Another shitty day in paradise

After the photo famine comes the feast...

Almost shipshape

Most of the rooms are now looking a little less like a refugee camp.

The mayhem lasted a few days, but, by close of day Sunday, we had our bedrooms, bathrooms, snug, kitchen and HUGE living room reasonably functional. Even the infamous Bastelraum and Weinkeller are roughly as they'll be, although we have a long way to go. The guest bedroom'll be done this evening on a just-in-time basis; it's Claudia's birthday tomorrow, so her mother's coming to babysit while we go out scoffing fine food and quaffing wine.

Ooerr, I still haven't thought of anything to buy her.

The main Keller's still a disaster area of regional importance. As we're short of a garden shed, there're all sorts of outdoorsy stuff here and there, including our garden furniture. Plus two adulthood's worth of 'valuable' but unused-for-donkey's-years crap that we really should either sell or scrap. Box after box after box of it.

Now what really gets me is the way that removals people the world over think. Or don't think. Or maybe they do, but their sadistic sides get the better of 'em.

Imagine four or five removal blokes walking into our Keller, all bearing identically sized boxes. Identical in every respect, with the logo of their company on the sides. Stack 'em good, right? Well, the first seems incapable of placing his box against a wall, and the rest are equally incapable of putting their boxes upon a box that's already there and waiting for them. Result? They drop their boxes all over the place according to some random dispersion pattern that'd baffle a Chaos theoretician. The next batch of boxes then arrives, and are likewise scattered about the place... but wait! Wait! Look over there, that bloke's actually putting a box upon another one... oh... oh no... no no no.

He has of course placed the box rotated roughly 50 degrees to the previous box, and offset enough that it's centre-of-gravity's somewhere over the edge. As the bloke turns his back, it slowly tilts and then slides off until one corner touches the floor. It's progress is then halted by a garden rake that's lying on the Keller floor, a perfect setting for a slapstick routine. The rake's about three feet from a corner that even the most idiotic person I've ever met (you wouldn't know who you are) would recognise as a prime location for gardening tools.

Hmm, another chap's getting very close to the rake. Will he? Will he? Heh heh heh... go on, it's only divine justice... Oh bugger, he's dropped his box directly onto the rake's tines (crunch at they break through the cardboard, hopefully nothing broken inside). Booby-trap safely deactivated by a mixture of apathy, incompetence and Mister Magoo levels of good fortune.

Disaster avoided, the chucking in of boxes and stuff continues, and the colour of the Keller floor becomes a distant memory. It's now looking like a squatter's township as almost nothing's higher than a single storey. Progress slows as it takes quite some fancy footwork to navigate across the Keller...

(sigh)

Onto happier subjects...

The lights situation? I put a couple more up in the kitchen this weekend, so that's a total of... oh lordy I've lost count. A good few dozen done with my own fair hands. No further electrocutions, so I think I'm getting the hang of it.

There're two more utility lights to go up in the Kellers, but the nice Huf Haus people don't bring those until Thursday. And we've finally found a decent design to be nailed onto the outside walls of the house, so we'll be ordering five of 'em. At least I think I counted five sets of cables out there. Must check later today. Oh, and we've decided on bathroom mirror's with integrated lights, so I think they sort of count, so two more.

The light's at the end of the tunnel (sad pun intentional).

The kitchen's 99% finished. We're waiting on a piece of glass for the splash back that couldn't be ordered until the last moment. Accurate measurements, dontchaknow.

What else?

The shower cabinet arrives by Huf Haus on Thursday, so we'll be able to bring our main bathroom up to scratch. The blinds are likewise up on that side of the house, we'll be able to use the main bathroom without a show. I'll be able to chuck Claudia's bathroom stuff out of my downstairs bathroom and then it'll be mine, all mine. Mine! Hah hah hah...

Curtain rails are up throughout, but out of action 'cos the curtains guy needs to come back and cut notches here and there so we can thread on the slidey things. For now we're surviving with the blinds on the upstairs side that faces the neighbours. T'other side's uncurtained for now, but then there's nothing out there but rolling hills and the odd farmhouse in the distance. Downstairs we have the outside electric shutters. It'll all look better when we've got proper curtains, but for now we're functional.

And why no photos?

'Cos we're waiting for the electrician to come and conect up the phone and TV cables. Until then, no internet access from home. And that means no way of posting up photos for a little longer. Should be up and going by next weekend, but we'll see.

Needless to say, we're ecstatic about our house.

We're in!

We moved in on Tuesday.

Five words summarises the whole thing, but as always the story was a bit more complicated than that.

