Crisis One and Two

We (finally) got a response from Herr Hufhaus via Herr Arkitekt with regards to (a) expanding the window area of the bit of Keller that peeps out from under the house and (b) the bathroom sink(s) unit. Buggeration, the both of 'em.

Crisis One - Keller Windows.

Ok, Keller background. Keller equals cellar. Got that? Now our house will have a gross floor area of 110 square metres per level, which is plenty above ground, and more than plenty below. So we decided to use some of the Keller space for a hobby room - Bastelraum in German. Remember the word, because I have a feeling it'll be coming up time and time again over the next few months.

Anyways, we decided that about a third of our Keller area would be civilised, with underfloor heating, laminate flooring, plastered walls, paint, etc etc. But one thing is for sure: civilised rooms have windows and plenty of light. Any room lacking daylight simply doesn't get used, or only used reluctantly by torture victims. Soooooooo, we used a combination of the slope of the land, plus a couple of extra windows in the side of the Keller to create that daylight.

The picture below shows what I mean (one hopes).

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Anyways, it turns out that the Keller has a load bearing limitation which means that if yer want winders, then yer can't have floor to ceiling windows on the ground floor above it. Buggah buggah buggah. What Herr Hufhaus says is that the clear window above needs to be replaced with a window unit that's horizontally split in the middle, which offers more rigidity... and a big chunk out of the view. And as we have two Keller windows, and two clear glass units above 'em, that means two new window units with 'orrible splits in 'em.

Why oh why oh why do we find this out just now? When the Keller windows have been discussed for four months? Because Herr Arkitekt and Herr Hufhaus seem to be reluctant to talk to each other.

Lesson One - Make sure yer architect talks to the Huf Haus people on a regular basis, and if they don't, sit on one or t'other desk until they do.


Crisis Two - Bathroom Sinks

Next problem: we decided that the standard Hufhaus bathrooms are bloody marvellous: spacious, elegant, modern, cool, and generally thoughtfully designed... with the exception of the side-by-sinks, which looked like an afterthought. Many people agree, going by the fact that the vast majority of bathrooms have a custom sink unit inserted. Well, we made the same choice: standard(ish) bathroom, and our own sink units.

So, we spent rather a long time looking at various concepts/designs/materials, and, inevitably, costs. We landed on a design with a base unit for storage, with an elongated sink on top of it. One mega-sink, one plug-hole, but two taps either side for his and hers toothpasting sessions. We also wanted a fullish width mirror cabinet above for extra storage.

Anyways, it seems there may or may not be enough room for the mirror cabinet. Or there is, but it'll stick out. Or it won't stick out, but it'll not be right. Or something is wrong, anyway. Look, the bottom line is that's there's a problem with where we want the mirror cabinet to go, and we don't know what it is, "but it's very obvious once you see it".

Great.

Sooooo, that leads us to the next lesson learnt...

(ahem)

Lesson Two - Get accurate floor and (if necessary) wall plans, with measurements, for all interior spaces where you'll be using a non-Huf solution. That obviously includes the bathroom, but then there's the downstair loo, the kitchen area, you name it.

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And how's the digging going? Well, we popped up to see it on Friday evening, and not much to report other that a few holes where the utilities are located. There's a smallish hole with what looks like a standpipe coming out, complete with a tap on the top which wouldn't look out of place in the middle of a third world village. There's another hole with what looks like a pipe full of wires in it, and yet another (bigger) hole with a sodding big pipe in it. Methinks the latter's the sewer, but thankfully it hasn't been broken into quite yet.

The remaining grass looked green, with a few meadow flowers popping up. Rafael (our eldest) asked if we could keep the digger.

Finding the land

So, while we're all waiting for some photos of the digging, I thought I'd fill you in on how we found our land.

A couple of years ago, Claudia told me about the Huf Haus concept, and how a former colleague of hers had built one for himself. Sort of rang a bell, but couldn't place it. December last year, we happened to drive past a cluster of show houses near Zurich (a place called Kindhausen) and Claudia pointed out the Huf Haus there. "Aha", says I, "I read about these donkey's ago in an inflight magazine. Cool..."

