Finished the ceiling of our bedroom Sunday, 20-Jun-21 21:28:22 CEST

Started on a new pile of gypsum plates Sunday, 04-Jul-21 22:04:30 CEST

Monday, 28-Jun-21 22:23:54 CEST

Our doorposts were mounted

Our doorposts were mounted. We finished putting up gypsum plates in our bedroom. We repaired our washing machine, and we had talked to our heating expert. A really active week.

Monday 21 June

This was the longest day of the year already. We had a regular day working from home. At our new house, our carpenter was busy installing doorposts. It was raining today almost the whole day. That is good because we had a couple of dry weeks.

After work, we went to the new house to look at the progress with the doors. It was going very well. Our carpenter had planned two days for the job, and he had finished half of the doorposts today.

It had rained 14 millimeters today. The sheep were happy.

We put up two gypsum plates on the north wall in our bedroom. We did the plates around the window.

I tried to take a photo of the wall to show how far we came tonight, but that did not work very well. On the other hand, my wife took a photo of me trying to take a photo, which was more successful. Perhaps there is a setting I can change to make the camera less sensitive to the light from the window. I would know how to do it on a regular camera, but I used my smartphone camera.

Two plates on a Monday evening is not that bad at all.

Then we went home.

Tuesday 22 June

Today was a regular day working from our old home. After work, we went to the new house to see how the installations of the doorposts progressed. They were all mounted according to the agreement, so that was perfect. It feels more complete with the doorposts installed.

We went ahead putting up two gypsum plates in our bedroom.

Every form of progress counts. Slowly the bedroom is turning into the grey of the gypsum plate paper.

When we were done with the gypsum plate, we looked after our three ladies. They were happy because they had found a patch of dandelion plants they like very much.

When we came back to our old home, we started on the last activity of the day. Repairing our washing machine. It is extraordinary that we start working on such a project on a Tuesday evening. The heating element was dead. A nail had been forgotten in a pocket. The nail had been stuck in the drum, and while rotating, the nail smashed the heating element.

The heating element could be removed, and the replacement fit into the machine. We put everything back in reverse order. When done, we had one screw over. That was disturbing, but the machine worked again. That was great!

Wednesday 23 June

Today I worked a half-day, my wife had a full day off. So we went to the new house after lunch. The plan for today was simple, we were going to a garden center to pick up more of the food supply we give the sheep. While we were there, I bought a plant and a handle for a scythe as well. I tried out the new handle, and it worked very well. The plant got a place in the flower garden. It was an “A Portuluca,” and I have no idea what that is. It had thick leaves and flowers. The thick leaves are usually a sign the plant can handle dry conditions. I looked up the plant, and it indeed can handle dry and sunny conditions. It is also said it likes sandy soil and we don’t have that. We will see how it goes.

We finished the west wall of the bedroom today. So now we only got two walls left of this room. It is the east wall and the south wall. The east wall is located towards the bathroom, and we will need to apply a couple of beams on that wall to support the gypsum plates. Then we will put extra isolation into the east wall. The south wall is towards the hall, running across the rooms of the first floor. Later we will build a cupboard on this wall, but that is a project for later.

Thursday 24 June

This was a full day of regular work from our old home. In the evening, I got a visit to our new house from our heating pump expert, Gijs. He looked at where we are in progress and where we want to be. It did not sound as if the heating pump installation would be the delaying factor in the process. We will need to coordinate the activities of putting out the floor pipes with the cement work. We need to eliminate all the gypsum plates and isolation lying on the floor before anything can be finished.

This means that we have to get a full grip on the progress of the gypsum. I suggested that we will be finished with the gypsum plates in two or three months. Gijs was okay with that.

We will need to put out the floorboards and then seal the floor with plastic as well.

Gijs told me he had just stopped having sheep himself. He had had a Christmas tree farm, and under the trees, he had sheep grazing. When Corona came, he could not sell any Christmas trees, so he stopped that business. With no trees, he had no need for the sheep, so he sold them. Now he had cows on that land.

When Gijs left, I practiced using the scythe with the new handle. It goes really well. I can cut grass close to the ground. It is less straightforward when the grass has been walked on by the sheep, but that is how it is. I devised a technique where the scythe blade got in under the flat grass and then cut it like that. At first, when I arrived, the sheep called me. I greeted them, and then I ignored them. They calmed down and were satisfied that I was working next to them with the scythe outside the fence. It is not possible to work inside the fence. That would be an accident within 2 seconds. The sheep minded their own business, so they went to another part of their patch to eat.