You should know is that during the first official days of spring we were inundated with a full winter's worth of snow. The flakes started to descend on us on Monday evening, as we finalised the packing, then intensified during the night. By Tuesday morning, there was a respectable blanket covering most of Switzerland.

Ooerr.

Still, could have been worse. Oh hang on, it was worse. Because our old house is at a far lower alititude than the new one, (by about 300 metres, or a thousand feet), so if it was inconvenient at one end, it was going to be a bloody nightmare at the other. Lots of worried glances out of the window on Monday night and Tuesday morning. Lots of mental plans to defer the move a day or so, or to at least figure out where I could steal a snowplough. Or a husky.

Only... it seemed to go alright.

The chaps turned up about an hour late ("Snow chaos across Kanton Zurich"); filled their wagons in more or less the time they said they would; drove over to the new house; unloaded and were away before yer could say Bob's yer uncle.

By Tuesday evening the house still looked a bloody mess, boxes and unbuilt furniture everywhere, but at least our bedroom was intact enough to sleep in. Kids remained with Claudia's parents.

As we're a tad short on the curtain front, that night we had an open view from our bed out of our bedroom window (floor to ceiling, if you recall) right across the rolling farmlands. Fluffy snow lay everywhere, and the weather cleared enough so that the visibility was crystal. The few farm houses out there were still lit up, presumably as them Swiss country folks were still feeding their goats or something. Each light gave a glow to the surrounding snow. Little pools of light.

Magical.

Packing

Claudia and I've spent most of the weekend packing up our stuff. Kids were dropped off at the grandparent (Swiss side) yesterday morning, and by lunchtime we were cracking on with the job at hand.

I recently counted the number of times I've moved house since leaving the family nest aged 19 years. It came to, erm, a little more than once per year. In the old days, it'd be a bootful of books and stuff. Then when I started buying furniture, I needed a rental van of some sort. For the last few moves I'd called in the professionals, and coughed up instead. But this move's looking very different...

What was a bit shocking was the massive increase in posessions that's come with parenthood. It took us a few hours just to pack up all the kid's stuff. And the lads're only 3 and 1 years old. Imagine what it'll be like when their spotty teenagers... or maybe they'll have less stuff 'cos they'll be aborbed into their computer games by then.

Anyways, packing's been a bigger job than we expected.

Anyways, I'm going to bed now. Knackered.

Things are coming together...

A quickish update... things really are coming together.

The kitchen has now been completed. True to his word, the Kitchen Guy had a new worktop in the correct stainless steel made up. It arrived on Thursday, and that was the piece that allowed all the last few pieces of the kitchen jigsaw to be assembled. Yesterday, (Friday), the plumber came and did his stuff. He also spent about an hour downstairs in the Keller plumbing in the washer and drier. So, both our kitchen and laundry room are now 100% complete.

Erm, but we have no idea how to use the new appliances 'cos the electrics guy forgot to leave us the instruction manuals. Hmm. However, one expects they'll appear soon enough, so a minor point.

The Curtains and Blinds Guy also turned up yesterday. He put up the somewhat essential blinds in the main bathroom and 'overlooked' bedroom. They're a good solution, and should spare some blushes. He's supposed to turn up again on Monday with the six or seven kilometres of curtain track that'll be needed for the endless glass areas. Ok, one exaggerates, but needless to say, the Curtains and Blinds Guy was a little shocked at the final tally once he'd done a sweep around with a tape measure.

Then there's the Bastelraum parquet situation. Do you recall that the Parquet Guy forgot to reserve the stuff we wanted? And there wouldn't be any more until April? Sheesh! Well, Claudia and I had another look at our samples, and opted for a slightly different parquet, which is definitely available right now. "It also looks much warmer..." says Claudia. Hmm. Anyways, he's also supposed to turn up on Monday, so hopefully he'll get on famously with the Curtains and Blinds Guy.

And those lights? Those endless lights without which our Huf Haus will be a dark place when the sun goes down? Well, I've put up 32 of 'em myself. Another 4 were either done previously, or were done by the Kitchen Guy. A few more to go after we're moved in, plus another 5 for the outside of the gaffe.

I did a fantastic job, even if I say so meself. And only got electrocuted once. Eeek. Good tip for you do-it-yerself electricians out there: put up some sort of provisional light bulb as a visual clue to whether the electric's on or not. And if you do get zapped, don't write it up in yer blog or yer wife'll find out, ("But you told me you knew what you were doing..."). Still, it was all worth it. The house looks far less alien now it doesn't have bare cables poking out of every orifice.

