Timber frame

I might have mentioned this before, but underneath all the plasterboard and whatnots is a timberframe house (Fachwerk). Every now and again bits of it peek through when we knock off plaster.

Werner went to the town archives this week to look at papers which date the house as much older than originally thought.

Although it's still not 100% sure it is now thought that the house was built in 1896!!

More on this later.....

Changing face

The front of the house is changing subtly. Yesterday we got a window sill - if you can still call it that when it's so high up.

Soon the bricks will get plastered, and then painted and then no one will ever know that there was a pink door there.

BTW although it looks crooked, it's not. It's the street that is crooked / sloping down.

And the bedroom window has come back and now has a mechanism that allows it to be tipped open :-)

No more seeping water?

The water seeping into the cellar was not coming from the pipes that run out of the house but from the main pipe under the driveway that they ran into.

Mr Burger (that may not be quite the right way to spell his name) has dug up a little bit more of the drive and replaced a bit of broken pipe. Hopefully that was it.

Today he's going to fill the hole up again. The photo shows the old pipes coming out of the house and a new piece of mains pipe.

Bye bye pink office door

With the idea of turning our house into a house and not a flat above offices, we have removed the pink office door. It used to lead in from the street to the offices, bypassing the 'real' front door.

Now it will become the wall of the spare room.

The work is obviously only half completed and currently it looks like the house has been vandalized as the window man has also taken one of the bedroom windows to his workshop to replace the opening mechanism which only opens wide and doesn't tip (not very useful when it's a ground floor window that opens onto the street).

Hopefully when he brings it back it will tip too.

Cherry picker

We briefly had a cherry picker this morning. It was required to put up some kind of chimney on both sides of the roof.

It would have been useful earlier this summer to pick the real cherries off the tree.

Curtain challenges - how to keep out the sun and the street light

After two visits to Möbel Rieger, many hours and much measuring we have chosen and ordered curtains for the ground floor and first floor. The bedroom curtains need lining to make sure that no light comes through. These things need careful checking in the shop .....

Looking for the leak

If you remember, there were a few wobbly moments before we bought because of the water in the cellar.
Through a freak coincidence which involved Zoe not washing the paint brushes thoroughly, Werner washing them in the downstairs toilet sink, and me at that time looking down into the cellar, we discovered that the water (coloured white from the paint) seeping into the cellar comes from the sink in the downstairs toilet.

Since then, many men have turned taps on and off while other men removed the manhole cover in the drive and put their heads and hands down into the hole, with the result that they decided we would have to dig up the drive and find the leak in the pipe and possibly replace that bit of pipe.

Today a man came with a little green digger and made a medium sized hole.

Then he went away again (leaving his digger) because there's nothing wrong with the water pipes he exposed.


The plumber man sucked through his teeth, shook his head and said he would have to dig up the tiled toilet floor. But not today. Then he got in his little van and drove away leaving me with a digger and a hole.


More to follow soon, I hope .....

Green news

If you want to hide from the world, become a cricket (or a grasshopper or whatever it is).

Good news

We have a buyer for our flat!
Hoorah!

More Sunday work

This Sunday we realised that if we want to tile and repaper the toilet we have to remove the old walpaper. As with all the previous decorating and building proceedures in this house, it wasn't done in the usual way. Who puts silicone up underneath the wallpaper? And why?

Anyway, werner got to use a spikey thing out of his strange tool collection. Which may have made him happy had he not then realised that he had to do the same to the bathroom downstairs too.

I swept up, pulled out a zillion pins that used to hold in the skirting boards and cut the blackberries back and went down the road to Subway to get lunch. Girly stuff. At least I get to drive to the dump again tomorrow morning.

Garden Sept 19th

We took laminate and lino samples to the house today and have pretty much choosen what we'd like to have on the floors. Photos to follow whenever we get that far.
In the meantime here are some taken in the garden late this afternoon...

This is a climbing hortensia (which sounds nicer than hydrangea) - there're a couple of these and they're a bit more delicate and possibly prettier than the normal bushy type.


A general garden view from east to west (the funny double socket thingy at the bottom of the photo os going to be replaced with one that should really go in the garden - and it probably won't hang loose like this one does).


This is zebra grass which grows under the wisteria and next to a yellow strongly perfumed rose.


And this is a funny grass whose name I don't yet know.

there are loads of these bushy roses and they keep on flowering and flowering. Which is nice.

