Lights, cleaning...action

Today has been another progressive day. I had the help of the village asylum seeker who spent the day cleaning upstairs for the most part. I started the day by giving the downstairs beams a final sanding to remove any plaster that had spilled onto them.

I then gave the exposed stonework in the hallway and kitchen a final clean. These stones look lovely.

The plasterers returned again to give the fireplace its first coat of render. They will apply the second and final tomorrow.

With the help of one of the carpenters, We fitted the shower screen in the en-suite. I must say that the en-suite is just great.

Here is a Friday night summary. All upstairs rooms are clean including the windows and bathrooms. The downstairs bathroom is clean as is the guest room. The remaining rooms to clean are the lounge,kitchen and hallway.

Will we move on Saturday. I am up for it, but the other half has no plans....

Progress report...Lights, painting, furniture.

Lots of things have happened today. The telephone cable was attached to the house, and the plumber has now finished his work.

I completed the painting in the main en-suite today, and this only leaves the gangway to paint (yahooooo)

The carpenter delivered and fitted the sliding door for the kitchen as well as two other glass doors.

The electricians have fitted lights in Raphaels' room and the office, so now every room have lights in place.

Before lunch Reggie and myself built the wardrobe for Raphael, and after lunch I constructed two wardrobes in the master bedroom with the help of the asylum seeker who resides on our village. He is a wonderful man from Congo. So we have wardrobes in each room.

The kitchen company came again today, but have yet to complete their tasks. The kitchen is fully operational, and will be completed within the next two weeks.

Friday will be a cleaning day as well as more detailing. The front door needs some more fettling, and I need to fit a second piece of glass to create a double glazed unit.

Time to rest.....

Wednesday...A busy day...

Another productive day. It started with a meeting with the project manager and a cabinet maker. He will make a hospitality bar, and custom linen cupboard for the first floor landing.

This was followed by a visit by friends, which meant a guided tour and a coffee break. Soon after I painted the remaining two door frames, and then turned my attention to painting the undercoat in the en-suite. It will get its top coat on Thursday morning.

The electricians have been installing lights in each room, and it only remains for lights to be fitted in the living room, the room of Raphael, and the office.

The painters are speeding along. We have opted for an off white house with a kind of New England Barn red trim. The photos do not do it justice. Actually the photos make it look like a lap dancing club (oh yes that is in the next village).

The plasters have been working outside today. Because the house has been built in 3 stages, the back of the house had a weird combination of exposed beams and cement render. We have tried to balance things up.

The day is still still young. 6.00 pm. We are now about to head over to Germany to return some 12 packets of tiles, and 4 packets of parquet. We ordered too much. This is a nice feeling.

So what are our remaining tasks?

1. Paint the en-suite.
2. Re-assemble the front door fittings.
3. Clean the house.....
4. Build two more wardrobes
5. Move the furniture.
6. Install the glass shower screen.


mmmmm. I am sure that there is so much more.

Not a fag paper in it....

Today was always going to be a tough day. It started at 7.00 with a number of small tasks. I cut and replaced a roof tile, before moving on to the exciting task of carrying wardrobe components up x flights of stairs. What a joyous 3 hours.

The plasters appeared again, and appeared to undo previously completed work.

The electricians doodled about, and appear to just turn up to kill time. The tile layer returned to measure his work so as to calculate his bill. We got him to fix a couple of things.

The painters started on the exterior to the house. They started by washing the surface by hand, and checking the integrity of some of the old facade. Reggie and myself both agree that these painters really love their job.

After lunch we had an appointment with the cabinet maker to discuss the glass types for three doors.

On return to the house the parquet layer was just finishing. He has done a very nice job.

So as to not feel left out we started to assemble the wardrobes. The first being in the guest bedroom. We measured and measured again to ensure that we could get a 3m wide set against the back wall. What we did not take into account was that the house was built in 1678 and the room is by no means square.

The bottom line is that the wardrobe fits to perfection. You cannot get a fag paper down the side of it.


Once on a role our attention turned to the office cupboards. They are now assembled apart from the doors.

