Updates

I wish I had a good reason to explain the lack of updates lately.  We've had a lot and not a lot happen housewise, which may have something to do with the lack of posting.  Or, I will pull the "mommy card," something I am looking to pulling for a while, by saying that most of my free time lately has been spent researching car seats, strollers, and hanging out on The Bump.  Whatever, I haven't been on top of posting AT ALL!
The electricians were back to make sure that all the lights work.  In order to do this, they had to install light bulbs.  Basically, I can now say, "and then there was light."  So now, whenever we want, we can go from this:

                                                      To this:

Now, if we were only doing this on our own electricity, it would be even more exciting.  Sadly, we've been waiting at least 5 weeks now for our electricity.  But, to be fair, the electric company said that it would take 6-8 weeks for our connection, so we're still in time. 

We've made quite a bit of progress with our exterior stucco.  The guys put on a layer of material and then installed a mesh over the entire house.

The mesh will help prevent any cracks from forming in the stucco. 

Once the mesh was worked into the second layer of stucco, another layer was then placed over the mesh.

Oh, and to make matters even better, it was so very hot here two weeks ago!  The stucco guys normally walk around the site fully clothed, but it was horribly hot.  Poor guys!

In the following picture, you can see how much cleaner the finished side looks, compared to the front that is only covered in one layer of stucco.

The stucco guys also installed insulation around the front door area too.  It is important to insulate around the front door as this wall is poured concrete, which is a very poor insulator.  No poured concrete in our home has contact with outside air or with the ground. 



The wall between Joern's garage and the house was also covered in insulation, and has now been covered over in plaster.  Joern is very proud

We also met with the owner of the stucco/ plaster company a few weeks ago.  He invited us over to his house to see the interior wall treatment that he has at his house.  We were very surprised that he invited us to enjoy coffee and chat with both he and his wife.  It was a lovely evening, and our stucco guy is really such a nice guy!  Joern and I also agreed that we really liked the plaster treatment on his walls.  There was a little texture, but very little, and if you didn't touch the walls, you would say that they look rather American. 

We were expecting the stucco guys to come last week to work on the house, but I guess they were busy.  It isn't the end of the world that they weren't there to work on the outside, because outside work has little to do with us moving in. 

We also met with a salesperson about garage doors.  One of our "surprise grillers," at our Richtfest installs garage doors for a living, so Joern asked him to install ours.  He got us in touch with a salesman from the company he works for, who came out to the house last week.  Honestly, I'm not such a fan of the door that we went with, but when I looked at the alternatives, well, it wasn't so bad.

I guess I made a big enough stink about the doors because Joern was willing to drive two hours, in one direction, this past Saturday to check out their garage door showroom.

Here are our doors (without the square windows up the side):

I know, I know, its plain, and I usually love plain.  One of my agruments against the door is that its super trendy.  Everyone is currently installing this door in this color in their houses.  I'm so afraid that in 10 years, everyone will say, "hey, that door is soooo 2010."  Second, I am just afraid that it is a giant wall of black.  Its just a little too sleek, with no visual interest. 

My agruments aside, there aren't many other garage door choices. 
Here is a sample of another style of door we could have chosen, along with a number of window choices:



You can see in the above picture, the bottom row represents what the majority of the door would look like, with a bunch of window options that would go along the top row of the door.  Although I would have prefered this, but with wider pannels, in the end, I broke down. Some fights just aren't worth fighting, and I really have gotten my way in the majority of house decisions.  Joern can have this one, and this way, I won't freak out the first time Joern drives something into the door. 

We also finally signed the wood floor contract!  Yesterday, it was back to the showroom again just to go over some of the details of the contract.  Of course, we have a special case, as we did the contract through our friend, who happens to own the company, instead of ordering from the showroom, but the installation is running through the showroom, which is responsible for the district in which our house is located.  But, I am really glad we went there yesterday!  The representative we've been working with asked for a final okay on the floor we chose, but when he showed us the floor, it wasn't our choice!  We changed a few weeks ago from oiled to varnished, and obviously the guy who marked our change wrote down the wrong style of floor too (our regular guy was on vacation at the time.)  So, when we were at the showroom yesterday, he asked, are you sure you want this one?  Sure enough, the other guy noted that we wanted a parquet that is made of thin strips pressed together, to give a very lively, modern look to the floor.  Those readers who know me know where I was hit, at modern.  Nope, no modern in our house!  We quickly clarified that we wanted the much more traditional look.  We also discussed oiled versus laquered.  Yes, we were warned that the oiled floor would required re-oiling twice a year, but in the end, we went the floor we liked more, which was the oiled. 

