Well it’s nearly Thursday and Thursday is the day of searches on our blogs. We will be going out of town tomorrow to go see Aerosmith and celebrate Stefan’s birthday (his dad, grandmother and my mom also have birthdays this weekend). But I’ve been having so much fun on Thursdays coming up with answers to the searches that led to our blog, I figured I would do them a day early rather than break my streak so early in the game by not doing them at all 🙂

1. painting kitchen cabinets
   This is something I blogged about quite a while ago because I knew that one day we would be repainting the kitchen cabinets that came out of our old kitchen (which is now my office). Here is a simple guide from DoItYourself.com that we found a while ago on how to repaint your kitchen cabinets from cleaning them to sanding and primer to painting them and adding additional coats.

2. buying a farm house in Germany
   This search and variations of it seem to be becoming more prevalent. I dare to say that if someone should come across our blog and need advice about buying a farm house here, we would be willing to share our story with them. We went through the process of buying this farm without ever having bought a house in Germany…or a house at all actually.

   There are several things that are quite different about the German real estate market, such as the fact that realtors don’t usually have an exclusive listing on a house and they don’t show properties that aren’t listed by them. When we looked at our house it was for sale by owner and two realtors including our own. There is no centralized database of listings used by real estate agents like MLS in the US so they don’t usually even have a way of becoming informed about other properties not listed by them. Realtors here also do not need a license to sell or list property. Hence you will likely run into a few during your searching process that are dumb as posts.

   In general I do not think the process of buying a house is as easy here as it is in the US. It seems that many properties are sold under a bit of duress, especially older farms like our own, and the entire process from making an offer to actually closing on the house could easily take 6 months or longer. Our new electrician had to wait 2 years to close. Hopefully you will find a good realtor with a good lawyer in tow. The lawyer does all the actual closing process here and draws up the final contracts. If he is sleeping and there is a sticky situation, you want to make sure you have an out in the contract. They are iron clad here otherwise. If you don’t speak German you may want to look for an independent translator to help you through the process.

   Although there are likely a few specialty sites that cater to English speaking people looking to buy homes here, I still recommend using www.immoscout24.de if you want to look at houses. The site is in German so you will need a German-English dictionary handy or have www.leo.org open on your computer. Kaufen means “to buy” which will be the first step to get through on the housing search site. Then you have to select Wohnungen (apartments), Häuser (houses), Grundstücke (lots) or whatever else you may be interested in.

   You will then need to input a city (Stadt) or area (Kreis), select a region (Bundesland) or use the Umkreisssuche (area search) if you want to find a property near your office or a friend’s house. Weiter will take you to the next screen.

   The next screen you come to allows you to set minimum & maximum number of rooms (Zimmern), living space in square meters (Wohnfläche) and price (Kaufpreis). There is also a box to check for those looking for homes for sale which have occupants (i.e. investment property). Ergebnisse anzeigen will take you on.

   You will now either get a list of properties or you will get a screen that says there are too many properties and you should narrow the results. There is a category called Haustyp which is were you can narrow your search down to include only Bauernhaus (farmhouse). This will bring up all sorts of farms including horse farms and newer farms. If you are looking for a timber frame house like ours you need to zero in on the ones that say fachwerk.

3. paradiso bash granite problem
   Thankfully the only problem we’ve had with our paradiso bash granite was getting it here to us from Italy. Talk about a long wait. But now that it’s installed we couldn’t be happier. Cleaning granite is very simple. You can just take a wet rag and wipe it down. You don’t really need to use soap and also shouldn’t use any chemicals on it aside from granite cleaner.

   One thing we have noticed with this granite is just how porous it is. If you set something down on it that is wet, you will notice that water has seeped into the counter when you pick it up gain. Therefore you should be extra careful about anything you may cut on the granite and should almost always put a cutting board down first.

4. faktum drawer adjustment
   It’s amazing the number of IKEA related searches that lead to this blog. We do have a Faktum kitchen with Fagerland fronts here although we have not had to made any adjustments to the drawers. But there is a great website called IKEAFANS.com for IKEA junkies to get together and talk all things IKEA. They include a tutorial page which has things like adjusting the hinges on the doors, removing the front of a Faktum drawer and much more.

5. Germany decoration ideas
   I’m not really sure what that’s supposed to mean or entail but I will list a few places that I haunt if I am looking for some good deals on decorating items.
   • IKEA – If you read this blog on a regular basis, that is probably a given. I love the place.
   • Das Depot – This is the closest thing we have to Pier 1 Imports here in Germany. The store is generally broken down into themes, holidays and colors when you walk in. Items are generally inexpensive and seem fun to decorate with. They have just recently started selling their products on line also…and I have managed to mostly stay away from them although I do get their newsletters 🙂
   • Tchibo – I am addicted to Tchibo. Each week they have different groups of items which are available until they run out of them. Some weeks it may be power tools. The next week clothing. And then the ones which are really dangerous for me which include kitchen gadgets, china and items for entertaining. There are many grocery stores and other stores which carry their products and there are also specific Tchibo stores. You can also buy everything online and many times things are available only online or several weeks in advance of when it will come to the stores. They also sell products in the UK.
   • Many of the large furniture stores in Germany also have decorating items along

     with nearly everything you would need to equip your kitchen and dining room. They also usually have bedding. Sort of a department store just for your home.