

The house has been really busy the past few weeks, with a some waterproofing, prep work, and continued tiling.
Last week started with the arrival of the people who install waterproofing.  They worked to cover our garages  and foyer.

Tar paint covering the foyer, and the guys are rolling out a water-proofing material over the paint.

Covering the tar paint with waterproofing material on top of Joern's garage.

The waterproofing covered with a special covering in preparation for greening.

Finishing up Joern's garage.

The foyer covered in tar paint.

Installation being installed above the foyer

                                            The waterproofing material down on top of the
                                                                   insulation on the foyer.

There was also a lot of work done on the balcony.  First, the plumbers came to install a gutter system on the balcony:

 And then, the waterproofing guys installed insulation and waterproofing on the balcony:

The waterproofing was especially necessary.  We could easily have encountered problems in the dining room and kitchen with water.  We were already starting to have some leakage in the foyer, underneath where my garage meets the foyer, and Joern's garage was leaking a bit, on the wall that his garage shares with the house.  We asked quite a few times, and were assured that this was normal, as the leakage was occuring at the juncture of two strucutures (garage and house,) and that this problem would clear up with the waterproofing.  The waterproofing has since been put to the test with quite a bit of rain, and so far, we're okay!

The plaster guys also worked very hard last week and into this week prepping our ceilings and walls for paint. The plaster guys applied a flat grounding for the paint onthe walls in the first and second floors, and a slightly bumpy ground for the cellar walls.   They also spackled, sanded, spackled, and sanded the ceilings to ensure a smooth surface. Then, beginning on Monday of this past week, the plaster guys started finalizing the ceilings.  First, they applied primer, then glue, in small sections, to the ceiling:

                               
Then, they applied the paper covering, which is a mixture of cellulose and textile fibers, which mixes to make a strong and flame-resistant covering.  We chose this cover for our ceilings because they are concrete, and no matter how much you try, it is hard to sand out every imperfection in the concrete.  Since we have so many windows, and so much light pouring in, we were a little conerned that it would draw attention to any imperfections in the ceiling.  The paper covering came out quite nicely.

On Tuesday, the plaster guys painted the ceilings:

And while the guys were painting, Joern and I sat with the owner of the plaster company, and chose paint colors.  We went with an off-white in the cellar, light gray-beige in the main areas of the first floor and second floors, a steel gray in the powder room, a turquoise-infused blue in the kid's bath, a lovely blue for Erbse's room, and a hot-chocolate-like color for the master suite. 

On Thursday, the plaster guys worked to cover over all joints with an acrylic paint.  But, the coolest surprise was what we found in the house when we arrived on Thursday night.
In the living room, we found:

So then, we ran upstairs to find this in the master bedroom:

And this in the kid's bath:

And the paint that brought happiness tears to my eyes:

Yup, we got our Erbse's little boy blue paint!

We also checked out the house, to take final pre-paint pictures, including the mostly completed tiles.

The primed walls in the master bedroom:

The cutouts in the wall in the master bedroom to access the pipes and wires in the wall:

Here, you can see the texture on the cellar walls:

And here is a view of our little storage room in the cellar:

 Here is a view of the completed tile in the master bath:

 The master shower:

A closeup of the trim in the master shower:

And, one fixed wall in the powder room:

Well, there you have it.  Friday deserves its own post.  But, this is a good recap of the past two weeks. This is such a great phase, not only because we are so close to the end, but also because we get to see our decisions and choices come together!





Kitchen FINALLY ordered!

Today was a huge day.  Such a huge day, in fact, that I need to write about the goings on of today now, and will have to write a two week catch-up post over the weekend.  But I simply have to talk about today!
Today has a tiny backstory though :)  There was quite a bit of progress on the interior this week, we picked out paint colors, and painting was set to start at the end of this week.  If you put the rest of the "race to the finish" into a timeline, it would go like this:  paint, floors, plumbing fixtures, electric, kitchen, FINISH.  The floors will be in by the end of next week, early the following week, and if you give the plumbers and electricians one week to do their installation, we're looking at the first week in November for the kitchen. We last spoke with our kitchen guy about a month ago, and he said that he would call us when he completed the revisions in the design.  In retrospect, a month was ridiculous.  So, imagine Joern's dismay when he called  kitchen guy yesterday, and he said that it should take about 6 - 8 weeks to get our kitchen!  We don't have 6-8 weeks anymore, and we don't want to move in without our kitchen!
Joern set up an appointment with kitchen guy for this afternoon.  It was an exciting day today anyway, because the plaster guys started painting the ceilings today.  So we knew we had a lot to be excited about, but making things more exciting was the knowledge that we would sign for the kitchen order tonight.  Joern was pumped up to give kitchen guy a piece of his mind, because we were so frustrated going through the whole day thinking that we might have to put off moving in until early December just because of the kitchen.  As we were driving out to the kitchen studio after work today, Joern received a text message:  the kitchen should arrive during calendar week 44.  After a slight scramble to check the dates of calendar week 44, our frustration and anger disappeared, because the kitchen should be here in 3 weeks!