When they were calm, I gave them their daily portion of feed supplement. The ladies heard the sound of the chunks falling into their feed bucket, and they came running from far. The last sheep bumped into another when they came to the bucket.

They had discovered they could go up on the dyke as well. There were five meters of the dyke that they had discovered. They still got an area in the new field they have never been to, so it is nice to know they still have plenty to eat.

It was a lovely evening. My wife could not join me in meeting with Gijs, so she stayed at our old home. Had she been with me, then we had started put up a gypsum plate.

Friday 25 June

What is there to say about working a full day from the office? Well, it did not feel more efficient than working from home. Not at all. I had social interaction with colleagues, which was good.

After work, we went to the new house to look after the sheep. They were happy, so that was fine.

A colleague said he had to go to the hairdresser. Already in the morning, he mentioned that. It was funny because I also had to get a haircut. During the Corona crisis, the hairdresser shops were closed in the Netherlands, and during that time, my wife picked up her skills to cut my hair. She is doing a fine job cutting my hair. In the evening, she cut my hair, so I got my hair cut before my colleague, surprisingly enough.

Saturday 26 June

This morning, we decided to start the day efficiently to get to the new house quickly. There is a lot of time to win jumping out of bed when you wake up, so I did that today.

When we came to the house, we started to work on the east wall of our bedroom. The first thing we did was to isolate the wall towards the bathroom. For this, we used rests. It became a patchwork of isolation. That does not matter because no one will ever see it. We had these rest lying so we could as well use them for the wall.

Our son wanted to help us today putting up gypsum plates. My wife and I got used to working together, so we had our hesitations of doing things differently, but it actually worked out pretty well. There are things he needs to learn, but it is a question of time. At some point, he had the feeling he had done enough, and then he went outside to work a little on the driveway and weeding thistles.

The bedroom is almost covered in gray gypsum plates. Tomorrow we will finish the bedroom to move things stored in the southeast bedroom to our bedroom.

Sunday 26 June

Also today we arrived early at the new house. It was such lovely weather. I thought it had been wonderful to capture this moment such that if I replayed the capture, all the feelings would come back. No device can do that. The best I can do is to describe it with words. So what was the feeling this Sunday morning in the house? We had a good night of sleep and were adequately rested. Today we would finish putting up gypsum plates in the bedroom. It is funny how easily we dropped working on the outside. We still got things to do outside, but we moved indoors to put up gypsum plates. At some point, we need to continue finishing the things outside to take down the scaffold.

Where were we? I was explaining the feeling of arriving at the house this Sunday morning. The sheep were still happy in the morning with their food supply. It was quiet except for the sheep that called on us. That is not always a nice feeling that they are calling us. But except for that, it is feeling great with these ladies.

I hope we soon can experience more early mornings at the new house. We got more personal space around the house compared to our old house. In the garden of our old house, there is a fence to our neighbors garden. If neighbors are in their garden, it is so close it feels uncomfortable. Usually, people do not use the gardens until around 11 AM in the morning during the weekend. It is a silent, beautiful place with room for the birds to sing and the bees to hum. At 11 AM, people are entering their gardens like a giant infected pimple that explodes. It is not beautiful. The kids are already worked up to complete conflict voice levels, the grownups start smoking, it stinks, it is necessary to play music in the garden. The kids start fighting. The dogs start barking. When the kids stopped fighting, they usually call their mother for attention. The mother’s name, or just “mommy,” is repeated in the tempo of a machine gun. It goes on and on. Moments later, the next fight has started, or a kid is hurt. Starts screaming out their pain. Perhaps this how humans are. Self-centered, noisy, stinking, loud, abusive, inconsiderate. I hope not.

At our new house, we don’t have this. Just yet. Perhaps that is the feeling, the lack of drawbacks we experience at our old house.

Today our goal was to finish putting up gypsum plates on the walls of our bedroom. That succeeded.

The next room is the southeast bedroom or study. I think I will work there a lot. Also, our daughter will have her room there when she is in the new house. At least as long as staying over is a thing. That is why we call it our daughters room.

We moved the Crab 48 scaffold to the new room, the southeast bedroom, but it did not go as expected. The scaffold did not fit very well. The solution was to build up our new Rix scaffold instead. We took down the Crab 48 and started building the Rix scaffold. In the afternoon, we had finished two plates in the new room.

Then we started moving the sheep for the second time. We created a new patch behind the house. There they have more shadow as well as more grass that is better to eat. I do hope they can stay there a little longer than a week.

This was our week at the new house.