All rooms have walls

For the first time in weeks we visited the house yesterday afternoon, and took some pictures.

We have been busy with the children being ill and home from school, and at the same time deciding a million details for the house, such as electricity (number and placement of outlets, switches, dimmers, spotlights, indoor and outdoor lamps etc.), plumbing (placement of the upstairs radiators, type of faucets etc.), tiling for bathrooms and kitchen, finalizing the layout and design of the kitchen (number and placement of drawers and cabinets) and so on…

All rooms now have their walls. They are still open to one side, so the electrician can do his job next week, putting wires in the walls.

The most fun was seeing the rooms on the second floor. One can now walk around safely upstairs, because there is now a floor. Still no stairway though. It will be one of the last things installed, because it will stand on the parquet flooring, which is not to be installed for months.

This is the upstairs bathroom (to the left) and one of the bedrooms.

Here a few pictures turning left in the upstairs hall.

We decided on much larger windows facing south, and they really do let in a lot of light!

The only one who didn’t like these windows was Dan the Builder, but that was just because the window balcony were complicated to install, with lots of parts.

As a comparison, here are the normally sized windows on the opposite wall.

Here is a better view of the two side-by-side bedrooms.

This is how one of the three upstairs bedrooms look, they are all the same.

The Late Mr. Beam

Those of you who read this post know that there was a small problem with an unfortunate placement of a beam that obstructed the view out of the upper living room windows.

This situation has now been resolved, as you can see!

I’m not entirely sure what the did beside simply removing it, but we’re really happy they did. From the outside, sitting on top of my shoulders, this is what the upper windows now look.

And this is the one taking the picture above ;-)

Painting is virtually done

As you can see, not much remains to be done to the outside – the drain pipes, some exterior lights and the tile edges in the concave corner of the roof, and – of course - some paint.

Below I’ve played around in some painting software trying to show you the color we are planning to give our house, a very faint yellowish tint. I’m sure Angelica would have explained that better, I’m hopeless naming colors.

Let just hope it will be less spotted after the actual painting. :-)

No more scaffolding

Now all scaffolding have been removed, and as a result the house looks much more finished from the outside.

And this is from the small (dead end) street outside, across the rubble still left from the garage and the remaining tree trunks.

Have we mentioned that the buyers have now taken the remaining useful pieces of the garage, such as the door? There’s still a pile of old insulation though, that we’ll have to take to the dump some day.

The roof edge

This Friday, we also took some pictures of the edges of the roof which now has nice silver looking sheet metal covering the edges. The roof gutter and drainpipes will be the same material.

Here we can see that the tile edges in the concave corner of the roof looks quite jagged, and unaligned. Dan the Builder ensured us this will be fixed later when it’s not too cold and wet on the roof for the glue used.

Here Angelica inspects the roof balcony from the outside.

(A zillion bonus points for anyone spotting what she just noticed.)

The second floor

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!