The following picture highlights everything I was just describing: 

The floor we chose is the bottom.  It is much redder and more classic than the top ones.

The one on the top right is the laquered version, it is browner, and not as warm. 
The example on the top left is the "strippy" floor.  Cool, but not my thing. 

We agreed though that applying the oil by hand twice a year was not our thing, so we will be hiring someone from the floor company to come out to the house twice a year to oil the floors.  Some may see this as a waste of money, but we will have to look to save somewhere else, and just accept this is an unavoidable cost.  No matter what the oiled floor looks so much better!

Last, we finally got the tiles for the cellar.  Although I posted before that we had chosen a tile for the cellar, we never purchased them.  In the end, we cheaped out and went to a Home Depotish store, and but the tiles.  They're beige and shiny, and I'm pretty sure they'll still look awesome. 

Today marked the next phase in the building process, but I will leave that post until tomorrow, because the beginning of a new building phase means looking forward, no more updates or reviews.  Without giving too much away, all of a sudden, we are starting to feel that we WILL move into the house, and not in the next five years.  I feel like moving in will become a reality in the near future!  Wahoo!



Happy Anniversary, Dear House

One year.  One crazy year.  August 27, 2010 began looking like this:

And now, this is standing on the same spot:

I admit, I had hoped that after 365 days of building, we would be in the house, but good things cannot be hurried.  The good news is that we've reached the "Endspurt," or "race to the finish."  September will bring with it the beginning of the finishing work, exterior paint, tiling, plumbing fixtures. 

No matter, it was a very exciting day to realize that we have come really far in a year.  Obviously, things will be much different on August 2012!  So, HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY dear, dear house!  We love you so and are so looking forward to moving in, and spending many happy years with you!

A new room design!

I just ordered new furniture.  And, I completed a design board, for my favorite room in the house!

About one hour ago, I completed my nursery furniture order!  The furniture is counterclockwise from top left:  from Pottery Barn Kids:  Larkin 4-in-one crib, Charleston Rocker and Ottoman, Larkin Hi-Lo Changing Table, and the Tailored Stripe Rug (center;)  from Babies R'Us: Ahoy Mate Bedding.  I fell in love with the bedding because it is nautical, with an adorable twist:  MONKEYS!

The furniture should be in by early October latest, and shipped to Germany in the middle of October!  I can't wait to set up our little man's nursery!

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!



Trying to get Joern to post

I hope that Joern will be updating in the next few weeks, cause I'm in Connecticut!  I'll most certainly be buying some more home items, which will definitely deserve their own post.  But, for right now, Tchuess for the next two weeks!

Decision weekend

This weekend hasn't been an easy one.  It started with the fact that I was supposed to have made a front door decision by Friday.  Friday was such a busy day though, and we had been through enough decisions, that I made a different decision on Friday:  I needed the weekend. 
Joern gave me the front door.  Do you know how difficult it is to chose a front door?  It is so important, and really speaks about the entire house.  Horrible.  Two factors in my decision were that it must have as much glass as possible, as the front door is one of the biggest sources of natural light in the cellar, and I want black.  Here are the three candidates:

Of course, you have to imagine all in black, and all with sidelights on both sides.  Argh!  The top two are wood, and cost 1,200 Euro more than the bottom door, which is made from aluminium.  The wood door would need to be painted every so often, but that is something we can live with.  I like that the first two look more "front doorish."  I even posted the doors on Facebook, and of course, I got really mixed feedback. Here are the results:

Door #1 - 5 votes

Door #2 - 4 votes

Door #3- 4 votes

And some comments:  "door #2 goes with the symmetry of the house,"  "door #3 is most striking (but I don't like it)"  (thanks Dad,) and "you should should get it in a fun color!" 

Add to that the other decision as to what type of glass we should put in the door:  clear, frosted, or textured.  My brain is still in a knot.   As of Sunday night, I am leaning towards Door #3, black, with clear glass.  This is subject to change of course.  I have until tomorrow morning. 

Major decision #2:  entryway/ cellar tiles.  Oh my.  This is a really difficult decsion because our entryway is so large.  We went to the granite guy who is the business neighbor of Joern and his parents.  He was kind enough to give us samples, that we could keep over the weekend. 

