A few small jobs

Last weekend I managed to get around to doing a few small jobs. A couple of things were annoying me - not just because they hadn't been done yet, but because there were boxes of stuff lying around and I wanted to get rid of them. The first job that needed doing was the fire extinguisher. I don't know how many times I knocked the box with the extinguisher over. We had a bit of trouble deciding where to put the thing at all (we have a small one in the kitchen, so it didn't necessarily have to go in there too). In the end we decided to put it on the back of the chimney stack - i.e. in the corridor between my office and Eileen's room. It is now pretty much hidden from 'normal sight' (come to think of it, maybe that isn't such a good thing) but it is still easily accessible. Hopefully we'll never need it, but as they say, it's better to have it.

Another job - or rather two jobs - that badly needed to be done were the lights on the outside. Uli had left two cables through the insulation on the outside, so all that really had to be done was to install the lights themselves. One of the lights was a sensor light, which only comes on if (a) it is dark enough and (b) somebody passes by the front door. The problem here was that I had to turn off the electricity at the fuse box as there was no switch (with a sensor you don't need a switch). Once I figured out which fuse it was, it was quite easy to install the light. The other light is to the left of the balcony door (looking in). Luckily, there is a switch there, so I didn't have to turn off the electricity - just the switch. The light itself was pretty much the same as the one by the front door (except for the sensor) and so it was equally simple to install. The end result is quite nice, I think. The bulbs are E27 800 Lumen LED - both 11W. I don't imagine they'll be on all that much - although in summer, if sitting outside, it could be on for quite a while on some nights.

Electrics, planning and a polish blacksmith

We are still not completely finished with the electrics. As I wrote in the last post, we are running on two of three phases - which is entirely possible and plausible thought not desirable. We want all three. Plus, I'm not sure whether or not the damage to the existing (and hidden) main cable is limited to one or two phases. For peace of mind, the replacement cable needs to be installed. This morning I tackled the job of threading the cable into the main fuse box. This was in no way easy. The cable itself is too thick and stiff to thread through the small hole, so I had to strip the protective insulation skin off it and de-tangle the five wires. I could then thread each wire individually through the hole. After a lot of pushing and shoving I finally got it through. Thus, it should now be relatively easy to actually connect up the replacement cable.

As well as that, I just ordered more linseed oil varnish - the same colour as what I used on the beams in the kitchen and in Eileen's room and the guest room (a kind of reddish brown). The idea is that I will varnish a leftover beam (it needs to dry first). Then I will fix it to the wall in the corner of the kitchen (vertically, floor to ceiling). Then I'll bore deep holes into it every thirty centimeters - the idea being that a wine bottle could be pushed in to the hole and it should stay suspended in the air - almost horizontal, but not quite - so the cork is covered with liquid and doesn't dry. The leftover beam I have is not quite long enough, so I'll have to join it to another beam. Then I'll need to figure out how best to fasten it to the wall. If it works, we'll (a) hide the gap between the white wall and the brick wall in the kitchen and (b) get ourselves a useful wine rack.

Sandra ordered a metal tree from a polish blacksmith. I was a bit sceptical of the whole plan, but when the piece came, it was clear that it was quite good quality. It is a kind of a clothes rack, shaped like a tree. It had five metal rings through which screws fasten the whole thing to the wall. It took me about five minutes to fasten to the wall - thanks to the Makita drill with hammer action.

Lastly for today, we're still planning the gallery. As well as the linseed oil varnish, I bought 20L of whitewash for the brick wall at the back of the gallery. I have to scrub the wall with a wire brush first, to remove all the loose dust. Then I'm going to point it - roughly the same as the kitchen. Then I'm going to paint it white. It needs to be painted because there are too many bad bricks and gas concrete bricks in it. Hopefully, they'll all disappear underneath the whitewash and I'll be left with a nice white brick wall, with blackened beams crossing it. We'll see...

A month on...

Now it has been over a month since we moved in. A couple of 'teething problems' needed to be sorted out and still need to be sorted out. For example, getting the heating working properly was a bit of an issue. The heating company made a reasonable decision on how to heat the radiators (our second heating zone, the first being the underfloor heating). However, they hadn't reckoned with Alois. He heats downstairs with timber - an oven in the kitchen and a stove in the living room. Because he likes it toasty warm downstairs, immediately upstairs (the bedrooms and office)  get warm as well. Coupled with the radiators, it was too much, so now the radiator zone is turned off. It is still bordering on too hot.