And then there's the landscaping. Now I must say that the only non-Huf supplier who'll consistently provided Huf levels of service has been the landscaping people. They guided us through the various negotiations with the local Gemeinde (local government), helped us sidestep the stupid situation of the Case of the Stolen Land, and generally solved this or that problem as and when it arose. I've a lot to say about the progress outside, but it must wait for another post. However, the punchline is that the general earthworks are now finished, and I couldn't be happier. The landscaper's remaining work could be better termed gardening and joinery.

Progress on all fronts!

Back to reality

Well, those wonderful, reliable, punctual Huf Haus people wrapped up just over a week ago... and now we're getting a glimpse of what everyone else has to put up with when building a house: the fact that the vast majority of companies and suppliers work to a different level of service to Huf Haus.

A lower level, in case you're on the wrong track.


The construction of our kitchen started last Friday, and continued on the Monday. It was supposed to be finished that day, only a few hiccups surfaced. We'd ordered two stainles steel worktops, one for the area around the sink and t'other for the cooking island. Well the kitchen guy had ordered the sink worktop in some other non-stainless steel material. Furthermore, while unwrangling the worktop problem, half the wiring up was delayed; so we're missing the sucky hood thing over the electric hob, the dishwasher's still in its wrapping, that magnificent food centre's full of melt water, and and and.

In theory the wiring'll be done next week. In theory the new worktop for the sink area'll arrive the week after. In theory this'll all be wrapped up just before we move in. In theory this was all to be finished last Monday, so yer can shove that theory where the sun don't shine.

And then we have the Bastelraum parquet situation. That was to have been laid down last Wednesday, and the skirting boards nailed to the walls. Easy-peasy, no risk, no trouble. Except that when the parquet guy popped over to his supplier to pick up some 50 square metres of the stuff, he was stunned to find nary a stick of it. Someone'd mopped up the lot on Monday. Claudia was likewise stunned to hear that the factory won't be able to produce more until April, so in lieu of a time machine, we won't have a Bastelraum parquet in place until a couple of weeks after we've moved in. I, on the other hand, was stunned that the daft sod hadn't reserved the parquet a few weeks back when we'd made the decision.

C'est la vie? C'est le guerre, more like. Why do these people insist on introducing unnecessary risks into their work? Do they want their lives to be more exciting? I'm sure this has happened time and time again, over the years, and he still doesn't get round to making that crucial reservation.

Daft sod.

Claudia and I've decided to take all these things in our stride. We've just left the Huf Haus autobahn (efficient, fast, free of traffic) and are now on the local roads (pot-holed, clogged, diversions). We can either bitch about it, or we can feel smug about the fact that 97% of our project was on that autobahn.


On a happier note, the sink unit for the bathroom arrived on Wednesday. Claudia was there to let 'em in.. and was surprised that they'd already been inside the house for an hour. Huh? Turns out that local suppliers operate a sort of house key exchange; they'd got it off the kitchen guy.

Anyways, the unit had been nailed to the wall by the time she arrived, although there was still some work left to do... which was just as well as it was 5cm higher than it should have been. Claudia took the snap shown above, gave the orders to move it down a notch, and left. We'll see how it looks in its full glory later today.

Another happy note: I painted the keller floors last weekend, using a special keller floor paint. Sort of battleship grey, so a side of one of Her Majesty's fleet'll be short a lick o' paint. I really got quite a buzz of satisfaction out of making my own contribution for once. Until that then, I'd been more like the gentleman farmer of the project; mumbling some irrelevence or other, waving a stick at this or that, and then watching the hairy arses march off into the fields to do the real work. At that moment, I joined the ranks of the hairy arses, and it felt rather good.

Also on a happy note, we managed to find lots and lots of lights this week. If you recall, we've a total light count of 45. So we were left with a lot of research and shopping around to do. And the likelihood of spending a lot of money.

Well, we found the window wall lights at Interio, and bought 12 of 'em. CHF 69 each, so what's that? About 30 quid a pop? And we found the 4 wall lights we need for the stairs at a place called Moebel Pfister, a mere snap at CHF 62 each (about 25 quid). And we also picked up 6 ceiling lights at, erm, at one place or other. Hard to recall as all those light places are beginning to merge in my mind's eye. Anyways, they cost CHF 59 (also about 25 quid). We also bought two spot light clusters, but they were way more expensive at CHF 150 each (65 quid).

A total cost of CHF 1,730 (750 quid) for 24 lights. Plus whatever we paid for the four we already had, plus the two on the way from Huf Haus. And muggins here's going over to the house today to start wiring them up. Should take a month of Saturdays, eh?

Make sure you pop over to Bob's Blog (link on the right) as he's experiencing similar difficulties. Well, maybe a lot worse...

Final handover!

