Floors and furniture

The floors were finished by Friday, the 21st.  Unfortunately, I wasn't quite quick enough to snap a bunch of pictures before Joern started covering the floor for protection, but I was able to get a picture of the kitchen:

And, as soon as the floor guys left, Joern started measuring out the baseboard for the living room :

On the following Monday, the 24th, the floor guys were back to oil the floor.  We weren't allowed to walk on the floors for two full days following the oiling. So, the earliest we were able to get back into the house was Thursday.  It looks wonderful!

Here are two views of the master bedroom:

Joern also was working hard on his baseboard project.  He set up a little workshop in his garage, and has been busy with his mitre saw for days now:

And while we were wating for the floors to dry, our garage doors were installed!

Joern also decided to take advantage of Marcel's visit this past weekend.  Joern, Marcel, our neighbor Torsten, and Joern's dad started moving in some of the heavy furniture and the vanities.  Seeing our furniture in the house really made the whole thing feel real!  Only a few more weeks, and we'll be in the house!

That's our refrigerator under the black wrapping.

We now have one comfy chair in the house!

 The rugs are all waiting in the guest room.

Erbse's vanity!

The super, ridiculously heavy dresser in our bedroom.

We lit a fire on Saturday afternoon. So cozy!

The vanity and storage cabinet in the master bath.

                                                         The boys after a long day of moving!

Joern has been working hard on the baseboard and last night, we installed medicine cabinets.  We hit a snag in Erbse's bathroom, the hole for the medicine cabinet is too large, and we need to get the plaster guys to come back to help us fix the problem.  Unfortunately, we can't install the beadboard until the medicine cabinet is installed, and we can't have the plumbers install the fixtures in Erbse's bathroom until the beadboard is in and painted.  Good thing this isn't the only bathroom in the house!

I can't wait to see where we are by this Friday, as this is supposed to be a big week.  Of course, it is a very short week, because Tuesday was a holiday, and no one came to the house on Monday.  But, this week should include the completion of the wood floors, installation of the kitchen, installation of interior doors, installation of the exterior blinds, and plumbing fixture installation.  Of course, we'll see if this all really happens in the next three days.  And, we have no idea when the electricians plan on returning to finish up the electrical. Oh well, the good news is that we'll be in by the end of the month, at the latest!   This is fantastic!  Now, its time to get to work with the bittersweet job of packing up our apartment!

Paint's finished, tile is almost there, and the floors have started!

The plaster guys, who happen to be the painters too, came back Saturday and finished painting.  On Monday, they came to clean up.  All of a sudden, the house was completely transformed.  Since the plaster guys were back in the house, it turned into a total pigsty, and it was really hard to imagine how the house would look without dust and junk everywhere.  The floors reappeared and the windows were revealed again. Its kind of amazing.

Tile Guy also came back on Tuesday night to work on the powder room.  Thank goodness he agreed to at least redo the tiles that poor Joern had to remove.  Even when it wasn't finished on Tuesday, it looked so much better!  From this:

To this:

And then, he came back on Wednesday night to finish up the tile, and to install the cap tile, in the powder room. 

Tile Guy still has some work to do.  Most importantly, the grout must be completed in the powder room, so that the plumbers can come in next week to install the plumbing fixtures.  He also has some work to do in the foyer, as he couldn't finish the tiles until the front door was installed.  But that isn't such a huge deal, it won't have an effect on our moving in anyway. 

The most exciting change in the house was definitely yesterday.  If I wasn't sick, I would have braved the pouring rain and freezing cold to go see for myself.  But the good news is that it will all be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.  The guys from the parquet company started installing the wood floors!  They started with the top floor, and finished the master bedroom, hallway, and the office. 

The good news is that as of today, we won't be covered in dust anymore, like Joern is in the above picture.  I'm ready to say "goodbye" to the dust and so ready to see our house that much closer to becoming ours.

Okay, so I love the floors!  I can't believe how they warm up the house.  And yes, it looks ridiculously American, but since there are 1 1/2 Americans living in our house, that's fine by me :)  As soon as I walked up the stairs, I felt immediately at home.  I can't wait to see what the first floor looks like when the floors are in!

We also got news today from the garage door company:  the garage doors should be in next week!  For the first time since forever, the house will be closed off.  No more worry that someone could walk into the house and walk off with whatever. And even better, no more freezing my butt off in the house! 

I hope beyond all hopes that either the plumbers or the electricians will be available next week to start the finishing touches.  Maybe its because I'm the daughter of a plumber, but I cannot wait to go to the bathroom in our house- and wash my hands there too!  I knew that this was all very exciting, but didn't realize just how exciting it was going to be to get to this stage!

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!



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!