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!





Some Valentine's love for our incredible team!

Happy Valentine's Day from the construction site!
It was an incredibly busy day on the house today,Mr. Builder,Mr. B,  plumbers, builders, roofers, and Joern!  And they all deserve a little Valentine's "I really love you all," in different ways, of course!
Here's a quick run-down of this very special Valentine's Day.
The roofers spent the day making the grid that goes around the entire roof.  This grid holds the tiles.

And they also covered up the exposed beams under the overhang.  They explained to Joern too, the purpose of the slotty metal pieces.  If a roof tile breaks, the water will run down the waterproof sheeting, and run out the slotty metal pieces, which will signal to us that there is something wrong with a tile.  Cool! 

Oh, and the roofers installed our skylight today.  It is small, but adds a ton of light into what is fast becoming my favorite place in the house. 
At 4:30 this afternoon, the roofers totally surprised us by starting on the roof tiles!  It is a little more brown than we expected (joke,)  they're just covered in dust from them cutting them to fit.  WAHOO!

Mr. Builder was at the house for a little while today.  He checked on the house, and moved his sign from the duplex next door over to our house.  Although I'm not the world's biggest advertisement person, I must say, I feel like we just stuck a Mercedes symbol on the front of our house.  I am very proud to have a Mr. Builder house!

Mr. B was also at the house today.  He needed to clarify the height of the floors, and deliver the message that we need to rethink our windows in the front of the house.  We had originally planned two doors on each window, but Mr. H (our window guy,) said that the doors would be too big and he could not guarantee the hinges on these huge doors.  We have a few options that we need consider now over the next few says.  Mr. B also delivered the news that we have to redesign the location of our electrical panel yet again.  Ugh.  It turns out that our original planned location, underneath the stairs, was illegal, because there must be 1 meter of space on three sides, in case there is an accident, that the electrician can fall without hitting their head of ceiling.  So, we move again.  It is remaining underneath the stairs, but will go behind a door that faces you as you walk in from the foyer.  I'm not bothered by it at all.

Our plumbers were at the house today for quite a long time too.  They drilled some holes in the cellar walls for the air filtration system.  They also elongated the tentacle-like pipes for the air filtration system.  And, they installed a box for the outcoming air and one for incoming air.  The pipes run into the boxes, and the boxes into the air filtration system.

 Our interior builder, M, who is just such a nice, hard-working guy.  He worked on the cellar today, and all of a sudden, we have a full techincal room, and a clearly defined area for our built-in storage.  He also completed the small wall on the side of our foyer.  And right before he left, he started filling in the small hole that was placed for the electrical panel.

And last, but not least, the latest addition to our building team- Joern.  Joern spent a few hours today gluing the overlapping air barrier to the sides of the exterior.  It all looks beautiful and is now airtight.  Thanks Joern!

So there you have it, a crazy busy Valentine's Day!  I am going a little buggy now separating all of the photos into the proper folders.  Ugh!  But I'm not complaining.  Obviously, I feel a lot of love for all the fantastic guys involved in the creation of our house!

Just keep working, working, working

Okay, don't call me Dorry.  The builders just keep working.
Today, continued work on the ceiling of the first floor.  Steel mesh was installed over the entire ceiling, and they worked on the forms for the poured concrete sub-floor. 
We also received our second set of builder's steps (aka, Freaky Scary Wooden Ladders.)  Sadly, no picture,  but it will come soon.
A few plumbers were there today to lay the lovely orange pipes for the air filtration system for the first floor.

They should be pouring the sub-floor in the next few days, officially ending the shell of the first floor!

A few other exciting and weird things of which I sadly have no picture include the cut-outs for the recessed lights and the freaky tentacle looking creation climbing down the wall in the pantry.  No worries, pictures will follow in the upcoming few days!

Just go away for a week, the progress is amazing!

While we were here:

Seeing this:

And drinking this:

This is what the builders did:

The pre-fab portion of the ceiling of the cellar was installed, the first pipes for the air filtration unit (in orange,) were laid, our first temporary stairs were installed, and preparation for the poured concrete floor were completed.

The trench around the house was completely filled in.

Our light wells were installed, the add-on was placed above the completed concrete box for our gas tanks.

We are absolutely shocked that so much happened last week, both in Ireland and in Neckartailfingen.  It is huge!  We're looking forward towhat this week will bring!

While I was sleeping

I spent most of the day resting, and sleeping.  Joern, on the other hand, got to watch the progress and got to meet with the architect and the plumber.
Today, they worked on the exterior cellar walls.  It started this morning with a last minute change.  Joern contacted the architect yesterday, when he realized that there is a part of the cellar that is exposed in the front, and was a place we could install a window.  We didn't plan any window because earlier on, we had a few windows planned in the cellar, which turned out to be illegal because they were planned on walls that lay on the border.  But, Joern realized that this one portion of wall, between the cellar and the back part of my garage, was exposed wall, set 3 meters back from the property line, no problem for a window!
So, Joern quickly called Mr. B last night, who quickly okayed the change.  This morning, he contacted Mr. Builder to let him know about the change.  Time was important, because the builders were preparing the forms for the walls today.
It turns out it all worked out, and they framed in a floor-length window.

 By the end of the day, the majority of the forms for the concrete were completed.