Another issue with the heating system is coupled with a problem with the electrics. After Christmas we started having power cuts. It turned out that the main conduit from the electric meter downstairs up to our separate electric distribution box (the one with the fuses) was somehow damaged. Two of the three phases were shorting, and constantly tripping the main (50A) fuse downstairs - i.e. cutting out the power

completely. Since then I bought another cable to do the job - a big thick stiff cable which was wicked hard to bend, but which should easily deal with any power running through it. Whereas I was able to run the cable along the floor of the gallery (still OSB) with the other pipes (i.e. pretty much hidden), down through the hole in the corner of the living room floor (with the rest of the heating, electric and network cables), along the floor of the party room and out through the wall to connect up with the rest of the cabling, I still had to cut a channel about a metre long into the freshly plastered (and painted) wall (you can see it in the picture). I also had to cut through the outside plaster to get the cable to the box. Petermaier will have to come and plaster it up again as soon as the weather gets a bit warmer.

Other than that, our shower is finally finished. It was finished well before Christmas, but the glass wall was missing, meaning that it was hard to use. The week before last, the company came around to put it in. It was very heavy.  The cats have discovered that the underfloor heating is warmest in the bathroom (probably because of the tiles) so they are almost always to be found lying on the floor near the shower.

The next delivery is going to be our couch(es). I called up the company the other day and they confirmed it is going to be calendar week 8 - roughly the middle of February. It's a bit unfortunate it took so long - I can't hang the television on the wall until the couch comes. Otherwise I won't know what height to hang the television at. We got a new television about three weeks ago. The old one (a 32") is going to go into the guest room (also hanging on the wall). I need to get the right screws for it though.

Other than that we put up some pictures in Eileen's room and generally made it look

more like a child's bedroom. I also ended up painting a bit of a wall again, after Eileen coloured it red with crayon. We started working on getting the guest bedroom into shape as well. The shape of the room made is a bit of a puzzle as to how to turn the bed and the presses to make is some way logical. The presses are the old ones that were in the house before we started renovating. A bit of a cleaning and they were ok-ish. I still think they need to be stripped and re-varnished. My office is also pretty much finished. There is still to much stuff in boxes there for my liking (waiting on their final destination), but it's fine to work in. Below are some pictures.

Dr. Schutz to the rescue

 It looks kind of like Murphy puked on the floor at regular intervals. This stuff is Dr. Schutz's amazing floor cordial. It is a tenside polymer bonding agent that forms a protective layer on top of vinyl floors. Bloody expensive too. It is applied undiluted on a floor which is either just put in, or which has been washed and polished three times. Ours is the latter. I washed and polished it three times last night. Strangely, even after the third wash, it looked as though there was (still) a very thin film of dust on the floor. Sven put in the floor in the corridor between the kitchen and the bathroom yesterday, so it was easy to see the difference between a really new floor and a floor which - albeit was washed three times - was a couple of weeks old. I was a bit worried about sealing the floor with Dr. Schutz in case I ended up just creating a sealing layer on top of the dust. It worked out fine though - the downside being nobody can walk in the living room until later today. At least three hours, preferably more. 

 The result is quite good, I think. I'm still waiting for it to dry, to see what kind of "final finish" it has. In the picture on the right it looks like a high gloss finish, but it isn't really - at least, it shouldn't be. The Dr. Schutz film is still wet. You can kind of make out the direction it will go in, though. Below is one more photo of the living room, with Dr. Schutz applied. I couldn't move the table out, because there is no room in the kitchen (the chairs are in there) and I didn't want to put in on the balcony. On top of that, it is too heavy. I ended up working around it, then moving it. We should soon be able to move in more furniture. The couch won't arrive until mid February, so we'll have to find some way of bridging the next month. The electricity is working now too - ish. There are a couple of problems which need to be looked at.

Getting there...

 "In by Christmas" was always going to be a bit of a challenge. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "in" and what you mean by "Christmas". For all intents and purposes we are more or less "in" - in that we have heating, water etc. Most of the rooms are finished (for now) and just need a good cleaning. There is still painting to be done (especially the beams in the gallery - they received a coat of linseed oil paint to prime them but they need the black paint to match the other beams) and lots of acryl/silicone to be used around windows, doorframes, skirting boards etc. All relatively small jobs and nothing which would really hinder a full change of residence. The blockers at the moment are electricity and furniture.

