More rooms

Tuesday morning, there were a few more walls up on the ground floor. This is the hall. The small room with the window is the guest toilet, and the slightly larger one to the right is a clothes closet.

Here “Mrs Pixel” is standing in the kitchen (a “remove-me–or-die”-edit :-)). One can also see the entrance to the hall and our bedroom. There will be a bedroom door near where the clothes closet wall ends.

Here we can see the wall separating the stairs from the office is also in place.

It will be very interesting when the stairs are put in place. It’s not easy visualizing from the blueprints how it will actually look. I hope it’s not too bulky.

The roof windows, and the wrong door

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.

Water and sewage

Me and Angelica made a quick visit to the house this morning, before work.

We noticed that two city workers was there digging a hole in the street, to hook the house up to the city’s water and sewage systems.

This was supposed to have been done a month ago, so when the builders needed water to mix the concrete glue used when building the outer walls, we had to ask the neighbors for water.

It was a good thing we where there, because they told us that “they would only run the pipes to the lot boundary, not all the way to the house. So we needed to connect them to the house ourselves”…

When we left we said to each other; “Wasn’t that exactly what the contractor said when doing the water/sewage-line installation in early January?”

We called him up, and yes, they had indeed already run their (our) end of the water/sewage pipes from the house out to the lot boundary, in order for the city to connect to them later.

Which of course meant that the city workers today should be connecting to the pipes already in place!

Our contractor said he would clear this misunderstanding with the city, and we assume that we saved ourselves a bit of trouble (another hole in the street) and money, by turning up at the house at the right time.

Panorama-o-rama

I got my hands on some software that could generate panoramas from a series of closely related pictures. Could not resist to make a few.

The garden…

Indoors… 

And we wish this was the view from our house, but it is from the nearby hills overlooking the Öresund strait. Isn’t it a nice view?

The first room

When we visited today, the walls of the first room was in place! It is the ground floor bathroom. Bastian checked it out, but was happier playing with the sawdust while dad took a million boring photos.

Beatrice wanted to help …

… gather a lot of sawdust, that is. ;-)

The roof tiles

As you can see, the roof tiles are almost laid now. The square “hole” is where the roof windows will be. The other side of the roof is also done, except for the two roof windows on that side.

The tiles turned out just the kind of medium gray we wanted, not too dark, and not too bright. It’s not the same to only see a few of them in a catalog, so we were happy they looked like we had hoped.

The Beam in the Eye

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.

Almost weatherproof

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! :-)

A Round Window in a Square Hole!

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! :-)

Visitors

OK, so the kids was not playing in the mud all the time of our last visit. They also wanted to do some inspection, just like us. Here they are checking out the roof from the outside. They seem to be quite proud of it now, when it looks almost like a real house.


Also it turned out that someone else was visiting the house beside us: The neighbours cat, which here does a death defying balancing act on the second floor. Without the floor.


Of course, now that both dad and the cat had been checking out the second floor, Bastian and Beatrice also wanted to see. So they bravely climbed a ladder to inspect their rooms. Here Bastian makes friends with the cat.


Beatrice also checked out her room. I think it is hard for them to picture what it will look like when it is an actual room here, instead of empty space without even a floor...


Here is a view of the livingroom, much like it will look from the second floor railing (which will be placed above the red beam). In the end there will be only the two triangular windows on the sides. The hole seen at the top is not supposed to be a window.

And here is how the roof frames look like from the inside after covering.


We initially thought we would have quite some room at the attic, with plenty of headroom, which was how it seemed on the initial sketches. Great, we thought, for storing things such as christmas stuff, or winter clothes. But now we realize that it will be a close to useless space.

Now, I think we will have a hard time even crawling there, because it will also be filled with a lot of insulation (60 cm / 24").

The Windows have been delivered

Another weekend means another day-time trip to the construction site. It snowed friday, but it has all thawed away by now. It's still fairly wet though, so Beatrice and Bastian used the opportunity to play around in the mud in the so-called garden, while mom and dad was busy examining the construction... But not too busy to capture this piece of evidence.