So, here is what our entryway looked like this weekend:

Not an easy decision!  We like the gray and the two that are not in the row.  Our fear with the gray though is that it is too trendy, and too dark.  The in the forefield are a natural stone, which also won't show the dirt, not slippery, and won't show breaks if we (or Joern) drop anything on them.   But, the gray definately has a much more eye-catching style.  Not an easy decision!  We need to decide soon though, because they need to be ordered, and in before "Cute Tile Guy" starts work in early September.  "Cute Tile Guy" even came to the house tonight, to give us his opinion.  He likes the gray the best, for color, but he said that the two are easiest to work with, and easiest to care for, but not his style.  Thanks "Cute Tile Guy," we were hoping for more. 

The samples need to go back tomorrow, and we have to return to the tile showroom for the children's bathroom floor, and to tell them what tiles to use in the shower in the cellar. 

But the exciting news is that at 7:45 tomorrow, we have an appointment with the electrician, plumbers, and representative from Stiebel Eltron, for our air-heat pump's test run!



Our busy, busy day

I knew that we had planned on tiles today, but I had no idea that we would spend an entire day, from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm running around for the house.  It feels so good to be home, relaxing, and I'd love to say, not thinking about the house, but I always think about the house, but at least I'm not running around anymore.

Our day did, indeed, begin at 8:00 am, with a trip to the tile place.  Three hours, a fight with the saleswoman, and a lot "blah, blah, blah," later, we walked away with almost all of our tile decisions finalized.  We're getting down to the wire here, orders need to be placed, otherwise, the only people we can blame for another month of empty house will be ourselves.

We originally went to the tile showroom Mr.B works with in October.  The man we worked with was a wonderful guy, who was supportive and energetic.  Sadly, he is on vacation now, and Ms. Gray took over the account.  Let's just say that her name describes her, kind of a miserable human being.  As soon as we started talking to her, I wanted to finalize our selections as quickly as possible and be done.  Unfortunately, when it comes to picking out tile for your house, the process is never quick.  We started with the master bath.  Ms. Gray had printed out the list of all of our choices, so we worked our way over to our first choice, master bath floor tile.  I was so proud of my preparedness:  I had my inspiration notebook, the computer loaded with my three bathroom mood boards, tile samples from home, and a few books with yet more inspiration photos.  Ms. Gray was not interested in all my hard work, just interested in the tile.  Fine lady.
Turns out that we still really liked the tile we chose for the floor, and the tub deck nine months ago:

We also realized that we still really liked the travertine mosiac we chose for shower floor and bench:

Ms. Gray suggested that we use the mosiac for the tub skirt as well, but "Cute Tile Guy" suggested instead that he would cut "strips," of the floor tile in order to wrap around the roundish tub skirt.  I'm now confused.

I also am uncertain about tiling around the toilet and behind the vanity, we need to do some measuring before making our final decision.  It was in this discussion that Ms. Gray ended up really offending me, and caused Joern to threaten to leave.  Joern said that we were undecided about tiling behind the toilet, because we want a minimal amount of tile in the bathroom, and then he added, "in America, there isn't a lot of tile in bathrooms."  To which Ms. Gray responded, "ugh, I know, it looks horrible, and those wobbly American houses can't hold tiles anyway!"  Seriously?!  Can you say that when you are a salesperson, and you have an American customer.   This is a usual comment here, but one I am particularly sensitive to, considering that my dad and godfather build houses.  Joern lost it, and said that he is so sick of people making these unfounded comments, that it is unfair to me, and that Ms. Gray needed to appologize and if not, we would leave. 

Although I found it a little embarassing, Joern was right.  We are the paying customers, and she needed to keep her opinions about the quality of American home construction to herself. 

She finally appologized, and started pulling out all these stories, backpacking through the States nine times, her son spent a year in the States studying, "blah, blah,blah," which I didn't really care to hear.  But whatever, we need the tiles, and Mr. B gets a significant discount at this tile showroom, I just hope that we don't have to work with Ms. Gray more often.

Once the mood lightened, it was on to the children's bath.  My beautiful, cottagey, beachy, bathroom.  Since we chose a "wood look" tile for the flooring, Ms. Gray asked about our parquet.  Since you should never try to match these two floors, we needed a contrast.  The only problem with answering this question was that we never finalized our parquet choice either.  We decided that we would go from the tile showroom to the parquet company, to finalize our flooring choice.  I did change the tile in the shower though.  Our original choice was Joern's choice, a very large, rectangular, matte tile, which didn't really fit with my cottagey theme.  So, I changed the tile to my beveled edge subway tile.

