Finally the front door have been installed. Initially the wrong type of door was delivered, but now we’ve got the correct one!
The sidelight does let in a lot of light, which is nice. The less electrical lighting the better…
The wood details are nice, too.
A lot of work has also been done with painting, flooring, and tiling the house, but that’s for another post.
Today was the first time we actually was able to enter the second floor (by ladder)! This is the resulting picture. One can also see where the stairs will enter the second floor hall.
And this is the nice view out of the rightmost window (at least if one disregards the ugly red/yellow signs at the grocery store – lets hope they are bought by a grocery chain with subtler coloring!).
If it the weather had been clearer we would have seen Denmark, and the southernmost part of the island Ven, including the steep hills known as “Backafall” mentioned in the poem “Vid vakten” (1917) by poet Gabriel Jönsson who lived not far from here. The poem was set to music in the 50’s and became a very popular song; “Flicka från Backafall” from a movie based on the story of the poem (a sailor on a long voyage in the Caribbean longs for his girlfriend at home). I think I remember my mom singing it to me when I was little (*snivel*)
So, what was I saying again? Oh, yeah, one will be able to see Ven from here :-)
This Friday afternoon, it was sunny and we took this nice picture from the scaffolding outside, of the sun shining through the windows on the second floor. I think these large southeast-facing windows make all the difference!
When visiting the house, it seemed that the doors was in place. We also saw that the roof windows on the side was in place.
This is what it looked like from the inside.
It was not until we came inside, that we noticed that the rest of the roof windows (including the window balcony) had also been installed.
We also saw that the front door was not in place, only the side light, and some provisory boarding in order to keep the weather out.
It turned out that the wrong door had been delivered, the one we got had the wrong kind of windows in it - a single round one, instead of three squarish ones. And it was supposedly a six week delivery time on the doors. We’ll have to wait and see.
The side door (no picture) is currently what they call a “construction door”; in order not to ruin the real door they put in a temporary one during the construction, so that it does not matter if it gets dented or scratched. I assume our construction door had been in use somewhere else, because it was quite scarred already.
So, this weekend we will not be able to get into the house, because it will be locked up, and we will actually not get the keys until the entire house is finished.
Of course, if we visit during working hours, and ask nicely, Dan the Builder might just let us in to take a few more pictures.
Seldom do I quote the bible, but it seems appropriate here, sort of.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Matthew 7:5
When looking around the house early February, after the roof frames was put in place, we could not help but noticing one tiny little detail in the living room, that stood out as being, shall we say, “a beam in the eye”.
Perhaps you can spot it too?
Indeed, we’ve done the drawings of the house ourselves - but those drawings was drawings of the desired floor plan, and of the desired exterior of the house, and contained no construction details like, say, the placement of the roof frames relative to the windows. We’ve had no other requirement here than the living room being open to the second floor.
Those drawings have been made into proper construction blueprints by the general contractor, and supposedly looked over by a proper architect and a proper building constructor. One might think they would have spotted a thing like this? Note that the beam does not even look like the other ones, it’s much thinner.
We obviously have told the general contractor we are not happy about this, and they are “looking into a solution”, as they say. (Please note that Dan the Builder is not the constructor, so no blame on him.)
If we’re lucky, they will be able to completely remove the beam, without compromising the stability of the house. We’ll just have to wait for the general contractors solution proposal, I guess.
Now most of the windows have been fitted. The ones still un-fitted are the roof windows, because they have yet to cut out holes in the roof.
This is what a corner of the living room looks now like. Considerably less “construction site”, and more “room”, don’t you think?
And this is the long side of the house.
Note the absence of the front door. The doors have not yet been delivered, so the front door and the side door is what currently remains in order to get a weatherproof house.
I imagine Dan the Builder & Co really looks forward to this, because it is quite chilly now in mid February, mostly windy and temperatures bouncing above and below freezing.
A thin layer of snow also fell yesterday, as you can see.
Of course, before they can stay mostly inside, they have to face the freezing cold climbing around the roof putting the roof tiles in place. I’m not envying you, Dan! :-)
We took a few moments to visit the house this morning after dropping of the kids to school , and we found that Dan the Builder and his colleague have somehow managed to fit our round window nicely into what used to be a square hole in the wall!
It looks really, really good already, if I may say so! And this is even now without the paint.
When the rough edges are smoothed out it will look great from the inside too. We hope it will be eye-catching when you turn around the corner from the entrance.
Dan told us that when they fitted the window, a small boy and his mom walked by outside, and the boy shouted “Look, a round window!”
So I guess it’s eye-catching from the outside as well! :-)
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