As if we needed more than the thick layer of mud on them afterwards, especially Bastian. He was so muddy we had to take his jacket off before he could sit in his kids seat in the car, and had it not been quite cold we would have taken his trousers as well.

While the kids played around, we saw that most, if not all of the windows had been delivered. Here you can see some of the custom made windows; the triangular ones for the upper windows in the living room, and behind them, the round one to be fitted in the now square hole between the kitchen and the living room (seen in the middle of the last picture here).

The rest of the windows and doors are standard items, although they are supposedly very energy efficient, with tree panes of glass, with argon gas instead of plain old air in the space between the panes.


We have a lot of glass surfaces (especially in the living room where I suppose these window doors will be fitted) so it was important for us to have good windows that does not radiate all of the heat out of the house during the winter.

The Roof again

Just a short post with a photo from this morning. As you can see, Dan the Builder and his colleague are almost finished making the roof ready for laying the roofing tiles.

Unrelated, but no less important, is the fact that it is my fathers birthday today! Happy 65:th birthday, dad!

The Topping Off

Before Christmas Bastian made a wreath at kindergarten. This came in handy now at the topping off yesterday, because traditionally at a "taklagsfest" you should hang one on the house for good luck.

I'm saying that it can't fail with this perfect wreath!

So yesterday we gave the builders a sandwich layer-cake ("smörgåstårta") and they hung our wreath at the gable. And it will hang there until it is time for the exterior of the house.
We hope that the cake was yummie and gave a lot of energy!

Then they continued covering the roof, preparing for the roofing tiles. Yesterday it was only Dan working, in hard wind, and he was just exhausted when I met him. The wind really can take all your stamina away!
But when the roof is complete, the rest of the job is indoors! (or in the beginning under a roof...)
The roofing tiles will be dark gray, looking something like this:

This is how it now looks from the inside.


Dan the Builder told us that they will be a team of two doing the tiling, but after that it will be mostly Dan himself that will build the rest of the interior walls and other joinery, in conjunction with other contractors coming in to do stuff like plumbing, electricity and painting (indoors and outdoors).

We also want to extend a huge congrats to my cousin Jonas and his Sara that surprised us today by telling us that they had married January 30th! Good luck and we hope to see you soon!

Roof frames 99% ready

We brought the kids here yesterday, all snoring and coughing due to our more than a week long flu. Thought we needed some fresh air...
So we took out our camera, and couldn't take a single photo due to that Martin had forgot the memory card in his computer.

Kids complaining about cold noses and hands, and we headed home again without mission completed!

But today we came prepared! Freezing cold and a bit windy too! Which quite frankly means that you are freezing your "beeeeeep" off!

With mittens, scarfes and caps we concuered the scaffolding!

You're probably not allowed to do so, but who will know?

Exciting and a bit frightening. More than me just holding on for dear life! The bloody thing moved!

A new picture of the beams in the living room. It will be so exceptionally nice! But of course I am biased!

Here Beatrice is looking into her room, thinking about her pink wall paper that she wants and fantasizing about not having to share a room with Bastian any longer. I had Martin climb around on a ladder inside the house also, but he claimed that I wasn't holding on properly and stomped down...
Who would you choose to look after? Two children or a fullgrown man?

I knew you would agree with me. It wasn't as if he ever was in any danger! Hrumpf!

This picture is taken through the bathroom upstairs. The "hole" where there's no beams is where the stair is supposed to come up later.
Followed by some more exterior pictures, one hiding our son Bastian. Martin also wanted to see if we could see our new house from the hills above Sundviken, so we took a small detour and took these LOVELY photos!! (oh yes, I am ironic!)

The first one showing where we live right now and where we will move. Notice the arrows pointing this out!

And then, for the finale, a close up! So tomorrow we will be topping off, "taklagsfest"
Cakes to bake and a wreath to hang!