From there, we moved on to the powder room.  We will use the above beveled edge subway tile halfway up the walls, which I think will look incredibly sharp with a dark gray paint.  We also chose, for now, a dark grey floor, which will also be used as the floor in the pantry because it is located so close to the powder room:

Ms. Gray warned that the floor doesn't go with my subway tile.  I'm not sure what to do here.  I also asked if there was some sort of a "cap" tile for the wall tile.  I really made Ms. Gray work on that one, but after about half an hour of searching, she found a proper, fitting cap tile. 

From the powder room, it was on to the cellar, which is by far, our most challenging tiling choice.  The problem with the cellar is that it is such a huge, tiled space.  I see throw rugs in our future, because it is just such a large, continual space, and I am not the world's biggest tile fan (according to Ms. Gray this is because I am American and we have no senrse of style or taste.)  We had originally chosen a very lovely gray tile for the cellar:

But Joern, who has free reign in the cellar tile choice, decided he wanted beige.  We looked at bunches of beige tile:

It isn't easy to chose a beige tile for about 450 sq. ft (45 qm) of unbroken space.  I have a fear of beige, which is funny because we'll probably have beige walls, and our very beige and brown master bath, but I have a fear of too much beige, unbroken, in one space.  When I walk into large spaces of beige, I feel like I'm being swallowed by beige, but I understand that I may be weird.

After three hours, we left without finalizing the cellar tile, and agreed to return on Monday with a parquet sample and a sample of the stone countertops in the two second floor bathrooms.  And I took a deep breath of relief to be away from mean ol' Ms. Gray.

From the tile place, we headed to the granite guy, who is supplying our exterior window sills.  He also sells tile, for less money than the tile showroom, and he is nice.  Joern was more than happy to jump at the opportunity to give him the order for our very large tiled cellar.  He pulled out a whole bunch of beige tile:

We were particularly drawn to the two tiles on top in the middle.  They are a stone tile, and have tons of life.  Since they are stone, and a natural product, no two tiles are the same, which means plenty of interest and beauty, and I love stone!  The nicest thing of all was that he offered that we could take home a bunch of samples, because that's really the best thing you can do.  Getting samples from most places is like pulling teeth.  It was so refreshing to have this offer.

From there, we headed to the house to check out the tile in our foyer:

Joern likes the one on the right, and I like the two on the left.  Both are interesting though.

Since we were in the house, and I had the camera, I decided to snap a few shots of all that is going on in the mechanical room:

The air filtration system and the heat pump.

The pipes are now all insulated, and the plumbers then put a cover over the insulation.

A view of the insulation cover.

                                 I'm in the picture, so you can get an idea of how large the hot water tank is.

We also noticed this very pretty control box. 

Once we had sufficient photos, it was on to Reutlingen to Bembe, the parquet company.  We had visited the parquet showroom a few times last year, chose a wood, but again, never finalized the decision.  We were immediately impressed that the salesman recognized us, and greeted us by name.  We checked, and agreed that the burgundy oak was still the best choice:

We also liked the smoked oak:

But we then agreed that the smoked oak with all of our espresso wood and chocolate leather sofa would be dark overkill.  So, we wrote up the final decision for the burgundy oak.  And then we received the great news:  as of 11:00 today, the parquet factory was closed for their three week summer holiday.  Fan-freakin-tastic!  We won't be able to get the parquet until the middle of September, at the earliest.  This may set us back a week or two, but this one is our fault.  At least we were able to walk away with another decision checked off the list, and two pieces of flooring.

Then it was time to head to the bath showroom, to ask for countertop samples.  Sadly, our account guy was out for the afternoon, but they were able to send someone else to help us.  Of course, he acted like we were asking him to solve world hunger, but we were finally able to get the samples of our limestone and granite countertops. 

From there, it was back to the tile guy, to clarify a question for the exterior window sills.  We even had to call poor Mr. B, who was headed out for vacation.  Fortunately, he picked up the phone and answered our question, so that we were able to proceed with the production of the exterior window sills.  They will be ready on Wednesday, a little late, but they are beautiful.

While we were at the tile place, we decided to go to Joern's parent's storage warehouse, which is in the same building, to check the vanities against the stone samples.

And while I was having fun with our samples, I decided to look at the floor samples against our dark furniture:

I'm so pleased with the look, we almost don't need a carpet in the dining room!

So that was our day.  Hours, and hours, and a bunch of decisions, that can't be changed now. I also made the decision to spend the weekend thinking about the door.  I even posted the door choices on Facebook, and got some really exciting feedback!  The final process of the house is exciting and scary, but it feels good to know that a whole bunch of decisions are behind us, and I can't dwell on them any longer.  Hooray!