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!

Doors, and windows, and tiles, oh my!

I won't lie, the house has been stressful the past few days, but it should be mostly over tomorrow. 
It all started with the surprise phone call two weeks ago, that we needed to make a decision about the door.  We met with Mr. Carpenter two weeks ago, and we showed him a door that we really liked. 
He got back to us on Monday with an offer.  He offered us two doors:  one wood, and one aluminum.  The wood is about 1/3 more expensive than the aluminum, but I keep worrying about how the aluminum door will look.
Here are our two options:

Both would have two sidelights, instead of the one.  The grey door is wood, and we would probably paint it black.  The white door is aluminum, and I am undecided on the color.
We need to decide by tomorrow, if at all possible, because doors have an 8 week delivery time.

That's just where the fun started though.  Yesterday afternoon, the stucco guy called and said that he cannot start with the outside stucco until we get something like window sills outside on the first floor, where the windows come into contact with the ground.  He told us that our options are stone or aluminum.  Joern wasn't too keen on the aluminim option, as we will be walking over these window "sills" very often, and aluminum can dent, or break if too much weight is applied (or if Joern launches himself if he isn't paying attention.)  He had a better feeling about stone.  But, the stucco guy cannot start until the sills are in, so he suggested that we go buy them today.

This morning, we headed off to the tile place, to ask about stone exterior window sills.  Imagine my surprise when the saleswoman told us that the delivery time on the stone sills would be EIGHT WEEKS!  I calmly turned to Joern and said, "be careful, my head is going to explode."  ARGH!  If someone had ever told us that we even needed these, we would have dutifully chosen them at the right time, and they would have long been ordered by now.  BLARGH!  So, Joern called the architect, who suggested we head to a DIY store, and chose something we could pruchase immediately.  After Joern got off the phone, he decided to ask the saleswoman how long it would take to order the tiles.  Even though we chose the tiles in October, we never officially made our decision, or placed the order.  Our growing concern was Mr. B's decision yesterday that we would finalize our decisions at the tile showroom after I return from the States.  While that sounded good in theory, we also realized that I fly in on a Wednesday, which more than likely meant that we would have an appointment at the tile showroom the following week, which would be one week before "Cute Tile Guy" wants to start work. 
Fortunately, we asked today, because she said that some of our tile could take up to 4 weeks to get!  Obviously, this would NOT work if we wait until after I return from the States.  Its a good thing the steam could come out of my ears, because it surely would have exploded upon this news. 
We agreed that we would go to the tile showroom tomorrow to finalize our selections, and that Mr. B would coordinate with the tile place today so that as soon as we finalize our selections, the order can be placed.

After we left the tile place, we headed over to the model home park, which brought back some amazing memories of looking at model homes, and dreaming of our "one day" home.
We looked at doors:

And we looked for exterior window sills:

Honed granite

Aluminum

"peppered" granite



I think it was the best decision to go to the model home park.  We got the opportunity to see a lot of things we needed to, and its always best to see things on exisiting homes, rather than in a showroom.

Joern called me this afternoon and told me that he went to a local granite dealer.  He chose the honed granite sills in black, which I really liked as well.  They will be on Monday, so hopefully, we can get started with the stucco on Tuesday!

Its really nice to know that we're in the completion phase.  I know that we can get stuck here in this phase too, but we're not building anymore, we're wrapping up!  Despite the stress and craziness, it feels good to be here, and know that soon, we'll be done!

