Sep 26, 2011 Posted by Tiffany

Time to give our walls some color

If you’ve ever had the privilege of visiting our home, you may notice that we have pure white walls…nearly everywhere. I say nearly because we did actually get brave and paint the walls in our guesthouse something other than white (namely a warm caramel color and something similar with a pinkish-hue in the bathroom out there). But after 5 years of owning this house, we have never gotten around... read more

Apr 4, 2011 Posted by Tiffany

The Shutters are Hung

Don’t forget to enter early for your chance to win a huge prize package from Germany! A few weeks uh months ago now, I showed you some photos of the lovely new shutters that Stefan and his dad built for the front of our house. They nearly lost a few fingers in the process because they were building these when it was -10°C (14°F) outside, but I assure you that all appendages are fully functioning... read more

Dec 7, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Dog- and kid-friendly walls

Once every six months, we have to repaint the walls in our foyer and at the top of the kitchen stairs. These are the locations where Ayla lays most often, usually flipped on her back with her dirty feet up in the air and on the wall. In April, before we had visitors, you may remember me writing about the joys of painting and that we were thinking about using some of the plexiglass we inherited from the... read more

Jul 22, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Bringing in the reinforcments to paint outside

You might remember my post from March when we tore down the vines on our storage buildings. After all the vines were gone, the wall was in pretty bad shape. It’s been shedding salt and just starting to crumble off due to improper care and the wrong materials being used on it in the first place. So our neighbor the general contractor came over and put a netting on the wall, added new plaster and got... read more

May 8, 2009 Posted by Tiffany

Erasing the dog residue in the entry way

I wanted to post this almost two weeks ago but things have been a bit hectic around here (what’s new right?) so I’m only getting to this now. Before my dad and his wife Barbara arrived here in Germany on April 28th, we were trying to get a few things done to spruce up the place a bit. One such area that needed serious attention was our entry way. If you have a Newfoundland who usually sleeps in... 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

May 27, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

A progress report from 3 long days of work!

Well, it’s taken a few days to recover but the marathon of work while Stefan’s parents were here has come to a close for now. We still have a few other small project that we are working on (like the mudroom which I’ll post about in a bit) but we accomplished some very big tasks over the 3 days they were here working with us. I know you’re curious about everything so here... read more

May 21, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

More mud room love and the to do list

Way back in December (which now seems like years ago), we did a bit of drywalling in the mudroom to accompany the other chaos that was going on in our guest house. We’d gotten things to a mostly acceptable state in there, and just ran out of steam and time so we left things the way they were for another day. In the picture below, you can see our drywall job, which wasn’t as bad as it could have... read more

May 9, 2008 Posted by Tiffany

Catching up on things

Ok, it’s been too long once again since I last posted. But that doesn’t mean things have been at a standstill around here! For one, we got the glass replaced in the front door! And I got the bill yesterday which only came out to €63 so we’re pretty pleased about that as well. Tomorrow we are going to finally buy the floor trim for the guest house so that when Stefan’s parents come... read more

Oct 6, 2007 Posted by Tiffany

Aren’t those gray patches supposed to be there?

For almost a year now (since we started construction and put in the new windows and doors in the kitchen) we’ve had big gray areas on the walls of the house where everything was patched up. We’ve gotten so used to them we started to think it might look strange if they disappeared. And then we tore apart the exterior wall and put it back together again which left the area by the front door... read more