Removed the temporary stairs Sunday, 03-Oct-21 21:33:15 CEST

Finished ventilation in the washing room Monday, 18-Oct-21 21:52:09 CEST

Monday, 11-Oct-21 21:14:44 CEST

Finished the window sills

I finished the window sills this week!

Monday 4 October

Today I worked from our old home, and my wife went to the office. She had to show her vaccination QR code at the site, but there were not many special arrangements for the rest. On the train, you still need to wear a mask.

After dinner, we decided to just go and give the sheep their food supplement but not work on the new house.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​It had rained 21 millimeters since last Saturday. That is more than we usually had last month.

I don’t have a regular wind measurement system yet, but I figured out how to measure it anyway! It had been blowing three out of four chairs in about northeast direction. I think it would be cool with a better measurement of the wind. That is something I will look into later.

There was no plumber today either.

Tuesday 5 October​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Time flies when you are having fun. Lately, time flies even if you don’t have fun, at least my time. I want to live in the new house, but it takes so long to get there. It is a bit frustrating, to say the least.

Today we worked from our old home again. Many people commute to work, there are massive traffic jams as before the pandemic, but the pandemic is not over yet. It is still here. I am less worried, though, and other people are not worried at all. Statistics show that right now, the virus is transmitted the most at the workplace. I cannot make these things rhyme. Just give me proper autumn, and we are back at square one with an R-value well above one.

When we came driving tonight, I had the impression that our sheep recognized our car. It can be that they notice when a car stops. When my wife steps out of the car and starts talking to them, they definitely know we are with them.

We got our bench at the beginning of the driveway to avoid having our driveway function as a turning point of the dirt road for all sorts of traffic, so we had to do something, and the bench worked.

Tonight I did not have a clear idea of what to do, but my wife knew better. She suggested that I finish the gap at the bottom of the wall of the staircase. She wanted to work on lining doors on the ground floor.

I filled the space with stripes of styrofoam. Then I placed a stripe of gypsum over the gap.

That is it; there is not much to it other than just that.

There had been no plumber to our house today either. My wife is getting seriously frustrated about the lack of commitment from our plumber. She argues it is one thing that our washing room is not finished before the floor heating is applied but what will happen then? Will we have a house that can be heated, but you cannot go to the toilet because the bathroom is not finished yet? I will talk to our plumber tomorrow.

I am frustrated as well, but I don’t know what to do except talk to him. It starts with that. To be continued.

Wednesday 6 October

This morning I worked from our old home. It was the first Wednesday of October, and I had a regular half-day of work to do. Working half days had never crossed my mind before we started building on the house. On top of that, the pandemic came, and we had to work from home. When working from home, working a half-day is actually not bad at all. The cost of commuting is taken out of the workday, making it shorter and more efficient.

At lunch, we went to the new house. My wife worked on the lining of doors on the ground floor, and I started to fill up our small carriage with rests of gypsum plates. She finished the lining today, meaning we don’t have any more work with the gypsum plates, unless for the washing room on the ground floor, obviously.

The lining project is surprising because I often overlooked how many places we got of window and door openings. “Now it is done,” I proclaimed several times, but that was not the case. We removed the stairs to the first floor and up there we are really finished. Today, we are finished with lining all doors and openings, wall ends, and whatnot.

I walked in and out, collected rests of gypsum plates, and placed them in the carriage. If they were too big, I had to cut them to size. It was an endless walk. I gathered 6890 steps today; that was not too much, really. It was not possible to fit all the rest plates into the carriages, though. It means we have to fill the carriages with gypsum rests a third time.

We also asked friends if they had any interest in getting gypsum plates from us. We have 20 unused plates that we can either stuff into the container or give away. I hope they want to have the plates. It would feel great if they wanted the plates.

I called the people installing the floor, and there is a date for when they arrive. First of November, they will start preparing the floor for floor heating. It will take a week to install the floor. Then at the end of the week, the anhydrite will be poured over the floors.

Now I had a firm date for the floor, I called our plumber. We discussed the hiatus and what to do now, and he will make sure that his activities will not be in the way of the floor people.

Well, on time for the closing of the recycling center, our carriage could not load any more gypsum. It was time to go to the center and get rid of this. They kept an eye on us with their deodorant cameras while we placed the gypsum in the three gypsum buckets.

When we came back from the recycling center, it was such a lovely afternoon. The sheep were so lovely. Or should I say two were lovely and the third looked another way? The two snugged up towards each other and had their heads together. Is it possible with a triangle drama among our ladies? We try to see if any of them is the leader, but I cannot see that. Selma is the one looking out for great new things to eat. Hannah and Bea follow Selma in that.

We noticed a new behavior among our sheep; they started eating thistles! That is such good news. That means we got a good chance to master the thistles since the sheep will eat them and keep them short as well. More of the calories growing on the ground is reused, and that is also good.

We pottered around a little, and then we went to our home.

Thursday 7 October

This morning there was a heavy fog. That did not matter much because we were working from our old home anyway. I would have loved to see how it looked like at the new house. I had probably walked around in the mist and taken photos of our sheep and garden for reference in future paintings. But that did not happen.

After our regular office work, we went to the new house to do some work. But what should we do? We need to clear out the house so that the floor can be made, so we have to move out things and throw away things. I parked the car further towards the dirt road to maneuver the small trailer closer to the workshop door.

I placed it so that I could have the trailer end near the workshop and drive around it. That way, it can be standing for a more prolonged period while we are filling it.

That is what you are doing in the dark on a Thursday evening in October. Filling it up with rests of gypsum plates. My wife carried out the pieces, and I cut them so they would fit in the trailer. We took out all rest this evening. Then we got other things to take care of, but they will be a little more tedious.

