As you can see, the trees and flowers here have no clue what season it really is. Our roses are blooming although it’s December, a lot of the trees are budding and I’m guessing that should we finally get some winter weather and snow here, they will be even more confused than ever. But if it doesn’t freeze, it’s going to be a heck of a growing season here lol.
I haven’t been at the farm for two days…well I wasn’t here yesterday and the day before I was only here a short while in the morning so when I arrived this morning I expected to see some dramatic results. To say that I’m a bit disappointed is an understatement but since these guys have not let us down so far, my trust is not broken, just subdued.
What they did finish doing was to seal the drywall cracks in the kitchen and build the form for the new stairs which will lead from the main house into the new kitchen and dining room. I am a bit concerned since they now have all the drywall finished but they haven’t run the pipes for the water connection which will now be across the room. Am I concerned? Definitely…and that is certainly on my list of questions to ask today when they show up.
I was also expecting that the lacquer would now be on the freshly sanded floors but unless it’s a very thin lacquer, it’s not on there yet either. Sure, this is not the end of the world but I’m fairly certain it will take about a day to dry and since the new bathroom is upstairs and requires that they walk across some of the wood floors, I’m wondering what is going to happen there. Granted we don’t have the shower yet to go in there or the tiles for the walls but we are expecting that to be delivered next week. They did rip out the vinyl floor in there already so at least that was a bit of progress if only a tiny one.
Since they are already going to deliver the windows on Saturday (they arrived at the store yesterday which makes them several weeks early), we will actually be able to seal off the house from the outside finally. It will be so nice to have the heater on full time again so we’re not heating the world. Amazingly enough, though, the house has managed to stay pretty warm despite it being rather open at the moment with these huge holes all over the place downstairs.
I was also under the impression that they would be starting with sanding the stairs today but since they didn’t get to the lacquer yet, I’m wondering if something happened to the floor guy?
We’re ordering another container which I guess will be here tomorrow so that they can throw away all the junk which is now laying around. Things like the piping which was being used to run the well water around the courtyard and into the backyard, and the sacks from the concrete and filler they’ve used on the walls, and so on. I would have expected that they could throw those types of things in the building materials container we have already but apparently they know better than we do. So it will be another €650 but if they don’t fill it up themselves, we have plenty of other things to throw in there from the barn and elsewhere…and we should be getting a refund on at least part of the building materials container because it’s only about half full at this point.
This weekend will be the official beginning of hubby’s vacation. We have a LOT to do and there is a lot to be done on the house still if they are going to finish everything that they can before Christmas. We are thinking there will be a few things which will need to be wrapped up later on like the counter top installation in the kitchen but that’s just the way it has to be. On Saturday we are hoping to use Macky’s (the contractor’s) mini-van which he uses for work to go pick up the tile from the tile store. Then they will be able to start on the kitchen floor tiling (we hope) on next Monday or Tuesday at the latest. Since IKEA is still screwing with us on our kitchen order and they insist it will be the third week of January before the items come instead of December 19th which they promised us last week, we will be going to one of the IKEA stores near us on Monday to pick up all the pieces of the kitchen which they have so we can assemble everything and get it mostly installed…and can then order our counter top since we will have exact measurements then.
My mom flies in on the 20th & Stefan’s parents will arrive on the 22nd. We are hoping to have made great strides in progress by then. The contractor has promised us to have everything that he possibly can finished by Christmas. That is 11 days from now, including today and weekends, and he told us he would sleep in the house if he had to in order to get it all done. Hopefully his promise is worth more than the employees of IKEA.
And at least we’re not our neighbors because their renovation task was and is a lot more daunting than our own. They removed the entire top level of their house along with the roof and have rebuilt it all. They actually just finished framing out the roof again so now I guess the building process will start to speed up again. But talk about a shock the first time we came to the farm and saw that huge crane looming behind our barn…and the pilings to hold the crane in place are so close to our garden wall that you can barely pass by them.
