Stay Tuned

It turns out that my American friends are all on break from the 9th of April to the 17th.  This means that our Richtfest would have to be without a bunch of my friends :(  And really, I need every friend I can get there, since Joern just spent the afternoon with the phone book highlighting everyone in Neckartailfingen that he wants to invite to the Richtfest.  And when I say "everyone," I mean EVERYONE.  I need representation.  And, it wouldn't be a fun party without my friends.
Joern is going to get ahold of the architect and talk dates.  We'll be the only people ever who Richtfest when the house is almost complete.  Huh.

Signs of life from the house

Sorry for the temporary lapse in posting.  But, we had a good excuse- we were in the States last week.  It was a whirlwind trip, but it was so good to get home.
House-wise, not much happened here.  Right before we left, the builders came to remove the staging, and put up a few boards as a small safety measure.

The back of the house

                                        The east side of the house (from the in-laws' driveway)
The builders also came last week Tuesday and took the crane away.  I don't have any pictures yet, but I have to say, now that the crane is out of our driveway, we've realized that we have a very large driveway!
My father in-law also called on Thursday to tell us that the chimney had been delivered.  They didn't do any work on the chimney last week, but at least it had arrived.

During our time at home, most importantly, we visited with my dad, sister, aunt, cousins, etc.  But we did manage to get a few important items for the house as well.
We asked my dad, who just happens to be a plumber, recommended that we go to Whites Plumbing Supply in West Haven to look for the kitchen faucets that we needed.  He said that he uses them a lot and recommends them to a lot of customers.  Well, he was totally right.  They were awesome!  A mix between a plumbing showroom and a supply house, all the salespeople were down to earth, kind, and they offered fantastic prices on their items! 
We quickly found ourselves looking into, ironically, Grohe faucets.  This is ironic because Grohe is a German company, and the faucets are made in Germany, but some are created specifically for the American market.  My dad said that Grohe has a great reputation in the States and the same can be said here in Germany. 
The decision went much quicker than I had imagined, as we settled on the Grohe Bridgeford faucet almost from the first moment we saw it.

And, even better, they offered a matching prep faucet for the island:

We also were able to purchase a good quality, yet relatively inexpenisve faucet for the vanity in our cellar bathroom:

And just when we thought we were on our way out the door, Joern found the pot fillers.  Honestly, we do not need a pot filler, and I never would have thought Joern would feel any differently.  That was until we stood there in the showroom looking at a bunch of pot fillers.  Joern found one he could absolutely not live without:

I can't wait to hear what our plumber has to say about this surprise, and very un-German, addition!

Surprisingly, we walked out with four faucets for about the same price (including conversion,) that a single faucet would have cost us here in Germany.  And, they are so my style!  Thank you guys at White's, and of course, thank you Dad for helping us out.  Getting our kitchen faucets out of the way was a relief!

Right before we left, I also managed to order my vanity lights from Pottery Barn for our master bath.  I had this crazy thing that we needed Oil Rubbed Bronze (ORB) light fixtures to tie in the ORB accessories I had purchased from Pottery Barn over the summer.  I went with the Sussex lights, which happen to be from the same line as the accessories.  The lights arrived on Thursday morning, and I have to say, I really love them!

image from http://www.potterybarn.com/

Of course, we also got to bring back a ton of things I had purchased since last summer.  Mostly textiles, but a lot of cooking items too, made their way over the Atlantic with us on Saturday evening.

Another big event that happened while we were home was that our architect confirmed the dates for our windows, and the date for the Richtfest!  Yup, that's right.  Our Richtfest is rapidly approaching, and will be held on April 9th!

It was surprising to see the house on Sunday without the crane.  I was also shocked when I realized just how gigantic our windows are now that the staging has been removed.

The next surprise was in store for us this afternoon.  Joern and I are suffering pretty hard from jet-lag, and I had to drag myself home after work.  I was completely shocked, and jarred awake to find Mr. Builder's son and another builder from the company working on- OUR CHIMNEY! 

The chimney is currently in pieces and must be put together using mortar.  But, Mr. Builder's son started by cutting a hole in the front of the house, where we will place a little trap door.  The cool thing is that the chimney sweep will be able to complete his mandatory annual cleaning through this door, thus eliminating the need from having him clean from the inside. This will save us tons of dust and mess!

                                           Mr. Builder's son cutting our a piece of our house.

And here is what the interior of the walls look like:

Oh, and the gratuitious photo of the saw used to cut out the blocks.  Mr. Builder's son did have to ask why an American company would make such a tool when they don't need this in the US?

We left the house around 5:00 and Mr. Builder's son and the other guy were finishing up for the day.

Yup, those are all pieces of chimeny around Mr. Builder's son.

Well, there you have it.  Relatively short and sweet, an update of the past week or so.  Besides the chimney, I don't expect too much to happen over the next few weeks.  But, I do expect to be busy enough preparing for our big partay!

I missed our anniversary!

