Welcome to our life!

Hi, I'm Allison! I'm a thirtysomething, freshly baked, stay-at-home mom. I'm originally from Connecticut, now living in Germany, hence the name of the blog. I live in southern Germany with my German husband and our baby boy. Life has turned out to be nothing I ever expected, and am so incredibly happy with it! We certainly do have a lot of laughs! I hope you will enjoy following our new experiences raising a little half American/ half German in a little German town.

Mittwoch, 7. September 2011

Sprinting to the "finish" line

Well friends, faithful readers, as of yesterday, we began the "end phase!"  Yes, the "end phase."  The house has come from a hole in the ground to the point where everything being done now is the interior finishing. 
"Cute Tile Guy," began yesterday.  From here, we are looking at 2-3 weeks of tiling, 2 weeks of plaster work/ painting, plumbing fixture installation, 1 week of wood floors, and the kitchen.  Kitchen is the last thing to go in before us.  We're looking at about 3 more months total.  But this is the exciting stuff!  From here on out, the house is coming together, the accumulation of all of our hard work and stressful decisions.  We're obviously freaking out excited!
Yesterday's job by cute tile guy was all prep work.  He installed water barriers underneath the tiled floor master shower and the bathtub. 



He also installed drywall along the back of the vanity and behind the bathtub.



We also now have in our possession the majority of tiles!

Our cellar tiles that Joern had to pick up and offload.  That was a lot of lifting!

And the rest of the tiles, from the tile showroom, that were definitely offloaded with a crane:




Although, I do believe that we have not yet received the tiles for the floor in the master bath.


Besides the tile flooring, our salesman from the floor company stopped by yesterday.  He needed to make measurments and to check that the floor is indeed dry enough to lay the parquet. 

The guys who laid the "Estrich," that concreteish material on top of the radiant heating tubes put little "markers" in the floor, marking easy places for the flooring companies to come and remove a section to measure the humidity level in the floor. 

They removed a small section on the first floor and a small section on the second floor, and put each section into a special instrument that measures how much humidity is in the concrete.





The good news is that the floor is pretty much dry now, so it will be fine at the beginning of October, the tentative begin date for the floors.

The salesman also spoke with us about a solution for our hearth.  Joern was vehemently against tiling the hearth in front of the fireplace, insisiting on a glass plate.  The only thing that the salesman warned against the glass plate is that we will be forever bumping into a raised surface and stubbing our toes.  For someone with arthritis in their toes, the act of stubbing my toes usually ends up with me in crying jags because the pain is just unbearable.  He suggested a solution of removing one of the bottom layers of parquet in the area surrounding the fireplace, this would take about 6 mm off the height of the parquet.  Then, we will install a 6 mm thick glass plate in the lowered section, which will give us a seamless, glass-covered hearth.  Genius, I tell you!

The floor was officially ordered today, although we still haven't made a final decsion on the stairs.  Really, stairs aren't a big deal though, and we could even move in before the stairs are covered.  And part of me would prefer to move in first, just so no one drops any of our lovely, very heavy furniture on our stairs.  The stairs are ultra-expensive, and we're now considering only putting parquet on the stairs heading up to the bedrooms, and using tile instead on the stairs heading up from the basement.  I am also undecided as to whether I would like wood only on top of each step, and painting the concrete a high-gloss white on the rise, or if it is better to completely cover the rise and steps.  I'm not going to stress about this decision, nor do we want to rush the decision.  Here, we have time.

Well, that's it.  The beginning of the end.  Of course, the house will be nowhere near complete when we move in either, but this is the beginning of the end of the uninhabited time in our house's story!

3 Kommentare:

Steffi hat gesagt…

Darling! This is your "baby blog". :-)
But great you hear that you guys are getting there. Stefanie

gruberstoni hat gesagt…

freue mich mit euch das ihr auf der Zielgeraden seid! Das mit der Glasplatte ist eine seht gute Lösung wir haben viele Kunden die ihre Glasplatte wieder entfernen haben lassen weil sie sich die Zehen anstoßen und weil Staub und Holzreste unter die Glasplatte rutschen und man sie dann sieht, nicht schön :(. Aber euere Lösung ist super!:) Bei der Treppe würde ich mich gegen Holz entscheiden auch wenn es schöner aussieht. In unserem alten Haus hatten wir eine Holztreppe und mit Socken ist diese extrem rutschig :(
Freue mich schon auf Fotos der gefliesten Bäder!
Liebe Grüße aus der Oberpfalz Madeleine

JoernandAllison hat gesagt…

Thanks Stefanie! Either this is "baby brain," or tired Allison after working this week. Whatever, I'm a little embarassed :)

Madeline- thank you for the comments! Yes, I am super excited about the glass plate, it seems like the best solution! As far as the slippery stairs, our other option is tile- which is just as slippery. If we find we can't live with our wood stairs, we can always install a carpet runner. But, I always wear hard-soled slippers and Joern has to find something, and I see lots of "grippy" kids socks in our future. I'm looking forward to seeing our tiled bathrooms!!!

Now, to figure out how to get this thing over to the other blog!