Saturday, December 01, 2007

A few more photos

Still feeling a bit guilty that I've rather neglected you lot for the last few months. Anyways, here're a few more photos that I took this morning - as the snow's gone (for now) you'll get a better butchers of the current state of affairs.

Note the posh Biohort shed - aluminium, and bloody great. Bought a matching aluminium box for the outside cushions and sun-loungers. Also note the posh postbox, aluminium, and bloody great. I think we might have an aluminium thing going on... oh no, that soddin' great armco's made out of steel. As yet there's no paint on it, but I reckon it'll collect it's first ding sometime this winter.

Couldn't resist the temptation to take a nerdy photo of the snow-thrower thingy. Nice colour innit?

I think the photos also capture the progress in the garden quite nicely. The earth is there simply 'cos the gardener came last week and hoicked out the weeds - leaving plenty of gaps between the plants. Prior to that the whole area was a sea of green. Oh, and you'll see our infamous weed patch. Going to break someone's back to weed that lot out again. Broke mine last summer, so not doing it again.

Oh, and the full splendor of our wooden decking/terrace. Well, fullish 'cos it is winter. Discussion with Frau Capucho this morning on that very subject - we built a huge one, but we're very glad we did. Now looking forwards to endless summers with the kids on one side, and Claudia and I on t'other with a glass of wine each.

And that's that for now...
























































Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Winter is upon us - again

Been a while since you lot got some sort of update, so here it is...

We're... living in our house. The last significant step was the fencing and armco, but they've long become background features. We're now in that nice business-as-usual period of simply living in our beautiful Huf Haus, and wondering if we should buy this or that stick o' furniture for this or that nook or cranny. Not that yer Huf Haus has any nooks and crannies. As stated before, finding a wall to put a cupboard against is no mean task when the majority of yer walls are windows.

The wooden flooring is bearing up - parquet floors are surprisingly durable if yer stick to the rock 'ard woods, and therefore inevitably the most expensive ones. Only major ding was done by yours truly last weekend, when he dropped a whopping thick glass jar on the kitchen floor - missed my foot (thankfully), jar survived, notch in the floor.

The other thing that's bearing up very well is the central heating system. Oo! Oo! Meant to tell yer all about that. Mr Banking and IT here had absolutely no idea as to the significance of the heating system we ended up buying. Nuff said that it was supposed to save money (makes me happy) and generate copious amounts of heat on demand (makes Claudia happy) and all's well with the world. Turns out that the air/air heat pump system is actually fairly greenie. Not as green as a ground/air heat pump, mind, but then the local geology was against us on that. I'll say to anyone that it's a crime against nature that some form of heat pump isn't a mandatory requirement for any domestic new installation or replacement throughout the western world - which would reduce the rather pricy acquisition price still further. They're cheap to run, efficient, greenie and just bloody marvellous.

One just hopes that one day it becomes so.

I'll continue to day-dream about some form of solar power for the hot water (currently running 100% off the electricity) but will await developments before I commit. Surely there's a market for roof tile-shaped solar panels? And surely someone can design one that's snow-friendly enough for use half-way up a mountain? Current mountain area planning regulations take a dim view on solar panels 'cos snow readily slips off 'em thereby putting any visiting vicar at risk of a decapitation.

What else?

Good thing the pickies below are snow-bound because although we've found a local gardener to take care of the borders and grass and stuff, the uphill side of the garden is still a massive weed patch. We have a local landscape garden firm submitting a 'concept' very soon - although one mistrusts 'concepts'. 'Concepts' usually need copious amounts of money to 'realise'. Still, we'll have a butchers at whatever they come up with.

And I've left the best and coolest thing for last. We've bought ourselves what's known as a snow-thrower - one of those lawn-mower looking machines that yer see on the telly sucking up snow at the front and then spraying it out of a nozzle on the top. Really bloody cool. Cleared our entire driveway with it in just a few minutes - a job that would have taken me an hour or more by hand and spade. Cost me about CHF 1,500 or, what's that, six hundred quid. Eek! Anyways, I'm made up with it. Four-stroke petrol powered, for those that understand such things, and light enough for Claudia to use it when I've succumbed to frostbite.

Anyways, here're the long overdue pickies...

























Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Fencing

A quick update in lieu of the pickies. I'm still waiting for a decent enough day to venture out with the camera, but the weather continues to suck.

The fence people have done their stuff. One day they came to set the metal posts in concrete, then a week passed and we returned one evening to find the steel cable fence complete, and also a short stretch of very Formula 1 looking armco.

All's well.

The cable fence looks a bit, erm, industrial with steel posts and ten rows of ultra-tight steel cable. It's set amidst the hedge-to-be, which is still a very gappy affair - the odd branch and twig with a leaf or two. Once it all thickens up over the next year or so, the fence'll disappear entirely methinks.

The armco is something else entirely. My word, 'industrial' is too wimpy a word for it. It's about three metres long, with rounded ends in case an articulated lorry hits it end on. My money'd be on this armco even so, let me tell yer. We've always been a bit nervous about that two metre drop on the down-slope side of the parking entrance. At the bottom of the drop's the kitchen corner of the house, and the nightmare scenario has been the nose of some ice-skating car crashing throught the kitchen window one snowy evening. Quite apart from the big structural risk to the corner of the house, plus the written off car, not to mention the crushed kitchen and a half-cooked family dinner, there's also the look of surprise on the car's occupants to take into account.

It would have been a very bad day.

Anyways, this armco's just the ticket, and unless that car belongs to Claudia or me, (eek, the likeliest scenario), then bring it on, I say.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Outside

Long overdue for an update, folks, so here it is...