When we came to our old home, I calculated the floor tiles area and wall tiles area. Then our plumber and ventilation specialist called us, and we discussed the project. He will make us a price for the tiles project. On Saturday, he will come and finish the ventilation in the washing room on the ground floor.

That is good because we will need some time to create the ceiling in the washing room. I think we can get the ceiling up in the time we got left for the floor. Worst case scenario is that I take a couple of days off to work on the ceiling. We will see how this pans out.

Friday 8 October

Today I worked from the old home half day. In the afternoon I went to the office. “Oh, you are well on time!” people said slightly sarcastically. No, but I am so much more efficient when working from home but I thought I could do an excursion in the afternoon to the office, especially since the weather was really fantastic and from my old home it is just 10 minutes with the bike to the office. From the new house, it is 40 minutes with the bike. I will not go to the office casually in the afternoon when we live at the new house. I will plan ahead when I go there.

After work, we went to the new house to give the sheep their food supplement. We continued a little bit with cleaning the house. Just a little bit.

Then we went to our old home and had dinner.

Saturday 9 October

It was a beautiful morning. We started the day by moving out more stuff from the new house. The ventilation specialist arrived and started working on the ceiling of the washing room.

I had decided to rearrange the stuff from our electrician. The pile needs to be more efficient if we are going to have it in our container. We don’t have any clear agreements with him about where to put this, but when the floor is arriving, it needs to be out of the way, and the obvious option is to put it in our sea container.

After lunch, we took our trailer to the upcycling center. Afterward, we went fun shopping at the second-hand shop. My wife found a couple of glasses. I found a mixing table, but it was too expensive.

Back at the new house, I worked on the window sills again. Painted the forgotten corner one last time. I finished all sills except the ones for the big doors in the living room. That sill is in two parts, and I will make a connection between the parts. I think it is possible.

The ventilation specialist worked the entire day. I don’t think he even had a lunch break. I was feeling sorry for him, but he said he was fine. The pipes progressed steadily, but he did not finish them. It is a tricky area where the pipes enter the heat recovery system. The machine takes air from the outside. Warms the incoming air with air the is coming from inside the house. Then the rooms are provided with fresh air while used air is removed from bathrooms and kitchen. The workshop has both in and out the air, so that is a self-contained area. With a heat recovery ventilation system, we keep the heat in the building much more efficiently. The result of the heat recovery system is also that many pipes are coming together in the utility room. It becomes a three-dimensional puzzle like so.

An added complexity is that we placed the heat recovery system near the stairs, and it is not good to have a pipe where there will be a stair in the future. This went wrong two times, but it could be corrected. The result was two extra holes in the wall. I will fill those holes when we are working on the wall in the washing room.

Unfortunately, three pipe pieces were missing to finish the pipes today, so he must come back. I hope he will finish it before next weekend to start working on the ceiling and wall in the washing room.

It was such fantastic weather today. My wife and son were out and clearing the area around our pond. We have not had the sheep grazing there, so here the weed has taken over completely. With weed, I mean thistles and rapeseed plants mainly. The trees and bushes we planted here have been covered by the rapeseed. They survived, but some were not having a good time under the rapeseed.

In the evening our daughter came to our old house. She had bought a new bike.

Sunday 10 October

Today we started the day ultra late. Partly, this had to do with our daughter not being a morning person, and besides, we worked really hard yesterday, so it was good to take it easier today in the morning. New for today was a fancy two-color smoothie for breakfast!

We arrived at the new house at 12:00, and that is some two hours later than usual.

My wife and son cleared up in the garden, and our daughter worked on her school work. It was beautiful weather again.

Today I worked on the window sills above the big doors. These sills came in two parts, and it is the first time I am doing two-part sills. We ordered the sills with a connection piece. I had a look at that connection piece thing and concluded it was not to my liking. It was made to just cover the sill from above, and essentially that should work. With that construction, I was afraid the two parts would not align well with each other. One could hand below the other. It would look awful after a while.

I wanted a connection piece that grabbed around the whole sill and kept the two pieces firmly together. That became my main task for today. I had rest pieces that I could use, so that was fine. It was merely a question of banging a rest piece to be used around a sill. It took some time, but it was worth it. It was still warm and sunny when the sills were ready. It is not so that when mounting the sills that I can get the sills to be absolutely aligned with each other, and it had looked terrible with two sills hanging independently next to each other. With this solution, the two pieces are aligned perfectly well, and they cannot get anywhere.

With this, I made all window sills around the house. That is a nice milestone for this week!

Next up, I can work on the permanent downpipes, and there is a correction I need to do below the solar panels. When all the sills got kit and painted, we were done with the south wall. That is the moment when we can take down the scaffold. It will be a fantastic moment.

We talked about the tiles we decided on for use in the house. The choice of tiles has had time to sink in, and we have come to other ideas. The red tint needs to get out of the tile. Today, we decided to go back to the shop and order other tiles without the red tint. We will do that next Wednesday.

Our daughter had time to look around on our farm and inspect our improvements since she came to the house the last time. Her leg is getting better. She is walking without sticks, but she got pain in her knee a little bit, so she is not walking freely, so to speak.

With the emerging moment that the floor will be ready, we had to discuss mounting a floor box where we can have electricity and Internet to serve the dining table. I spoke to our electrician, and he agreed on mounting such a thing. We only had to figure out where to put it, but that was for later. I also asked him if this was not the right moment to start mounting the outlets in the building. He promised to send a person starting on that work on Wednesday.

Here ended our efforts of the new house for this week. The window sills are finished and mounted. That is great!