Gah!  What's wrong with me?  Oh yeah, I was sick on Sunday.  But, this past Sunday was a highly anticipated anniversary for both of us.  Sunday was the 6 month anniversary of our ground breaking date!

                                          27 August, 2010, watching Mr. Wolfram prepare to dig.

27 September, 2010. The first day that the slab was walkable.

27 October, 2010.  Preparing the garages for pouring the ceilings.

27 November, 2010.  Preparing to pour the ceiling of the first floor.

27 December, 2010.  Waiting for the second floor.

27 January, 2011.  The ceiling of the second floor freshly poured.

27 February, 2011.   The "Rohbau," or shell is complete!

In the grand scheme of things, six months is a very short amount of time.  Some days, the house feels like its crawling along, but when you really think about it, a lot has changed in six months.  It seems most fitting that right around the six month mark, we moved into the interior phase of the house. Unfortunately, our one year post won't be as simple an overview as these past six months, because for the interior, I can't take pictures from the same place outside.  But, there will be be changes over the next six months! I am really looking forward to 27 August, 2011!

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!

Today's photos

More progress today!  I guess the simplest way to do the post today is through pictures.
                                               Completed pantry / kitchen wall

                                                
                                 Amazingly, this wall will now soon look like this:

                                             Standing by the back door looking into the pantry

                                            
                                        Looking into the living room from the front terrace. 

Looking at the wall with the TV and fireplace from the "couch."

                                       When I came home at 3:30 this is what was going on with the master:

(That wall is for our walk-in closet.)

And, the wall for the back bedroom was started.

                                          
                                           And, the builders had marked out the walls for the children's bath.

And, Joern was doing this: 

                                                           Joern's masterpiece in progress:

Then, Alex came to check out the walls.  He told us that the balconies and crane will

probably go next week.  And then, he and Joern had a big discussion

about central vacuums.

And by the time we left the house, at 4:30, the builders were still hard at work, and we had definite rooms!
         
                                                                   The front bedroom

The children's bath

                                                                     Master bath

It has been so exciting to watch the walls go up.  Now that we have rooms, we've noticed that some things are just as we had imagined, and other things were way different.  For example, the unnamed room in the first floor actually looks like a cozy guest bedroom.  The living room is a little smaller than I had imagined, but is completely appropriately sized for a living room.  Our foyer and stair case to the second floor are really huge and give you such an open feeling.  The first bedroom upstairs is acceptable for a bedroom (I thought it would be too small.)  But, the master suite is just as I had imagined.

All in all, it looks like things are winding down with the builder, and we'll enter a small hibernation period as we wait for the windows.  Perfect timing, as we'll be heading to the States in a little over a week, and when we return, its time to work on the Richtfest!

Tuesday's progress and why working adds to the stress

It is 9:30 in the morning, and I am sitting in work.  No worries, I have a break for about 5 more minutes, and I just got off the phone with Joern.  There is one aspect of this process I have not yet discussed.  Work and decision making.  As the house is a custom build, there are often decisions to make on the spot.  Like, what size the window grills should be, or where something should be placed.  Today's decison was about the pedestal sink in the powder room.  I called Joern right when my break started, just to say "hi."  Joern responded with two questions:  what size do I want the pedestal sink to be, and how far do I want it from the wall?  And I wish I could say this was my first experience of this sort, but sadly, I've had many similar phone calls.  I told Joern to go with the 65 cm wide pedestal sink, and left the placement decision up to him.

When I got home, I really wanted to measure the 65 cm width of the future pedestal sink, and was once again, shocked to find how much progress was  made today.  I know, I know, we really need to remember that this won't happen every day from now until the house is complete, but these are the days that builders really look forward to.

Here is our powder room, all of a sudden, a room.  The hole in the wall is for the

recessed medicine cabinet.  The pedestal sink will go underneath.

The toilet will be placed near the corner.  It will be so pretty here!

                                 Joern is standing in the living room, and I am standing in the yet to be assigned room,
                                     that is looking more and more like the guest room/ my crafting/ desk room.

The builders also worked hard on the pantry wall today, or the kitchen wall, depending on how you look at it.



We got to spend a few minutes watching the builders do their stuff. 

And, then, we got to check out the pantry:

                                                         I can't believe how crazy much we can store in here!

I also decided to take a few photos of the cellar during the day, you know,with  more light and all:

                                           

                                            And here, you can see our cellar 3/4ish bath.

Here you can see just how light-filled the entry way is during the day.

PS.  The cute guy comes with the house :)

After all the photos, we met with Herr W from the bank.  First, we took another tour of the house, and then we headed back to the In-laws' house to discuss  a few items.  He had to clarifly a few points on our small loan, and then we had to sign a few papers.  Then, we all had to work together to actually prove our capital was in fact, our capital.  In the end, it worked out, and we really do have the amount invested in the house that we said we did.  Amazingly, and once again, Herr W was at the house until past 6:00 tonight. 

Since that's about all for the day, and the fact that I am really tired, its time to go for this evening.  I'll leave you all with this morning's first house photo:  the roof's first snow!

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!