No changes within the house, at least none worth discussing in detail. Bathroom mirrors and their lights turned up in August (from memory) and were carefully nailed to the walls, so two more electric cables that had been peeping out of their respective holes finally disappeared. A few new bits of furniture materialised, and a few more were formally declared casualties to the cause... they might have been super in whatever nook or cranny they squatted in at our last place, but there's no place for them in our Huf Haus. Oh no. Not really a Huf Haus issue, as that's something that happens to yer any time there's a house move. Oh and Claudia figured out a sneaky way of putting up some curtains (yawn) in the kid's bedroom, which saved us a lot of playing up during those long daylight hours of summer. And that's it.

More goings on outside the house...

The wooden decking was completed sometime in late June, just in time for 2007's summer that wasn't. Within a couple of weeks of the final screw being tightened the usual paraphernalia appeared on it; table and chairs, sun loungers, whopping big parasols and some big pots with plants in 'em to make it cosy. Oh, and lord knows how many multi-coloured plastic toys, buckets and spades, a sand pit filled with wet sand and pebbles, and a limp faded paddling pool containing rainwater, bits of grass and dozens of dead flies.

One can only imagine that the proud owners of those designer homes that appear in House & Garden are typically childless.

The two parasols we bought are worth a brief plug: they're a cantilevered design (generally more wind-resistant that yer normal parasol) called the Sunwing C+ and manufactured by a pure, mountain-bred Swiss company called Glatz. The concrete bases weigh 90kg a pop, so they're as safe as houses against strong gusts; although you'd still want to leg over and close 'em up sharpish. I have a horror of parasols falling over and impaling the kids - seen far too many close shaves over the years.

I finally persuaded the landscaping chaps to cut that shed-sized paved area into the slope behind the house and shore up the walls against landslides. Once completed, father-in-law and I assembled the metal shed during one of the few sunny weekends of the summer. Claudia was greatly relieved as the plethora of gardening tools, lawnmower, plant pots, and lots and lots of outdoorsy stuff finally disappeared from their customary clumps and piles around the house - and I have to say that I'd become so used to seeing the mess that I was pleasantly shocked as to how nice the outside suddenly became.

A real transformation.

In 20-20 hindsight, I'd have done something about the shed from the start.

Again, the shed's worth a plug. It's an all alloy wonder called the Avantgarde manufactured by an Austrian company called Biohort. The coolest shed I've ever seen, and puts yer traditional wooden model to shame as it's essentially maintenance free, and should last decades. Pricy of course, but I couldn't bring myself to plonk the garden tools into some green plastic disaster that wobbles when yer shut the door. If the door can be shut at all.

And the garden itself?

First the good news: the lawn has grown up all nice and strong, and gets thicker and stronger every time we cut it. Even better, the meadow beyond our lawn has regrown, so there's a continuous stretch of grass from our wooden decking to the horizon. The dark swathes of soil left over from construction is a faded memory: it's amazing how quickly yer can make a garden superficially straight enough not to drive you nuts simply by chucking a few grass seeds around.

Final plug of the day: the lawn mower's from an American company called Toro, and its the lightest petrol mower currently available - 20 kg for a 40cm width. It has a mulching widget for those days when yer want to feed the lawn - oh alright, for when yer garden waste container's full to the brim. Light weight is good for us, as we have some slopy bits to negotiate.

Claudia's done a fine job of starting up the flower beds around our entrance are. There's a lot to be said for her 'instant gratification' approach; lavender, herbs (especially mint) and a few other bits and bobs which soon filled up the space. We also planted some of those japanesy maple saplings as per yer standard Huf Haus specification.

Erm, what else?

Oh, we planted two containers with various herbs and stuff and added water regularly. Two of 'em delivered big time: the basil and, amazingly, the chilli plant. We had big green basil leaves all summer, which is a first for me as all basil plants within ten feet of me normally peg it within days. But it was the chilli plant that was the revelation: over the last month or so, we've had dozens of fat red chillis. Well chuffed. Next year we'll plant only basil and chillis and see what happens. I'm all up for farming the buggahs.

The hedge along the parking area's slooooowly thickening up. Still transparent, but showing some promise of opaqueness for next year. Hmm, must buy myself a hedge trimmer.

Over the next week the safety fence for the parking area should be completed. We've been 'legal' since we moved in courtesy of a make-shift wooden post and rope affair. It's been looking a bit rough of late, with the rope between posts sagging sadly and the odd post leaning over due to fatigue. The fence itself'll be there to stop people/children/livestock from falling the three metres to the concrete path below. But there's a short stretch near the entrance corner that we've opted to properly armco to deter any wayward SUV from plunging downwards and thence through the kitchen window.

And the bad news?

Well, the long steep slope behind the house is a long, steep slope of weeds.

The ground cover plants have been struggling to compete with the local flora since they went in during late May, but in spite of a centimetre by centimetre weeding session by yours truly in early July, they're simply swamped with the fastest growing weeds I've ever seen in my life. A bloody triffid would be left in the starting blocks compared to these buggahs. Claudia's decided that we should go with the flow and simply call the entire slope an 'alpine flower meadow' (Bluemli-wiese). Not a bad idea, as yer bona fide alpine flower meadow is a mixture of grass, alpine flowers and, erm, alpine weeds.

Just need to add grass and flowers.

One shall post up a bevy of piccys again as soon as the rain stops for long enough to take a snap or six. Until then, sayonara...

Sunday, June 03, 2007

A little bit greener...

Another deluge of photos... taken about 11am in the morning, so the sun hasn't had time to come around yet.