Kreuzspinne

This is a European Garden Spider (Kreuzspinne in German) and it lives near the front door (not a photo from the internet this time, but from the garden). This is how it hangs around waiting for flies - head down.

Outside looking in

Today is a day of many appointments:

architect, electrician, window maker, carpenter, another carpenter, and the kitchen planner. And that was just this morning.

While we were in the (future) kitchen a jay bird sat just outside on the tree next to the window watching us with curiosity. Couldn't get my camera before the next door cat crept up and frightened it away but here's a screen grab of a jay from the internet.

Dungeons and dragons

What is holding Werner's and Veit's interest in the cellar?

And what would happen if I pulled up the ladder while they're down there taking photos of the hole and the pump?

And who made that hole in the wall?

Back to basics

The bucket is where the shower is going to be. If we run out of money we could just leave it there.

Mosiacs

Who made all that mess in Zoe's future kitchen / dining room?

It's ..... Hilti Man!!!

Things to do on Saturday

Such as cut the ivy. Again.

Remove the rest of the (dusty) flooring,

and put it in a tall pile

(after which I have muscle-ache in places I didn't know I had muscles!).

Secret attic

Last week we found a secret attic. Not where you would expect it to be - under the roof for instance. No, this one is between the ceiling of the ground floor and the floor of the first floor and only above the hallway and toilet area. But still, it's big enough to store the Christmas decorations and similar items that we only use once a year or so. And it houses new water pipes which made Mr Muhleis, the plumber, happy.
The orange and brown things are old inner tubing. Unfortunately there wasn't any real treasure hidden there just an old box with ink and a printing pad. Maybe there was some secret forgery going on up there or simply an eccentric artist who hid his tools from his wife.

Trucks and vans and skips...

... all of them fit in the road/path in front of the house (although it doesn't leave much space for the people walking by).

Naked kitchen

Möbel Strobel sent two men to remove the old kitchen. Now we have a naked kitchen!

View from the deckchair

This is the current view from the deckchair with the magnolia tree in the foreground.

Life in the magnolia tree

After I'd taken two car loads of rubbish to the dump yesterday and then hoovered the car for an hour or so to get rid of the building dust I sat in the garden on the yellow deckchair with a take-away coffee from the shop across the road. the blackbird baby seems to have left the magnolia tree now. Instead the tree is now inhabited by great tits who tweet loudly at me and nuthatches who run up and down the branches comically.
I still haven't got my camera back so here are images of the birds from the internet.

Noises in the cellar

.... is this your worst nightmare???

Axeman revealed

Luckily we remembered to get the ladder first before Werner went down into the cellar with the axe. The ancient crumbly wooden wood-wormy stairs fell apart rather easily and are now in the skip outside the house. Stahlbau Nägele are making us nice new metal stairs which should arrive around end of October. Till then there's a piece of wood across the door warning people not to fall down into the cellar/dungeon.

BTW we wanted to start earlier today but got diverted by havinng to rescue a budgie. It flew onto our balcony almost straight into Ella the cat's mouth. Werner took it off her while I ran down to get our old gerbil transport box which we took it to the animal rescue centre in. Amazingly it seems ok. Ella is still moaning at me for taking away her toy.

Kitchen quiz

Even without photos here are the latest developments:
We have planned the kitchen. It took,... actually, I'm not going to say. Instead here's a multiple choice quiz (you can write your answers in the comments box by clicking on the pencil).

A new small kitchen costs:
a) 2,000 euros
b) 12, 000 euros
c) 20, 000 euros

A kitchen planning appointments takes:
a) 8 hours
b) 80 minutes
c) 8 days

Delivery time is:
a) two weeks
b) 2 months
c) can't remember cos there was too much other information

The kitchen will be:
a) dark brown and white
b) knotty pine
c) chrome and glass

The colour of the floor will be......... (suggestions please)

still no camera

I sent my camera off to be repaired 7 weeks ago (the lens is stuck out and won't retract). It still hasn't come back. They say they're waiting for a part. So, I'm not taking as many photos as I would like as I'm relying on borrowed camera or other people.

In any case, we decided to goaway for the weekend to Strasbourg to celebrate Werner's birthday and to have a weekend off from renovations.

Here are a couple of funky night time photos tthat Werner took of the Petit France area of the old town. Just the place for a stroll after a French curry.