Tomorrow will see us assembling the wardrobe in Raphaels' room. Oh the joys. We are still planning to have our first house sleep on Saturday.

Sunday Sept. 25th 2009

So the lull before the storm is upon us. We have done very little in terms of preparation for a huge week. Today we visited the house with the brother and wife of Reggie. Whilst there the painter arrived with some colour samples for the house. I must say that this painter loves his job. The good news is that the external painting of the house begins tomorrow. This is wonderful news, but it also means that we have to get a wriggle on in terms of painting the window shutters.

So off to sleep now before the village bells strike into the next day. By the way, the village bells were paid for by Rosie and Paul, the deceased owners of the house. The bells are named after them, we have been told, and it is difficult to not think of them as they toll.

Back to work....

I have been away this past week on business, and it has been interesting how progress has been these past few days. I must say, that I am rather underwhelmed at the progress, and I will be cracking the whip on Monday. There actually has been some progress, and maybe I am just getting moving fever. The parquet is all but complete, and some more electrical progress has been made.

Some of the tasks for Reggie and myself to complete early next week, will be to paint the door frames, paint our en-suit (quick job), and paint the stair supports. In preparation of painting the door frames, I have filled the screw holes today.

The first piece of bedroom furniture has been assembled, and what a challenge it turned out to be. The wooden components of the furniture was ok, but the quality of the metal fittings left a lot to be desired.

The almost complete furniture is now complete (apart from one missing screw). Raphael will really enjoy it we hope.

Today I added some chemicals to the jacuzzi, and tested the heating. All appears to be tip top.

This week will be a huge week. I want to be lounging in the jacuzzi on Saturday night next week, and really have my heart on sleeping at the house that night.......Watch this blog....

Scaffolding......Coffee saga

The scaffolding has arrived today in preparation for the painting of the main house. This should start in about 2 weeks, and will take 2 weeks to complete.

We had a detailed discussion with the two painters today, and looked at some color scales and charts. I believe that it it does not matter how many charts you look at, you really need to find a house painted in the colors that you like. We have found such a place in Sissach.

The tile layer has just about completed the tiles around the fireplace, and these are looking very nice indeed. He can now turn his attention to the front steps.

This afternoon the glass screen for the main en-suite was delivered. I will try to get this installed on Friday to enable the tile layer to complete the tiling in there.

Everyone who visits the house tells us how nice it is, but we are not sure if they are just being polite or what. Reggie and myself are just too close to draw a conclusion, and Raphael does not want to visit the house, as he has been dragged there so often.

One of the ongoing sagas for us has been the purchase of of Miele Nespresso coffee machine. Easy task I hear you say. We thought so to until we purchased one. It arrived and much to our dismay it had the wrong surface finish (Aluminium) and a no return policy. We decided that we would sell it on the internet after we had found another one in Stainless steel. We found a stainless one. It was sent to us, but the firm made a mistake as it is the wrong model, and they do not have the correct one. So now we have 2 machines.

We then decided to change the Alu front for a stainless front ...cost...800CHF cripes...

Miele told us to find a broken machine with a stainless steel front. And this week after much trawling of the internet we have. Now we have 3 machines. We will send the wrong model back, we will replace the alu with the stainless from the defective machine, we will install it, and enjoy our coffee. The remainder of the defective machine we will keep for posterity.

Fireplace and floors

The parquet is now laid in the guest room, as well as Raphaels room. The tiler has been working on the fireplace. This now allows the flooring to be laid in the living room. Once the flooring is in we can then construct the wardrobes.

The electricians continue to work on the wiring and the fixtures. They will soon turn their attention to the workshop, garage, cow stall and barn. Today they fitted what can only be described as a full on server cabinet to house my small router. This will be changed for compact unit.

Reggie spent some more time on the old brick wall. We need to seal this with a a compound to stop the dust coating visitors as it does on a daily basis.

The kitchen designer paid a visit today to discuss the changes that need to be made to meet our specifications.

