Tiles and more

After work yesterday, Joern took me to Nuertingen to Mesitermax, a showroom for kind of everything you need for your house. Unlike a DIY warehouse, like Home Depot, it is more like a posh building department store. It was cool, and very informative.
We looked at some flooring options, both parquet and laminate. We then found the roofing section. Joern decided to ask some questions. We quickly learned that we have a lot more to learn about our options. There are so many different types of roofing insulation. We did learn that they are rated in hours, which means the number of hours of heat from the sun that the insulation can absorb before it begins to give off heat in the house. He even explained that you need to be careful not to buy insulation with too high of an hour rating, because it holds the heat in too well. Interesting!
We also saw the coolest display of roofing insulation materials. They were displayed in tubes, and compared the amount of each material required to maintain the same level of insulation.
As expected, traditional fiberglass insulation was the least efficient, and wood fiber and cellulose were the most efficient. Hmmm...
We also looked at interior doors. Surprisingly, I liked two doors, one cost 200€ complete, and the other, 1000€. The first was by far the least expensive, and considred the entry-level model. Being an American, and having looked at interior doors extensively over Christmas, the entry-level model is pretty nice.
We then headed upstairs to the tile department. Very interesting. Joern found tiles the he loved- gigantic, very thin plates. Joern's style tends to the cooler, sleeker side than my homey, warm side. We spent a lot of time speaking with a salesman, who was really helpful. When Joern finally said that I'm American, he said, "Oh well then you probably don't like any of these tiles. I have relatives in America, and I know American home decorating is a bit different." He then took us to a model bathroom with tiles that were pretty close to what I want in the master bedroom. I have a really good feeling in working with this salesman, because he didn't shoot down my tastes immediately.
He also talked to us about considering tile as an option for the entire house. Although he sells tile, he did give me something interesting to think about- tile is the optimal material for underfloor heating, which is what we'll have in our house. It does make sense that tile would hold the heat the best, and be the most efficient for this reason. He even showed us a tile that looks like wood. He explained to us that customers are looking for unbreakable flooring that has the warm look of wood, which is why the manufacturers are producing "wood look" tile. I don't think we'll be going with this choice, but very interesting.
We spent at least an hour looking around and soaking in all the information we could. I am so very excited to see how the choices we make look in our house!

Surprise day!

Today was a surprise! After our meeting, Joern decided to head out to a company in Nuertingen that makes pre-fab garages. He has met with them before, and wanted to ask a question about the letter we received from the the county building office. It turns out that the company and their Home Depot-esque store across the street were open for Sunday.
The funny thing about stores having open Sundays is that it is not just another open day. When a store is open on a Sunday, there are always events as well as shopping.
First we stopped by the garage showroom. Yes, there is a garage showroom, afterall, they are pre-fab. It is actually a huge open area with about 20 different garages, as well as stone for terraces, driveways, retaining walls, etc. They actually had a lot of really interesting options. We'll probably have paving stones for our driveway, and we definately need retaining walls. We also need garages, two to be exact. So there was really a lot for us to take in.
A sales rep. came up to us and asked us if we needed help. Joern explained that he was waiting to speak with Mr. Garage (not really his name,) but the sales rep who he has been speaking with already. She told us that he was with customers, and handed us two tokens for food, and two for drinks, and told us that they were offering sausages, bread, and drinks for the special open Sunday. Wahoo, free food!
We ended up waiting to speak with Mr. Garage. He was quite helpful. It looks like one of our garages is just too long. It is a law in our state that a garage that is built along the border is not allowed to be londer than 9 meters- ours is 10 meters. The law all has to do with not bothering your neighbors- they shouldn't be forced to look at a 10 meter (30 ft.) long garage wall touching their property. Of course, we didn't really think this law applied to us, as 9 of the 10 meters of our garage are underground, so our neighbors would not actually see the garage. Up until this point, no one has said otherwise, so we thought it was okay. Mr. Garage said that "the law is the law," no matter. Joern won't be able to find out until tomorrow, when the man at the county building office responsible for our project, will return from vacation.
Mr. Garage was also able to help to calm my fears about building the pre-fab garage next to our stone house. I heard that it would be a problem in the future, as water could get between the house and garage, and begin to separate from the house after years of freezing and melting. Mr. Garage explained that there is a small space betwen the two for this reason, and there is a cover to help keep out moisture. I believe him, I think it will be fine.
After our nice conversation with Mr. Garage, we headed over to the Hagebaumarkt, which is owned by the pre-fab garage company. Again, they had a number of special activites, including a face-painting station for kids, and various special information sessions. Surprisingly, we bumped into my father-in-law. So, we headed over to the food tent with my father-in-law for a wurst and a beer. Yum!
Today was a really enjoyable day, and very informative. I feel like we made another step closer to the house. Hooray!