Uli is already working on the electricity issue. All the wall sockets are done and ready. The lights are installed in the kitchen and bedrooms. The wall lights still have to go in and the thermostats for the underfloor heating. The biggest single thing that has to happen is for the main 64A connection to be connected to the mains. Once that is done, the lights come on and we're ready to go.

 I finally got around to getting the big window done. I was kind of procrastinating as much as possible with this one, which was not a good idea, given its height. On the last day I had the scaffolding, I decided to get a window sill from the carpenter in the same kind of material/colour as the other window sills. It was installed quickly and the whole window frame was painted white. I think this was the right choice. Black, to match the beams, would have given it a strange frame effect - like an obituary notice. The off-white colour of the boards in the ceiling would not really have suited either. Two coats of white paint, a cleaning and a dusting and the window is finished. I'm not looking forward to having to clean it at any time in the near future.

 The living room was finished too - you can't really get an idea of what it looks like from any of these photos. It is currently covered in dust, so it looks a lot older that it probably should. Tomorrow, it is going to get a good cleaning and a sealing (a kind of wax does this). We got a table and eight chairs as well - they are made from oak, which doesn't really match any of the timber in the house, but they were a great deal. Maybe we'll find an oak cabinet to match it at some stage.In the photo to the left the table and chairs are actually in the position they are supposed to be (permanently). The light arrived today too. It is to hang down from the purloin to about 2m above the floor. I'm hoping it will provide enough light not just for the table but also for most of that side of the room. We'll see.

 Niedermaier also finished up. He had to re-mount the radiators in the bedrooms (he had already taken them out so we could finish the painting). The bathroom had to be fitted out and the insulation had to be done in the attic (the copper pipes carrying hot water were not insulated, with the result that the attic was unbearably hot). The bathroom is now finished except that a glass shower wall has to be installed. The company responsible for this has already measured it and apparently it will be installed at the start of January. The good thing about it - the most important thing really - is that the shower water is immediately hot. No waiting three minutes, leaving cold water run down the drain (an expensive undertaking) - turn on, straight away hot water. The same applies to all the taps, so it seems as though that has worked out well.

Just photos

Kitchen floor done ,kitchen coming tomorrow

Sven started (and finished) the kitchen floor in a couple of hours this morning. The floor itself was delivered last week, when I was in Bologna. It was recommended that the floor be left open in the environment in which it would be installed - that way the floor would get a chance to expand to suit the humidity and temperature. In our case, that was a bit problematic as we were running the warm-up program for the underfloor heating. That program is on a downwards curve since late on Saturday night. The water temperature running to the floor is now at 30° (down from 45° last week) so the surface temperature is a little lower than that again. It was just about at the threshold where we could consider spreading the glue and setting the floor. The floor had to go in today, though, because the kitchen is coming tomorrow. The finished job looks quite well, I think. The italian travertine is nice and bright.

Chrisch was on site on Saturday and Sunday to sort out plastering in the bedrooms. The leveling coat was done with Rotband and the top coat on top of that was done with Hasit 150. The same kind of finish was applied as we used in the living room - when the last coat of plaster in on and still wet, a sponge roller with lots of little holes is used to give the wall the kind of cake-decoration finish. One thing I noticed about the finish in the living room was that the points tend to break off on contact. When the wall wasn't painted, that wasn't such an issue - however, when painted white, the broken off points appear gray. What I decided to do was to break off all the points myself before painting. The result is still quite appealing, but with the added advantage that it shouldn't break off anymore. Given that the living room was already painted, I ended up tearing open the points again, but it needs a last coat of paint anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Below are some more photos of how it looks. As you can see, I finished (the first coat) painting in the living room. The warm-up phase of the underfloor heating was so  hot, that it easily got rid of all the damp spots on the wall. You will also see that I got rid of the stairs up to the attic. There is a pull down ladder going to be installed there (hopefully tomorrow) and we want to finally finish the ceiling in the corridor. On the positive side, once the stairs was gone, we saw that the space in the alcove was actually quite big - it is exactly two metres wide. We still have to think of something to do with the space, though. Bookshelves, maybe.