Joern also met with Mr. B and our plumber, Mr. Haag.  Mr. Haag delivered the fabulous news that the air pump heat system he had planned in his original estimate was in fact, too small for our house.  Great.  The next size up does not have an integrated air-filtration system, which would leave us to need to buy an extra air-filtration system.  In total, it is about 4,000 Euro more than the original estimate.
They also discussed the toilets, etc. that were included in the estimate.  Mr. B suggested that we make an appointment with  a bathroom studio to look at different items.  I am thinking about going with some "plumber  basic" toilets at the beginning, and changing them out to nicer ones in time.  But we can also ask Mr. Haag for other items and see how much he would charge us for them.
Joern explained that they also discussed the gas stove issue.  I guess we had planned, very poorly, to put our propane tanks for our stove behind the house, rather close to the stove.  The problem is that this would put the tanks directly above the air-intake for the heat pump.  Since our heat pump uses air as its source, you don't want to have gas leak into the intake, it could lead to a very bad situation.   So, they will ask to build a box out of concrete for the propane tanks on the side of the house, underneath the dining room add-on.  The second problem with the stove is that we also have a fireplace.  Evidently, if the fireplace is on, and we use the stove, it could cause a problem with the gas, and increase the potential of a fire.  Mr. Haag explained that we need to use a ventilation hood that recycles air, instead of brings in air from the outside.  He also explained that we need to ensure that the ventilation hood has a good filter.  Since we have a air filtration for the house anyway, there should not be a problem with getting fresh air into the house while cooking.
A lot happened while I was sleeping on Wednesday!

The Info Day

We had such an incredible, and informative two days this past weekend. I think for ease of understanding and to make things easier to deal with, I will post only here about the FingerHaus Info Day. Then, in another post, I will talk about the model homes that we visited on Saturday and Sunday.

As I posted yesterday, we were pleasantly surprised when we found out that FingerHaus was willing to pay for our hotel on Friday night, to make our visit much simpler. After a filling breakfast on Saturday morning, we set out to the FingerHaus factory and company headquarters. It started at 10 am, and there was already quite a crowd forming when we got there 15 minutes after 10:00.
We began our day by attending a discussion on air compressor pumps and air filtration systems.
Here are some interesting things we learned:
1. German pre-fab homes are made from wood, and the new ones are almost completely air-tight.
2. Because of this air-tightness factor, mold can become a problem. People need to air-out their homes frequently throughout the day to combat this mold.
3. The other option to airing out the home is to include an air-filtration system. I never thought about one, but now, we have to learn a lot more before we build our home.
4. A green home heating technology available here is an air-compressor run from solar cells. The compressor acts like a refrigerator, and the heat produced from the cooling unit is then used to heat the home.

For us, the information on the air-filtration system was really informative. Jörn is not interested in an air compressor for heat, instead, he would like to use a geothermal heating pump. But, I am really thankful for the air filtration info, I never would have thought about this.

Afterwards, we met up with our project manager from Stuttgart, Herr Meisner. He showed us around the home building showroom. Because most of FingerHaus' homes are built turn-key ready, home builders most often choose everything for their new home, from exterior and interior paint, to flooring, to door handles at the company's showroom.
Here are some of the different choices Jörn and I will have to make:

What will the showers (at least 2) look like? Tiles, floors, doors, shower heads?

Will we be able to fit in a corner bathtub?

Should we have a lighted faucet in our bathroom?

What style of stairs will we choose? What color wood? What banisters?

Which flooring should we use for our deck and terrace? How about the railings on the deck(s)?
After our heads were overloaded with choices, we made our way over to the factory tour. Wow, that was so interesting! Somehow, I never really got how much of a house can be made at a factory!


The walls are built and insulated in the factory. Windows and window coverings are also installed.

I was really impressed to see that the plumbing was also pre-installed!

A house being packed up. There is a whole house on those four trucks!

After our very cool and interesting factory tour, we then went to visit the two model homes on the property of the factory.


The yellow house wasn't really anything we are interested in. But, I always enjoy the company's use of giant windows and open floor plans to enlarge a space!


The second house, the grey and red, on the other hand, was incredibly gorgeous! Of course, it is brand new, and opened to the public on Saturday. Everything was amazing. The floorplan downstairs was amazing! I always felt that we would need one continuous dining and living space, since this provides the most airy feeling. This house was set up slightly differently, and honestly, it was beautiful! The only thing that we would need changed would have been the kitchen. But, there was plenty of room behind the kitchen, which they used for storage space, that we could open up and use as kitchen space.

My biggest problem with the house though was the sloped ceiling upstairs. Similar to a Cape style home, many homes in Germany have one and a half floors, as the full space of the top floor cannot be used. This style of home has a particularly steep sloped roof, and you really lose a lot of space. I don't know if my American bed would ever have a chance of fitting in the bedroom. The house does have a MBR suite, which I really want, and a second bathroom upstairs.

A picture of the master bathroom. It was beautiful, but Jörn couldn't stand in half of the bathroom. Hmmm.

After visiting the two houses, we returned to the building showroom to check out a few more items.
I checked out some fireplace options because I want one of them too. Then, Jörn found the keyless entry system that he's head-over-heels in love with!


We were exhausted after the wonderful day, but instead of heading to Wetzlar, where we planned on spending the night, we stopped off in Marburg, at another model home.