Project "Project Manager" (Bauleiter)

There are a bunch of ways you can approach building a house. You can work with a company that builds your house in a factory, the delivers your house to you and is up in a day or two. You can go with a company that builds your house in traditional German stone, turn-key ready, or similar. You can even build your house by yourself. Or you can go the way we are going, find every person on your own and ask them to all work together to build your house. In a way, this should save us some money, but it also allows us to get exactly what we want, since Germans like to tell you what does and doesn't work, and many will not work on something they think doesn't work (think wooden kitchen cabinets.)
There are people whose job it is to help people in our situation, who help ease the load and stress of managing all workers, called Project Managers or Bauleiter in German We are in the process of searching for a Project Manager. On Sunday, Joern and I met with a parent of one of our schoolkids. I found out about him through another assistant at work. We met with him last year, but we weren't so excited by the houses his company had to offer. A year later, and he is trying to break out on his own, to become a Bauleiter. He would like to use us as a reference. He spent about half an hour talking with us about all the things we need to do next in our project. Like, we still need an architect to sign off on blueprints, and giving blueprints to builders for a quote ends up being less expensive than if we simply give them our current floor plans. Wahoo!
We will hear back at the end of this week about where we go from here!

Dishwasher- check

Joern brought me to a kitchen showroom last night. We're in the process of gathering ideas for our kitchen island, and Joern also found a floor model dishwasher. The original plan was to use the dishwasher for our current apartment, since ours is broken. But, it turned out that the dishwasher is too high for our extra-low countertops. I just couldn't pass up the good deal on the dishwasher though, because I'm in love.
The dishwasher is from Neff, a Swabian company that has been around for a very long time. I am all about local companies, which are so rapidly becoming so very rare.
The dishwasher itself is so cool! The top rack is adjustable to two positions, and can be removed for cleaning extra tall items (think oven racks.) It is extra quiet. It has all sorts of pop-up holders for glasses and dishes, and the utensil holder can even be divided in two if you need extra space.

I am a little sad that it is semi-integrated and not fully integrated. I was so looking forward to one less stainless steel panel to clean, but it really isn't that huge of a space to clean, and it does look really nice. And anyway, it was such a good deal, about 1/3 of the original price, that well, it is totally worth it.
I am so excited to use it in our new house!

A tiny ray of hope

Joern and I went out for a ride last night around 11 pm. I decided to check the mailbox- and eureka, there was a letter from the Landratsamt in the box. It turns out that they have indeed received the application, but have a concern about the large garage on the border to the new neighbors. Hopefully we can work it out soon, and hopefully, this is the only hinderance to our building permit.
The good news is, of course, that they are looking at our application. Fingers crossed, pretty please?

Twiddles thumbs

No news. Nichts. Just waiting and waiting and waiting.
UGH!!!

The evolution of our new neighborhood

Last year, March 2009, our new neighborhood (subdivision) was a piece of land overgrown with trees and weeds.
Last fall, the new road looked like this:


The entryway to our driveway from the new road looked like this: (the large round cement thing is a drainage cistern)

Our lot looked like this:




Joern surveyed the neighborhood from above:


In the past few weeks, there has been quite a bit of work on this area. They are workin hard on building the new road, putting in curbs, and prepping the whole area for building.
We visited the site 2 weeks ago.

Here's the new road:



The cement drain that will be at the entrance to our driveway:


And Joern could stand on the street this time to survey the new neighborhood:


Joern's parents told us that there was a lot of noise and other action last Friday. So, we went again to visit.

The road now:

(Note the curb that is now lining both sides of the road.)

Here's the same drainage cistern:


And this time, my car decided to practice driving up towards its new home:

The Wonders of the Internet

I love vintage train signs like these, featured in the movie, Monster in Law:

photo courtesy of www.subwaysigns.com

I think they would be a fabulous decor item in our new house. They are a way to connect me to home without splashing yet more photos all around the house. Joern and I have spent tons of time in New York City, and would love having gentle reminders of one of our favorite places in our dining room. I also love the historical aspect of these signs, as I am looking for ways to add character to this newly built home of ours. I think even details such as vintage subway signs bring a us, even for a short moment, to a bygone era.

First, I found these at Restoration Hardware:


They are very cool, and I think they would look great.