Anyways, one thing led to another, then we, like many people, visited the Huf Haus show-house, walked around cooing, and sat and chatted with a nice lady about the various options. This was a most pleasurable two hours in total, and really the birth of our dream of building our own home. At least a dream with intent.

As we left the show house, bulky catalogue under one arm, I asked the nice lady (Frau Meyer) one last question: "How many people like us actually end up building their own Huf Haus". The answer was a wake up call; she meets about 200 'serious' couples per year, but sells less than 10 houses. "Erm, why do you think that is?" Cos decent land's like hens teeth. And then planning permission (Baubewilligung in German, and a very important word...) takes another year, minimum... people just give up and buy the Swiss equivalent of the Barratt home.

Ouch.

Well, we went through the catalogue, pointing out this house, and that house. Deciding how we'd change the ground plans, adjust the cellar (Keller), lay out the kitchen, and position our garage. In fact we pretty much built our castle way up there in the air. Conclusion was that we wanted the model known as a 3.7.30, which translates as a three axis house (That's the 3.*.** bit), three metres per axis (*.*.30), and lord knows what the 7 means, but it's one of the longer houses (not the longest) with a sticky-out window thingy on one side. Cool, so all we had to do is to find a 3.7.30-shaped piece of land to shove it on.

Soooooooooo, the following weekend we went to visit every available scrap of land west of Zurich. And didn't like one of them. Too industrial; too far out; too far from a train station; too steep; wrong shape for anything but an L-shaped house; nice, but not for an 3.7.30; wrong side of the hill (lack of sun); wrong side of the tracks, if yer see what I mean... yep, the 5% hit rate started to look realistic.

Dejected, we drove back home.

The next weekend, we went to look at everything to the east. But this time we had a conversation that roughly ran like this:

Me: "We have too many preconceptions; we've got to forget the 3.30.7 house and just find the bloody land".

Claudia: "Why?"

Me: "Cos the chances are that the land for us will need a different shaped house anyway".

Claudia: "That's ok, Huf Haus can make any shape we want".

Me: "Exactly, they've got short fat houses, long thin houses, anything. Let's just find a piece of land we like regardless, and then decide what we can put on it."

Claudia: "Fine".

Me: "And forget all the other requirements, or we'll be rejecting land because it has the wrong sort of grass on it".

Well, we saw a few more pieces of land that day, more promising, but not quite there. We cheered up, because it was on that trip that we realised that our new preconceptionless approach to land hunting would pan out in the end. And on the way home (actually to Claudia's folks house for dinner and drinkies) we stopped by one last piece of land; you know the one that yer keep to the end of the day, 'cos it's a lame duck and hardly worth looking at. The piece of land that yer look at only because it's on the way, and well, what the hell, we should have a butchers just in case. Daft really.

And that was that.

No it wasn't, it gets better... read on...

The following morning, Frau Capucho calls the contact number for the land, an agent representing the owners. Well, Herr Meyer agrees to come to our house the same evening to discuss. And later, there he is with a twinkle in his eye, almost unable to contain himself. Strange, but ok. We discuss the land, price, terms and conditions. We informed him that we wanted to build a Huf Haus on the land, if he knew what that was. The twinkle in his eye turned into a laugh out of his mouth. Erm, what gives?

Meyer: "I know, you had a long meeting with my wife two weeks ago, and Capucho's an easy name to remember. We're Huf Haus Switzerland".

It's not often that I'm speechless.

Meyer: "And the couple that I represent for the land sale was going to do the same thing: build a Huf Haus. They ran out of money, and asked me to sell the land for them".

(speechless).

Meyer: "Shame for them, because they got the planning permission and everything. Everything was set to start building... but that's life".

(speechless).

Meyer: "Anyway, I think you need to look at their house plans and see if it's what you want, because a fundamentally different house would need a new Baubewilligung. But if you like the old plans, then it'll save you at least a year and about CHF 50,000".

(speechless).

Meyer: "You'll see it's a three axis house, the 3.9.30..."

