Status on Christmas Eve

I popped over to the house for a wee look at lunchtime. All was quiet in the village and at the house. The temperature was down to -3 degrees C, so the ground was frozen, but little more than a slight dusting of snow about the place. Nice to be able to walk all around the house without muddy feet as the icy mud crust easily supported my weight.

I tested our new key and it worked perfectly. The key was a special arrangement with the Huf Haus people. Normally they avoid giving the owner a key too early due to (one supposes) safety reasons. If you really really want one, then really really ask for one and you'll really really get one.

As the floor hadn't had more than a couple of days to begin drying I just stood outside and looked in. The new floor looks... flat. Erm, not much more to add other than the fact that it looks a lot better than, if not as interesting as, the expanse of snaking heating pipes that were there before. When I later circled around outside of the house looking at this and that, I looked into the Keller windows and gazed down into the upstairs floor from the parking area, and was rewarded with visual proof that all interior floors were now nice and flatly cemented. Done. Good.

So where are we now?


Well, looking back on this blog I see that the first sod of turf was moved on the 19th September, and it's now the 24th December. So, just three months have passed in which our untouched green alpine meadow has been transformed into our dream Huf Haus, albeit one still awaiting a few necessities before we can move in.

The ground has been made safe from subsidence or slippage. The cellar has been built, and the small matter of a whopping big Huf Haus shoved on top of it. The first stage of landscaping completed so we have some steps to our house and the paving stones to get us to our front door. The electrics and water are in and functional, as are the interior and exterior drainage pipes. The wooden covers for various nooks and crannies that channel cables and pipes within the house are all safely nailed/bolted/glued on. The heating system and maze of underfloor heating pipes are present and correct, functional, but not to be switched on just yet. The flooring has been cemented in.


So what has still to be done in the next couple of months?

Well, the kitchen is not much more than a few pipes and wires hanging out of the wall, as are both the downstairs and upstairs bathrooms. The bath itself is on the balcony for now, as are two loo-sized boxes. The parquet floor has to be laid, and the bathroom floors tiled. The cellar walls need to be prepared, whatever that means, and the part of the cellar that we decided to have 'civilised' into a spare room/office needs plastering. Then every wall needs to be painted. One imagines that all white wooden surfaces need to be painted, but I'm really not sure if the wooden bits come prepainted from the factory, or undercoated. Whatever. Oh, and then the whole lot needs cleaning cleaning and then cleaning again. And then we're still awaiting the next phases of the landscaping to sort out the garden and parking area as the exterior looks like the aftermath of some bunker busting cruise missile.

Yep, a lot more to do, but believe me, our cups are half full. We really couldn't be happier with the progress of the last three months.