So, the final Huf Haus handover date arrived. Claudia was supposed to do this alone 'cos of my work commitments, but a bit of finessing of a meeting or two made it possible for me to jump into my car and get up there. I arrived towards the end of the handover process.


The house was looking very very beautiful. All the mayhem of earlier in the week had either been nailed to the walls, or cleared up. There was a cleaning bloke doing some final touches here and there, plus a big hairy bloke was going around with a toolkit adjusting this and that. And there was our nice Huf Haus blokey, Rudiger, a different Rudiger from that Bob Salmon but naturally close colleagues. Anyways, he had his clipboard clasped in his mighty mitts, and a cheery smile on his face.

There were a few details already written down (trivial stuff, to be honest) but the handover had almost reached the bit where signatures were to be applied to paper. But what's this? A box of touch-up paints, just in case? And a fixit toolbox (think similar to those kits you get in posher cars, but more extensive)? There were a few more bits and bobs like that, all of which contributed to that nice warm feeling yer get when yer deal with a company like Huf Haus.


Wet ink on paper, handshakes all round, and we were done.

And there I was feeling a bit sad that this was the last of our regular meetings with Rudiger. But then we did have rather a nice house to compensate for that.

I spent some time looking at the parquet flooring in its full glory. This was the first time all the wrapping had been taken off the staircase, and the floors were clear enough for a, erm, clear view. Click click click with the camera. The results of which are posted here. This doussie parquet's not for everyone, but we're ecstatic about it. And if you recall, it's harder than nails. We will see if it proves to be harder than two hyperactive wee laddies.


This was also the first time we'd looked at our bathrooms without the usual construction mess lying around. Again, not for everyone, but we are very very proud of the look. Posh New York hotel, we call it.

Of course the main bathroom's missing a few things. We elected to source our sink unit from elsewhere. Should arrive a week on Friday. The shower cabinet's also missing, down to a minor Huf Haus cock-up. Seems that someone ordered the tall shower cabinet which wouldn't have fitted under the slopey roof; it should be here before our official moving in date (20th March) so no harm done.

The last point is an object lesson to all who're about to move into a Huf Haus: living in a goldfish bowl's all well and good, but few of us are brave enough to use a bathroom without some form of curtain or blinds. Our blinds arrive in a couple of weeks, but until then it's handwashing only. Oh bugger, no sinks. Maybe we can use it as an office?


But the downstairs loo, really a shower bathroom downstairs next to the front door, was 97% complete. The missing 3% represents the two lights that need to go up. I'm still strggling with myself whether to diy this, or call in the professionals. However, short of those lights, my bathroom's finished. Heh heh heh.



Just as we were finishing up, Herr Arkitekt (he of the bowtie) turned up for a butchers. Lots of back-slapping, jokes, handshakes and peering at this or that detail.

Nice bloke.


Just after we left, it seems the kitchen guy delivered his stuff ready for the Friday's work. Talk about quick off the blocks. The following photos were taken Friday afternoon, so you can see that the clutter's back. Ah well.

By that Friday afternoon, most of the kitchen units had been positioned. Our cooking island was looking vast. More like a cooking continent. During a lull in the proceedings, I stood in front of where the elecric hob's gonna be and gloated at the extensive views both inside and outside of the house. I'm going to feel like a master of the universe standing there. Won't miss a trick, so watch out.


And then we have the food centre. Or food center, as this one's an american model.

Ok, this bloody big metal thing's an outrageous extravagance. We looked at all manner of fridges during our kitchen research, and landed on some Seimens food centre as the way ahead. Rationale was that plenty of people spent money on a normal fridge for the kitchen, and then more money for some sort of vampire's coffin of a freezer in the garage or cellar. If we put that money together, then we could justify a single food centre with plenty of space inside, job done. Only the Seimens food centre turned out to look a bit, erm, crap and tinny.

Now, the kitchen guy had some whopping big General Electric food center humming in his show room. He cottoned on that the Seimens research had been a failure, and offered us this one at a massive discount. All's well then? Well, erm, not quite. Even the discounted price of this GE box was way more expensive than the Seimens version.

And our original cost justification? One expensive box is the same price as two less expensive boxes? Hah! We could have bought a fridge, a cabinet freezer and had a long weekend in a posh hotel for the price we paid for this thing.


And for those landscaping fans out there, a brief update. The driveway paving's finished (again). Everything's now cemented in place, so I've been told that by Monday I can test drive my driveway by driving my car on it, and see how it works for us. The various gaps you can see here and there are for soil which'll have to wait for drier weather.

The sandy stuff you see all over it's actually... sand. The idea is that after a few rains it'll wash between the cracks of the paving stones and set 'em rigid.