The cable man visited....let me explain. This not the tv signal supplier, but the person who will place cables on the stairways to stop people taking a tumble. We prefer these to regular banisters,

Lights. Action.....Jacuzzi

Quite a few workers at the house today. The parquet layer has started work in the guest room, and the tiler has returned to complete his tasks, as well as lay tiles around and in front of the fireplace.

The electricians are busy finalizing their internal work, and we now have lights in most locations and power to sockets.

The jacuzzi arrived late this afternoon from its original home in Geneva. The mode of arrival was a sizable truck with a super crane. The slab was already prepared, and the task of locating the object only took 20 minutes.

Tonight Reggie is taking advantage of the newly functioning lights, and is painting the kitchen.

By the end of he week we hope to have all of the tiling completed, the parquet finished, and the sun awning installed.

This should then leave us to clean and start installing wardrobes.

The weather is starting to turn chilly with the first frost expected this week. We will be happy to be in by the end of this month.

Sun blind, shade, awning.

Today was an early start. Up at 6.15 to go pick up Dani from the train station. Why so early you ask? We both had pick up projects near Zurich to perform. Dani had ordered a swing set for the family, and I had to pick up the a second hand sun awning.

We set off in the Discovery with the trailer in flat bed mode. The trip was uneventful to the first location apart from the new Westring system near Zurich. This comprises many tunnels which in turn confused both the gps system and the driver and added some time and distance to the drive. On arrival we loaded the components of the swing set, and headed off for the sun awning.

The awning is 5M wide and extends out 3.2 metres. This should prove to be useful for future outdoor events.

The early start did nothing for my energy level, but the children from Dani and Sarah were happy with their new swings by mid afternoon.

Wonder Wall

Today we built the glass brick wall comprising 56 bricks. This has been a really fun project from inception through to completing the build today. It started off with discussions with the architect many long months ago. We always had to overcome the challenge of the amount of light streaming into the first floor landing. This area links each of the bedrooms and office as well as the staircases. The challenge was to construct an en-suite that allowed light into this area. Urs proposed a high level milk glass window, and it was very easy to take the next step to glass bricks.

Once the decision had been made we had the task of sourcing the materials, as well as concluding the framing construction. The bricks we purchased in Germany. We were amazed at the price discrepancy between suppliers, varying in range from 14 Euros per plain brick down to 2 Euros. We also purchased some coloured bricks (8) which complement the wall tiles in the en-suite.

Reggie did a wonderful job designing the pattern on an Excel table, which enabled flexibility in various designs.

So the wall is built, and short of grouting we are very happy.

The tile layer has made plans to finish the fireplace early next week. The parquet will be laid next week, so we can really think about moving in....And then we can plan a party.

Granite, paint and fixes

The granite for the kitchen bench and splash-backs arrived today. This was fitted in the afternoon when no-one was home. The bench is super, and for the most part the splash-back too. The exhaust fan was fitted yesterday above the cook-top, but this was fitted too low. The result of this is that the granite has been cut to fit this exhaust fan....We are very unhappy with the kitchen company right now.

They have also made a design error with the fitted fridge freezer. Things need to be changed...and quickly.

Reggie wielded a paint brush today, as well as completing some fine detail work on the great wall.

The under floor heating system is now operational, which is lovely.

We are really in the home run. We will have the parquet fitted throughout the house early next week, and work will be completed on bathrooms and the fireplace.

One of the tasks to be completed on thursday is the multi coloured glass brick wall....watch this space.

A week away....

Just returned from a week away on business. There has been some progress, but not too much which is rather frustrating.

The flooring has not been laid, and the granite for the kitchen has not yet appeared. To top that off the plumber has broken a pipe which drains the spa bath in the en-suite, and of course the part cannot be had in Switzerland. In American football terms, it could be called a negative gain.

The painting in the kitchen is not yet complete, but this will be done in the next 2 days.

The plumbers have been attempting for the third time to locate the air extractor in the kitchen. They have cobbled together a solution and in doing so have damaged the wall. Great news......

I now need to go and get a glass of red.

Bye or now