Movement

I'm finally starting to feel like we're getting there, or better, we will get there. 
Now that the Estrich is in, the plumbers have been working hard this week to connect our heat pump and air filtration.  Connecting the heat pump is very important because it is necessary to run it to dry the Estrich.  The plumbers plan on a test run of the heat pump on Monday. 
Today when we came into the house, we even had a working air filtration system.  It was on "full," so it was a little louder than I had expected, but it was so cool to hear our house working!  For the first time, it really felt like this house, that has almost been a year in the making, will one day, be a functional home.
We also met with the main plumber, "Cute Tile Guy," and Mr. B.  It was good to be talking about tiles, which put us towards the final stages of the house.  We even have an estimate of the last week in August/ first week September to start tiling.  "Cute Tile Guy" needs about 2 weeks to do the tiling. 
Tonight's meeting took a lot more time than I expected, and we had a lot to get through.  I had a lot of questions to answer.  "Are you sure that you won't have any tiles on the walls in the master bath?"  I hope I'm doing the right thing here by not tiling the walls in the master bath, well, I did agree that we need a backslpash of sorts around the bathtub, but I hope it looks okay.   My favorite comment today came from Mr. B, who said that the tile place commented that they never had such varied tiles in one house before.  Wonderful!  I think, *hope* that it will all look okay.  But, the master bath is supposed to have a very sophisticated, "master" feel, and the children's bath should be much more whimsical, and the powder room is a powder room, a room where you can really be daring and different.  Do all the bathrooms need to go together?  I HOPE NOT!

I explained that we do not need tile on the walls in the master bath, nor in the children's bath, but will have them half-way up the walls in the powder room.  We had to decide on the pattern for laying the tile on the floor in the master bath and the powder room, which will both be tiled with rectangular tile, we chose to have the tiles laid out in a "wild" pattern, meaning that the grout lines don't hit each other.  In the children's bath, we currently have chosen a "wood look," tile, so this tile is installed to look like parquet flooring.  The bathroom in the cellar is no big deal to me, because it is really more of an emergency toilet and our rinse off shower. 

We also spent quite a bit of time with the plumber, discussing the mini walls that need to be built to cover some existing plumbing.  We need to have a half-wall in the master bath behind the toilet and the vanity.  In the children's bath, we need to have a wall built between the shower and the washer and dryer.  There were more little intricacies that need to be clarified, but those were more between "Cute Tile Guy" and the plumber. 

Overall, I was very pleased with the meeting, but was left a little uneasy.  What if the bathrooms look bad?  We left it that Mr. B will call the tile showroom for an appointment when I return from home.  I think I have a lot of work to do before this appointment!

Radiant heating

The plumbers managed to lay the radiant heating tubes for all three floors in just two days!  They worked like mad, but by last week Monday, all the radiant heating was completed!

Plus, they connected it all to the distribution manifolds:

And, what surprised me the most:  the plumbers installed our bathtub!

Plugging along

Last week and this week belonged to the plumbers.  They are preparing to lay the radiant heating! 
Turns out that despite its strength for construction, the concrete is really inefficient for radiant heating.  In order to combat the inefficiency of the concrete, the plumbers have been busy laying insulation.  I don't think I have ever seen such a highly insulated house before!
The plumbers started last week in the cellar.  Since its the cellar, they began with a moisture barrier.  Once the entire floor was covered with the moisture barrier, the plumbers then covered the entire cellar floor with one inch of styrofoam.  The most amazing thing is how tedious a process covering the floor with insulation can be.  The insulation comes in sheets, about 3 ft. long by 2 ft wide, which need to be cut to fit close to perfectly.  It was like the floor was tiled with styrofoam.  By the end of the day on Thursday, our cellar was beautifully tiled with styrofoam.  And then, the fateful question posed by Joern to the plumbers:  "Can you drill a hole from oustide the house into the cellar?"  Joern has a grand plan to run a wire underground between his parents house and our house, to connect to our central house computer, as Joern will then be able to work at his parents house on our computer.  This goes with our anit-WiFi stance (not because of electro-smog, but because WiFi is annoyingly slow,) plus it would take a really strong signal to communicate between Joern's parents' house and our cellar.  So, before the day ended on Thursday, a beautiful hole was dug into the top of our cellar for Joern's cable. 
On Friday morning, Joern and I headed to the bakery to pick up breakfast, and we left my cousin, Elizabeth at the apartment to sleep.  When we got back, Elizabeth was awake, with news, Joern's dad had called, and said there was a "small problem with the house."  Turns out that no one bothered to cover the beautiful hole, and we had quite a bit of rain on Thursday night.  The plumbers arrived on Friday morning to about 1/2" of muddy water filling most of our cellar!  They need to pump out the cellar and remove all the insulation and moisture barrier, so that everything could dry out! 
This is now what our cellar looks like:

A little sad, because this was much farther along last week :( 

The plumbers decided to ensure proper drying, that they would begin this week insulating the top two floors, and then returning to the cellar last.  Poor guys.  But after two days, there was some major progress.