We met with the kitchen guy Thursday afternoon, and it was another 4 hour marathon!  There were a lot of decisions to finalize, plus, we had to hammer down the cost.  In the end, we decided for the following things:
- a finished wall along the two walls that border the hallway to our back door, this is instead of leaving exposed cabinet bodies.  The cabinet bodies are matte, and since our whole kitchen is high gloss, this would be jarring to have different finishes.
- a space between the cabinet and the refrigerator.  Not my favorite choice, but we do need to provide plenty of space for air for the refrigerator, and there is no cabinet available that would properly fit above the refrigerator.  I'm not so convinced that it will look good, but I don't think we can change this one.
- a small, rectangular, undermount prep sink.  New Kitchen Guy planned a larger, square flush-mount sink in the bar, but I don't want the sink to take up such a large amount of space on the bar.
- a small hole in the bar with a lid, and a tiny garbage can underneath for Joern, when he cooks, kinda like Rachel Ray's "garbage bowl."  This one is an experiment, if Joern doesn't clean it out after he uses it, I'm sealing the lid with super-glue.
- we agreed on the electrically supported drawer for the garbage cans, it will be underneath the prep sink.  This is so cool, you just tap the cabinet door, it even works with your knee, and the door magically opens!  Since it is a garbage system, the whole cabinet slides open- no worries about messy hands on my white cabinets!
- the kitchen came with a few cabinet organizers.  They are not glamarous, and will probably be replaced over the years, but they will work for now, and saves us from having to scramble to buy utensil organizers for a little while.
- by the power of convincing salespeople working their magic on Joern, we are now going to be the proud owners of a warming drawer.  It might come in handy at big parties, but I'm not entirely convinced this was a necessity.
- a stainless steel drawer underneath the coffee machine for coffee grounds (from the espresso machine on the breakfast prep bar.)  This is another one, if Joern doesn't clean it out after using it, a few dabs of super glue will provide us with a lovely symmetric look, without the mess of moldy coffee grounds.

There is one tiny problem with the kitchen- the refrigerator is 91 cm wide, and not 90.  This left Kitchen Guy scrambling for a solution to gain back one centimeter from the wall with our ovens.   I think he came up with a solution, but by this time, it was 8:00 pm, and after 4 hours in the kitchen studio, my brain shut down.

Joern did quite a bit of price haggling, fortunately, because I would have settled for the price Kitchen Guy showed to us at the beginning.  In the end, Joern was able to get the price down about 5,000 Euro.  Good job, Sweetheart!

In the end, it seems like a pretty good thing.  The kitchen will be beautiful, and gigantic!  And now that we know that the kitchen is coming in 3 weeks, we are so excited!  Let the preparations for the move begin!

Yesterday, today, what will tomorrow hold?

It turns out that the "race to the finish," when building a house is just that.  The house hasn't really been this busy in quite a while, and there is a lot more busy to go.
Yesterday was tiles and continued work on the drywall.  By the end of the day yesterday, we had more tiles, a bench in our shower, and most surprisingly, a new storage room!

One of the plaster guys installing drywall around the air filtration pipes in Erbse's room.

The biggest deal of the day was of course the storage room in the cellar.  I don't know if I mentioned our decision before, that we would put a wall in at the end of the media room, making the media room a little smaller, but allowing us to have a sizeable storage space in the cellar.  This was a big deal to me because the cellar is so big, but so open that we had little space available for pure storage.  Sure, we could use cabinets here and there, but for a good old-fashioned storage room, we had nothing available.  Adding this wall, and creating a room that linked Joern's garage to the cellar also solved another problem: the wastewater pipe running down the middle of the wall in the media room.  We have now a very large storage space, that does not disturb the media room.

Of course, knowing this was coming could not prepare me for the feeling of bounding down the cellar stairs, and getting "lost" when I was headed towards Joern's garage.  Honestly, it took me a minute to realize where I was.  Yes, this was my house, but when a room exists that wasn't there 24 hours beforehand is a little shock to the system.

I love the storage space!

Here's a view from Joern's garage heading into the house.

And this is our slightly smaller, but still super-cool media room!

We also met with Mr Plaster-Guy last night.  He met us at one of his construction sites to show us our options for finishing the ceilings.  There are two options here for our concrete ceilings: 

1) Spackle- the ceiling would be sanded down, spackled, sanded again, spackled again, and then painted

OR

2) Vliestapete- a type of wallpaper made from cellulose and textile fibers.  

Mr Plaster-Guy showed us both types of celings, as one of his current construction sites has the Vliestapete in the top three floors and spackled ceilings in the cellar.  According to Mr. Plaster-Guy, a positive of the Vliestapete is that it will cover any small cracks that may appear in the ceiling.  We also saw that the light reflects differently on the spackled ceiling versus the wallpapered ceiling.  In the end, we decided for the wallpapered ceilings.  

On Thursday, the plaster guys also got to work on our ceilings.  They taped over all the joints in the ceiling:

And Cute Tile Guy was also rather busy.  He properly installed a backsplash (after a fit of passive agression,) in the pantry behind the utility sink:

And he got started installing tile on the shower walls, as well as mosaic on the shower bench:

Well, there you have it.  Tile Guy didn't come on Friday, but the plaster guys continued to work on the ceiling.  But, it isn't really photo worthy.
I will have to update though with some pictures from the front of our house: the electric company came today to dig out a hole for our electrity connection, we should have electricity next week!  We're coming up on a three day weekend, so we have to wait for Tuesday for people to come back to the house.