Then, I found these on VintageSubwaySigns:


This site, sells original signs- so cool! Unfortunately, I've jumped on this bandwagon kind-of late, and the majority of the originals are sold out. They do offer numbered limited edition reproductions on canvas. Also placed in my thoughtbanks.

And then, yesterday, I found Parishotelboutique.com. Such a cool site! There are so many vintage items on this site, it is so much fun to visit! And then, in the middle of it all, I found this:

This is a bus sign from New Haven. It is being marketed as Yale memorabilia. But for me, the mention of so many locations so near and dear to me- Bridgeport, Milford, Waterbury (this is where I bought my wedding dress,)New Haven, Derby, is all too much. It looks like this is my purchase. Now, I just need to find a good place to frame it!

I need to measure the tiny, tiny wall in our dining room to see if two signs would fit, as one from NYC and this one from home would be way cool. But, that takes a little more work.

The Gemeinderatsitzung

I know, I know, I was supposed to blog about this as soon as we got back from the town council meeting, but I learned two lessons: 1) colds strike at the most inopportune times, and 2) lots, and I repeat, lots of Champagne (and probably at times much harder stuff,) will be consumed throughout the building process.
To begin the whole story, I confused the date of the town council meeting. I found out afterwards that Joern didn't want to correct me because he knew it would make me more nervous.
When I got home from work on Tuesday afternoon, Joern called me and told me to come to his parents' house. When I walked in, Joern said, "we have to run to the current owners of the building lot because we have to have the paper signed by tonight. Then, we have to be at the town hall by 7 tonight." Turns out that the town council meeting was not Wednesday night, as I had thought, but actually Tuesday night. Argh!!!
So, first we ran to the current owners of our lot. They are the parents of a friend of Joern. They are such kind people. As soon as we rang the doorbell, they quickly invited us insisde. We sat and chatted for a while. We found out that the duplex will be built by Joern's friend Markus on one side, and the other side will be someone whose brother works at the bank (since it is the only bank in the town, this means everyone knows him.) I'm excited because all of our neighbors will be around our age, except,of course, for Joern's parents and aunt. Then, we talked a bit about America. Like all good Germans, the land owners have traveled extensively through the USA, unlike me. And, they love to talk about their experiences! After our little chat, we showed them the paper that the town sent to us in response to the building permit application, the form for the approval of the land owners for us to build. They quickly signed our form, and sent us on our way to the town hall.

We got to the town hall a few minutes before 7 pm. The town council members sat in the front of the room in a circle, and there were two rows of chairs set up in the back for the public. We were not the only members of the public audience, there were 3 others. Joern's dad came as the mayor started with his opening comments.
First on hand was a discussion of road repairs that are set to begin in May. It was nice to know ahead of time that my route to work will be really difficult starting in a few months. They then discussed an "island" on the main street that holds a sign for local advertisments. Third on the docket was an item concerning another smaller street in the town that would be repaved.
Then came item number four, the planned building of a one family house by Herr and Frau Roesner. I'm pretty sure that my knuckles were white. I became instantly frozen in place, and could only stare at the overhead screen as pictures of our house came into view. The mayor of the town discussed our plan for two full floors above a cellar located on building lots 166 and 158/3, our two garages on both borders, and the size of the house. He then reminded the town council of the discussion about building with two full floors at the meeting on the 2nd of February. He then asked for a vote on the house. He asked first who was in approval: EVERYONE raised their hand! That means our house was unanimously approved by the town council! 3 minutes devoted solely to our house came and went, and pushed us one step closer to our goal.
They then discussed an addition to the parking lot for the school.
At 8 pm, the mayor announced that the public portion of the meeting had come to an end and announced a 15 minute break for town council members.
Mr. Builder came and shook our hand to congratulate us. And then we walked down the stairs. As we were leaving, Mr. Buiding Store Owner (another story for another day,) who is also a member of the town council came to congratulate us. As he and Joern finished their conversation, the man who had been sitting on the left side of the mayor at the meeting, one of the three people in suits at the meeting, came to talk to us. He started with "Herzlichen Gluckwunsch," and then turned to me and started speaking English to me. After congratulating us, he then asked where I was from, and if I was happy in Neckartailfingen, and then told me that he taught my husband how to deal with money (either because of Joern's teenage summer job, or because of their very lage fight a few years ago when the town fined Joern a large sum of money for paying his business tax late.) I later found out that he is the town's Fiscal Officer, and it was a really big deal that he came to us at all, and that he spoke English to me, was an even bigger deal.
From the meeting, we headed over to my in-law's house to rehash the entire night over a bottle of Champagne.