Our foyer, filled with insulation

We found out that the radiant heating tubing does not lie on top of those styrofoam tiles.  Nope.  Another layer of styrofoam, about another 1/2" thick, covered with a rather thick plastic goes on top of those styrofoam tiles!  So, we have at least 1" of styrofoam insulation between our concrete floors and the radiant heating!  No hot ceilings in our house!  Here is a good view of both layers in the kitchen;



The styrofoam tiles on the bottom also had to be cut with a special burining tool to create channels for the pipes and tubes running along the floor:

And this is what it looks like when installed on the floor:





In some cases though, it would be too much work to cut out the styrofoam.  There is a special material that is used like a "grout" between the tiles to create a tightly insulated cover, which they also used to insulate around the longer pipes:

As of last night, most of the first floor was completed and the second floor is finished:

                                                                 Living Room:



                                                                     Master Bedroom:



I even found a surprise when I walked into the master bath:

We have a bathtub!  It will be installed within the week, as it must be installed before the Estrich (the untranslatable concreteish layer that is poured over the radiant heating,) which is set for next week!

I realize that the progress isn't overwhelming like it was during the building phase, the interior isn't as easy to notice the changes.  But, now I realize that every time something is completed now in the interior, the house begins to look more and more like a home!



Quite a bit of progress in the past, oh, month or so

Okay, so I realize that my last post about the house was one month ago, to the day, but I think I have some fairly good excuses.  Once the Richtfest was finished, we had two weeks to prepare the apartment for our visit:  my cousin, Elizabeth, and her friend, Carla, came to us at the last stop of their whirlwind European tour.  Also, the last 2 weeks of work were really crazy, and invovled a couple of late-nighters for me.  Then, Carla and Elizabeth arrived.  We've been having lots of fun, and have done quite a bit of exploring in Germany.  Of course, I should not forget the most important reason though:

Yup, this is ours!  Joern and I are having a baby, who we have named, "Erbse" (German for pea.) A baby who I happen to think is the absolute most adorable baby in the world! 

Despite all the goings-on in our lives, we have finally seen progress with the house!  The plaster guys finally started on June 4, a Saturday.   They were able to complete plastering the walls on the top two floors, but not the staircase.  After the Richtfest, the guys came in and fninshed by the end of the following week.  So officially, the plaster guys finished on the 18th.  Of course, they are not completely finished, but they are finished with the first layer of plaster, which is quite thick.  They will be back after the Estrich (the cement-like material poured over the insulation, pipes, and radiant heating,) so probably in late August/ September.  The walls look incredible, and I really need to take pictures of how lovely our very finished-looking walls are!

Last week, the electricians were at the house again.  All of our alarm contact wires are installed, and they now installed all of the outlets, without their covers, of course. 
Here are a few pictures:

                                                      Three plug outlets in the kitchen.

Not sure what the four holes with wires are for, but the squares with arrows

are for our exterior metal blinds.  It feels like "command central."

And last week, someone from Mr. Builder came in to pour the foundation for the air heat pump.  The plumbers came and put up the air filtration machine, and worked some more on the pipes in the mechaical room.

Yesterday, the plumbers came, and put up the air-heat pump.  They connected the air intake and outake portion, but of course, there is no plumbing completed yet.  It looks amazing so far though!

Today, the plumbers installed the gas pipe for our stove.  You can also see how nice the plastered over walls look in this picture:

The blue along the wall is the protection between the walls and the poured concreteish floor covering. 

We were also surprised to discover that the plumbers started to lay the insulation that goes beneath the radiant heating.  They started in the Erbse's room:



So there you have it, a very brief update!  Hopefully, now that life is a little calmer, I will be able to update with much more frequency! 
Ciao!