Quick update (no pictures)

The last time I posted an update here was before we went to Ireland (i.e. before August 13th). That's quite a while ago. Since then, the plastering was finished. We now have two coats of paint on the west side (the gable) and the reveals and between the rafters (the visible ends of them) on the north side has also received two coats. Tomorrow evening we're hoping to get the first coat of paint on the north side.

This weekend is reserved for putting in the insulation for underneath the underfloor heating. I ordered 100 square metres of 4cm insulation boards and 100 square metres of 2cm silencer as well as 100 square metres of 0.2mm plastic sheeting and 100m of 15cm high foam for around the entire perimeter. First, the foam around the perimeter goes in (the idea being that the concrete floor should "swim" and should not be connected anywhere, to anything). Then the 4cm boards are installed. Perpendicular to these (and on top of them), the silencer boards are installed. Then the plastic sheeting gets rolled out. At that stage, I can call in Niedermaier to install and connect the underfloor heating. Once that is done, we should (finally) be able to get the concrete floor done.

First coat of plastering done today

Petermaier's men plastering the south side

Petermaier's men will finish the last wall of the house (the south/yard) today. They already had the east gable and almost half of the south side done when we left for Nuremberg at 13:00. What they have to do is to put a coat of Hasit Armierungsmörtel (the same mortar they were using to stick the insulation boards) directly on top of the styrofoam boards. A plastic mesh is embedded into the wet plaster. I'm not sure if they just embed the mesh or if they put another coat on top of it - whatever it is they do, the end result of this (second last) coat is that the wall finally starts to look like a house wall - i.e. plastered. Once the south side is finished this evening, Petermaier's men will go to another job for the rest of the week and the start of next week. The plaster needs a good eight days to dry properly, so there's no point in them sticking around. When they come back next week, they will put on one final coat - this will be a coat with 3mm stones in it. The final optic will be delivered with a sponge. Two or three days afterwards, the wall will be ready for painting. After that, we can finally get rid of the scaffolding.

The finish on the plaster on the inside

Inside, the plastering that Chrisch did in July has dried to a grey/white colour. I thought it might be possible to leave it that way, but it is too grey for my liking, so we are going to paint it white at some stage. The final effect of the plastering here was achieved with a sponge roller - it looked kind of like what you use for applying paint, but there were circular holes in the roller part. I tried to take a photo of it but the camera had difficult focusing.

I also finished the timber part of the drywalling in the bathroom. You might remember that we needed to case the west side of the bathroom as there were pipes for the sink and the toilet which needed to be under the tiles. It wasn't easy to do (the diagonal beam was not parallel to the existing timber paneling and the toilet was fixed to a plane of boards which was not quite parallel to the OSB and also a good 8cm further in). We need to slab the whole bathroom next (the greenback slabs are in the living room waiting to get put up). First of all, ten days in Ireland...

The north side has the second last coat applied already