Jan 19, 2012 Posted by Tiffany

The power of new windows

It now feels like forever ago that we had new windows installed in our house — and for a while there, we weren’t even sure if they would ever arrive. But let me just tell you that they are already making all the difference in the world, even though they aren’t 100% finished. About 3 weeks before we were supposed to leave for Florida, we got the go ahead from the Denkmalschutzamt (German... read more

Oct 31, 2011 Posted by Tiffany

Lessons Learned: Upstairs Bathrooms

When we bought our house, it was a 3 bedroom, 1 bath house. Actually, I guess you could consider it a 3/1.5 since there is an outhouse in the courtyard (which we thankfully never have to use). So one of the very first projects we had our contractors work on was adding a bathroom with a shower (the original bath only has a monster-sized tub) in one of the tiny bedrooms. The finished result was really nice... read more

Jun 27, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

The walls are looking goooood

So the neighbor came over last Saturday at 10 (he overslept and was supposed to be here at and finished up the walls of the guest house. Read about him starting last Thursday here with previous photos. It’s really looking good and now we just need to get out there and paint. Since we should have enough paint left for those walls, we might just get to that in one of the next weekends…but no... read more

Jun 26, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

What the electrician has been up to…literally

Before Stefan’s party, we decided we better have the electrician come out and get some of the lights working around here so we could actually see our guests during the birthday party. Plus all the wiring seems to be about 30 years old and is starting to deteriorate and the last thing He installed three new lights in the main part of the barn and it is bright as day with those things on now! We wanted... read more

Jun 19, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Just putzing around

Ok, in German “putz” is what you call the plaster or stucco you put on walls. So yeah, I’m just making a bit of word play. Call it your German lesson for the day. We asked one of our neighbors who happens to be a general contractor and painter if he would come by when he had some free time and cover up where we bricked in the bathroom window of the guest house and also around the corner... read more

Jun 19, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

The compost pile is gone!

A bit late on the update but at least I’m getting to it sometime in the same month! On June 2nd, the wonderful workers showed up again to deal with our compost pile dilemma. On a farm, things like this are very common here – but apparently none of the people doing the actual work at this company had seen anything like this before so they were yet again bumfuzzled. As you might recall, we had... read more

Apr 1, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

What do you mean the glass is green??

After a lovely couple of days in Italy (mostly the region around Venice), we got back here very exhausted and happy to be home. As it turned out, we must have been a bit more tired than we thought because on Monday (March 24th) we started out the door to take the puppy for a walk, I grabbed a set of keys, we closed the front door and then I realized I had the keys to my truck in my hand and not the front... read more

Dec 6, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Yes, we’re still moving forward

In our last post, the last photo we sowed was this one: A rather big pile of screed still in that photo and we didn’t actually use up all the cement…the overage pile was a bit smaller in the end but it was still quite a decent amount that we just couldn’t use. Since we wanted to get the screed as close to the guest house as possible, we didn’t have a container here anymore so we had... read more

Dec 2, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Tomorrow is finally THE day

In our last post, we were going on about potentially putting in the screed on Friday which is basically one of last big step before we start the finishing touches on the guest house (paint, floor, tile, bathroom fixtures, etc.). BUT we had a rather unpleasant find on Thursday after Macky left when we turned the water back on to the house…one of hot water pipes connected to the heater Macky had just... read more

Nov 20, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Another big week…. moving closer to finish

This week really is another big week. Kovey finished the dry wall yesterday and we gladly sent him on his way. We haggled on the price some more, given that the ceiling in the mud room wasn’t included after all but we came to conclusion that was good for all. All of the drywalling is done now, including the walk in closet which ended up being a bit of a pain, since none of the walls in there are... read more