not lazy, nothing really happening

I know I promised to keep this up to date weekly but nothing is really happening except waiting. Still waiting on 2 things. 1) the money to be paid for the parcel (looking good here) and 2) the building permit (no clue what is happening here) but it does take some time (up to 6 weeks in total) So, we continue to wait. From time to time we have looked at internal doors and some different types of flooring, but we haven't made any decisions on that yet. Considering deck instead of patio. Also, I have been trying to inform myself on ways we can paint the walls and ceilings and such. Gathering ideas for outdoors. For the next week I will do my late tax return to get some extra cash for these items :-) Cheers All and keep checking from time to time. Something WILL happen eventually.

the notary and the loan and the architect

This morning we had a meeting with the notary to order the Grundschuld. This is basically an entry in the property office of the town of Mettmann that shows that the bank actually owns the land and the house.

Additionally we mailed the full application for the loan to our financial adviser to forward on to the bank.

The design plan to apply for the building permit arrived from the architect today and we will have to look at it over the weekend.

A Cozy Fireplace

Today we signed the contract to build a fire place. We realized that our original plan of just having the chimney put in and eventual we will put in the fireplace really wouldn't work out so well. The ovens and fireplace are so heavy that there cannot be any under the floor heating in that area and a different surface on the flooring. The costs just increase to wait so we took the hit now. This is one of the bits that makes it a 'dream home'. We chose a marble facade which slaps onto a actually heating oven. Looks like a classic fireplace but without being open. It can also actually heat a house up to 125 square meters! See the sales brochure picture. We actually ordered ours in a sand color which is more subdued and not the white shown in the picture and the heating element is in all black. Also it will not be flush against the wall as shown since the walls wouldn't be big enough to contain the heating unit inside. We have the casing around the chimney built around it as part of the price. We purchased the combination at the factory outlet store in Duisburg of the Hark firm where they produce all of their wares. It seemed like a good deal compared to the regular prices around for this type of system. It is about a 40 minute drive from Mettmann.

First Meeting with Architect

Today was our first meeting with the architect. This consisted of a tour of the building lot and then back to our place for a discussion.

At the building lot the architect explained how high above ground level the top of the cellar will stick out. He explained that the street will be higher than it is now when finished and that we should compensate for this and be sure the house is or two steps above this level. There is a slight slope to the property going from front to back or from the front of the house at the street to the backyard. It would not be entertaining if the rainwater came directly in our front door. Also we understood the affect of the type of soil. The soil we have does not drain hardly at all meaning that water stands for a long time. Therefore it is important to water proof the cellar. This is called a Weise Wanne directly translated that is a white tub. This is supposed to be the type of cellar used for standing ground water or soil that does not take water well.

Back out our place we went through the various design features of the house. The following changes where made to our current floor plan.

1. Widened all doors on the ground floor to 90cm. In the guest room this meant cutting a bit from the wall away to fit the open door in. The bathroom is fine.
2. Took out the kitchen and living room door to be replaced with a corner door coming into the combined area. (gives a little more kitchen wall space and since the kitchen/living room is open plan why have 2 entrances.
3. Changed the bathtub aligment in the bathroom upstairs to be diagonal and cut slightly into the mystery area. (that big blank area that can't really be used in a bathroom due to the roof shape)

We had a very good first impression of the architect and many of our questions and ideas that have been open for some time were able to be sorted out.

new street name

We noticed a simple sign post on our new street. It seems our street will be Emil Nolde Strasse. Emil Nolde was an early 20th century expressionist painter and a member of the group of artists known as die Brücke. The other streets in the area are also named after painters from this time frame. I don't know the number of our house yet, though. The painting to the left is called Yellow Sunflowers and Red Poppies.

new kitchen

We have purchased our kitchen today. It is a country style kitchen from the firm Nobilia. We purchased the kitchen from a large kitchen outlet in Ratingen Mega Küchen Markt. I don't have any soft copy images yet of the kitchen as it will look but I can describe it here. The front style is a vanilla wash with an antique looking handle exactly as shown in the picture you see here. First you need to take a look at the floorplan for the kitchen previously posted and imagine it mirrored. Start in the corner where the wall borders the guest bath and hallway. Here we place our current free standing refrigerator-freezer combination. Then the wall cabinets start and and the floor cabinets. The stove-oven combination is about in the middle with a cabinet style oven hood. As you round the corner the wall cabinets stop with a shelf unit right before the window. The floor cabinets continue with the sink under the windows with the dishwaher as well. The floor units continue around to make a u-shape which kind of acts as a room divider to the dining area. The countertop is extended out more than 30 cm extra to get a short bar-like affect where we plan to put two short bar chairs. We are quite excited about our dream kitchen. The countertop will be as shown but we will not decide this for sure until we pick out the floor tiles and such.
Here's the sink except that it is in a sand color, not white with a similar matching faucet head.

NOTE:If you have been keeping up with the blog I have added some images related to the building plot to one of the early posts regarding the building lot.