We spent another hour or so looking at someone else's plans, discussed the scope for changes that wouldn't involve a reapplication for the Baubewilligung. The planning permission was for a slightly bigger house than we had in mind, but generally in that direction. All in all, it was a good evening for Herr Meyer: he not only flogged us a piece of land, but he also sold us a Huf Haus at the same time. A nice double-whammy for a bloke that makes only about ten commission-earning sales per year.

As he climbed into his Porsche 911, I thought to myself "Land and house; no one gets that lucky".

And I was talking about Claudia and myself.

Digging begins...

Yes, it's troooooooooo. After an unbrief hiatus during which my expectations reset button was pushed several times, we've now arrived at that day; that day when yer actual fact diggin' starts.

The briefest of glances at our cow meadow shows that progress to date has been little more than conceptual. The grass is shorter than last week, 'cos the farmer (God bless him) mowed the grass. In fact, Herr Farmer also agreed to us locating some of the building machinery gubbins on his land, which has saved us a fortune in dosh and worry (God bless him again). The only caveat is that after construction is completed, anything that doesn't look like a cowsh1t-strewn meadow will have to be terraformed back into its former glory.

Fair dos.

Looking out of the window I see rain drops, so one has a concern that the first days' progress will be little more than moving some machinery onsite, and the wiggling of toes in wellington boots. One is unsure what the Swiss word for 'wellies' is, but one is confident that on rainy days yer Swiss construction worker is to be found in a local cafe wiggling his toes in them. In fact, it's been raining torrentially on and off for the last few days. One can imagine that our land is an alpine pond right now, with frogs, newts and carp.

Where was I?

Oh yes. The Keller arrives on the back of a Huf Haus truck during the second week of October (Week 41), and then the house arrives five weeks later, during the second week of November (Week 46). God help us if the Keller-shaped hole isn't ready by then. One can imagine that the Huf Haus truckers'll simply dump the Keller on our land, and then clear off.

See what I mean about expectations?

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Right, onto the serious stuff...

Over the last few weeks, there's been a flurry of activities as we've tried to square off as many of the uncertainties (read 'indecisions') as possible. Herr Hufhaus has been busy finalising the ground plans, but that's a hard thing to do when the Capucho's still haven't committed to a kitchen/bathroom and whether or not we'd be deleting one of the balconies.

The kitchen story finally came to end end last week, just in the nick of time. Bottom line is that a last minute change of heart with regards to the fridge freezer rather chucked a grenade into the budget. We're going to have one of them big fancy american food centre thingies; all stainless steel, with an ice-maker and water cooler built in. Implication is that it'll need plumbing in, 'cos the water and ice don't come out of fresh air. Herr Hufhaus has been alerted (I bloody well hope) by Herr Arkitekt (he of the bowtie).

Needless to say, the bloody kitchen will be the bloody kitchen of our bloody dreams, and I'm now bloody sick of thinking and talking about the bloody thing. Final cost? CHF 38,500, which doesn't sound much better in pounds sterling so I'll not bother to convert it.

Next: the bloody bathroom. Ditto(ish).

Next: the balcony. Now yer might have heard that Switzerland has mountains, and plenty of them. This means that building land is invariably on a slope, and more often than not, a steep slope. (Mental note for yer: those parts of Switzerland that are flat were nicked by other countries centuries ago). Anyways, the lie of our land means that we have to cut a sort of step into the hillside, and means that one end of our house will be sort of sunk down a level. Hard to explain by a bloke like me good self, but easier to visualise if yer imagine that the parking area will be roughly on the same level as what would have been the balcony above the front door. Sooooooooo, after much deliberations, the Capucho's finally took the decision to delete the balcony on that end. Sounds trivial, but as the balcony is supported by what is in effect an extension of two of the longitudinal beams that hold the damn house up, then it's probably important that it's a decisions that's made early, right? Right?

Anyways, we're there now.

With regards to the overall budget. Erm, we're about CHF 75,000 over, and that's before we start. I'll try and give a regular budget update, as and when I have the heart to recalculate it. Needless to say, I'm planning on robbing a bank.