Last week's pictures

As many of you know, last week was a really crappy week for both Joern and myself.  Let's just say our first try at baby-making was an abysmal failure, and I have been out of the hospital for 3 days now. 
I guess the builders sensed something was wrong, or maybe it was the fact that they got paid for another job and wanted to finish it up, but we were builderless Thursday, Friday, and Monday.
But Monday and Tuesday weren't so very bad.

The outside wall of Joern's garage is all set for pouring.



The forms around the exterior walls were removed.  Joern's looking out the window of the fitness room.



The two openings in the corner are for the intake and exhaust for the air pump.  The other opening is for a light well.

Tuesday October 5

On Tuesday, they poured the front walls for both our garages.


Wednesday

 The front wall of my garage is finished!

The front wall of Joern's garage is finished too!

In case you were interested, this is our next-door neighbor's air heat pump.  If you couldn't tell, its pretty big.  Our air heat pump will be even bigger, which is why we have to make our mechanical room larger.

Night falls on our building site

I went to my in-laws' house last night.  There is a new crane in our neighborhood, the mulitifamily home project is finally underway. 

I guess this is also a chance to brag about another purchase we recently made:  a Cannon EOS Rebel.  It is my first experience in the world of DLSR cameras, and I have to say, I am in love.  This photo was taken on night setting.  This is the first time I have been able to take a photo at night and have it come out.  With all my old cameras, even the night settings were not very useful, and I could only take pictures at night without flash, without moving, and a lot of luck.  This was my first night picture with the new camera, and well, it came out!  I know, not professional quality, but still exciting to me!

Recent home purchases

How on earth did I not post about this before?  Pottery Barn, one of my hands down favorite stores, sent me an email a few weeks ago, with a 10% off your order code.  I have NEVER received anything like this from PB, so I got to work looking for things that we need for our house.  We need lots of stuff, so it wasn't hard to find things.  It was hard to narrow things down, and hard to turn things away.  I don't really need to buy curtains yet, we don't have windows.  We have one set of sheets, but need a matching duvet cover, and we have one duvet cover that needs sheets.
But, in the end, here's what I got:

Image from PotteryBarn.com


I have been lusting after Pottery Barn's Daily System for quite some time now.  Recently, Joern and I have realized that we need a cork board, and some more calendars.   The Daily System would really meet our needs, but we currently have no room in our apartment for such a large and very useful wall.  When I noticed that Pottery Barn was running a current special offering 20% off the Daily System, I knew my days without this were surely numbered.  And when I got the email offering 10% off purchases, including sale items, I knew it was time to make the Daily System mine.  It will go in Joern's office, which by the way, I am trying to find a small place for myself in the office too.  I am so excited, and so happy to have made another super-cool purchase for our house!!












 

Dear Blogger

You stink!  I am trying so hard to post every day, with pictures, so that I don't fall too far behind.  I'm already a day behind because I lost the camera card with Friday's pictures.  Today, I can't upload pictures.
Thanks a lot!

On Friday, they removed the forms from the walls, so we have free-standing cellar walls.  Sorry, can't post pics.
Today seemed a little slow, but not sure if that could have been any different.  They completed the forms for the front wall of Joern's garage.  Tomorrow, it looks like they'll the front of Joern's garage, and then put the forms up for the front of my garage, and maybe for the foyer as well.  Again, sorry, no pics.  But it is so cool to see the changes happening to our house!

Joern also picked up a sample of the wood floor today.  He also arranged to get samples of the master bath tile and the tile in the powder room. FUN!  While Joern was in Reutlingen picking up samples, he stopped at a store that sells fireplaces.  It turns out that we might just be able to afford to install a nice fireplace during the building process and not in a few years.  This is especially useful, as we plan to use the fireplace to support the air heat pump for hot water.  Exciting!

The end of week 6!

Week 6 of our building exprience has now come to an end.  Despite many people believing that this process is quite slow, I am so surprised when I think back to the fact that five weeks ago the end of the day brought some scratches to the topsoil. 
Just a quick recap of the past 6 weeks:

End of the day, August 27th.  The digging has started.

End of the  day, September 3, excavation is complete!

End of the day, September 10.  Gravel put down and footings installed.

End of day, September 17.  Slab completed for garages and foyer, preparations for slab for house.

September 24.  Concrete slab being poured for house.

October 1, exterior cellar walls are free standing!

Joern also met with a representative from Deutsche Bank.  They are one of two banks we are considering to be our mortgage lender.  What is so attractive about this bank is their ability to guarantee the interest rate for 25 years, which in Germany, is a big deal, as most mortgages last 10 years, and then you need to either pay off the mortgage or refinance.
Here's what Joern explained to me:
- despite locking in for 25 years, we are also allowed to leave the mortgage in 10 years.  We can either pay off the mortgage in 10 years, refinance if the interest rate is better, or stay with this mortgage.
-we are allowed to pay an extra 5% annually on the mortgage without any penalty.
- because we are locking in for 25 years, we will be paying a higher interest rate, 4%, but the positive is that if the interest rate has gone up in 10 years, we're still paying a low 4%.
- this mortgage is a simple, classsic mortgage.  The other bank is offering us a two-part mortgage, one half would be classic mortgage, the other half would be a building-savings contract, so this one is a little more transparent.

Our walls

The builders worked hard on Wednesday putting up the forms for the cellar walls.  They spent the morning on Thursday, finishing up preparations for the forms.  At 1 pm on Thursday, the concrete truck arrived and they began pouring the remainder of the exterior cellar walls.

As of Thursday afternoon, all of the structural walls for the outside of the cellar are complete!

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!