Jens Folk Music Playlist 1 Tuesday, 11-Jan-22 21:32:43 CET

Finished the northeast bedroom and the bathroom Sunday, 23-Jan-22 20:12:35 CET

Sunday, 16-Jan-22 20:33:46 CET

PVC on the first floor

PVC planks glued on the first floor. Started painting the northeast bedroom.

Monday 10 January

It is Monday morning, I have a whole week's holiday, and it feels great! Yesterday evening I sat programming on the blog system. I created a new column in one of the tables of the database. Then we went to bed.

I was dreaming about the database. At first, I was dreaming about the new column. Then the dream got worse, the data was not getting into the new column, but it spread all over the database. I woke up in the middle of the night and could not sleep. So I decided to get up and program on the blog system, which is the thing you can do when you have a whole week of holiday ahead of you. After programming, I went back to bed for a while and could sleep really well.

We switched roles this week. My wife is working for her employer, and I work in the house, on the house.

This morning arrived our garbage containers. It is one of the milestones for living in the house. We get three containers:

• A green container with two compartments. The front is for vegetables, fruit, and garden waste, but we will not use that because we got our own composts. Recently we had six composts, but we moved two of them to an ample compost behind the sea container. We can put regular household waste (rests) at the back of the green container (086665).
• A black container with an orange lid for tins, plastic, and drink cardboard packages (P004385).
• The black container with a blue lid is for paper (819941).

Here is our group of garbage containers. They got wheels, which is convenient because we will need to drag the containers to the provincial road to be emptied.

In the background, you can notice our unruly heap of pallets.

I started plastering the walls in the northeast bedroom. I started with the north wall. This was all new to me, so I had to figure out how this was supposed to work. It can turn out to be so that I will become a natural talent for plastering. Time will tell. It is fun to do, though.

Tuesday 11 January

It was a beautiful sunny winter day. We stayed the entire day indoors. I had holidays, and I enjoyed it very much. My wife had a regular day working for her employer but from home and our new house.

My task for today was plastering the northeast bedroom. I worked on the east wall today. We have the temporary name "Son's bedroom," and last week it appeared he would move out, and this week his plans for his own apartment are long away, so we are back at calling it "Son's bedroom."

Today, our electrician replaced the cable with two threads with a cable having four. He also arranged UTP to the central computer of the heating system to our location for the Internet modem.

At the end of the day, I made a couple of panorama images of the northeast bedroom.

 

Applied plaster around the foot of the chimney in preparation for the gluing of the PVC tomorrow.

In the evening, I published my Jens Folk Music Playlist 1. It has been a lot of work for several months. I had not anticipated that I would have to reprogram my linking system on the blog server, but that is what I did. Tonight all were finished, and the document could be published!

Wednesday 12 January

Brett Parkett came and glued our PVC floor today. My wife had a day off, so she opted to use it and stayed at our old house.

I noticed some crooked PVC planks, but I also noticed that the ratio of good versus bad was much more favorable.

	Brett came 09:00
	Brett left 14:12.

 

While Brett and Ricardo were gluing the PVC floor, I started to change the fenced area of the sheep. They still have access to the neighbor's plot but in a different area. I kept an eye on our house to see if there were a sign that the floor was finished. At one moment, the door to the workshop was opened, and I decided to go back and see if the guys were finished. The floor looked nice!

In the evening we went to Amersfoort. In the middle of the city, we fetched a second-hand kitchen sink. It was two meters long and 60 centimeters wide. We got it for €35. Next, we went to Baarn, and there, we picked up a kitchen crane for €30.

I will build a bench to put the sink on, and then we will have this until it is time to build our final kitchen.

Thursday 13 January

It was a misty morning. We woke up in our old house and prepared for the day. We decided to bring with us the mattress. There is a nearby moment when we can sleep in the new house. Somehow we need a purpose before we do things. The last time we slept in the house, 4 September 2020, was after the theft of our scaffold feet. Several times after that episode, I wanted to stay longer in the house and enjoy the morning and evening, but it just did not happen. We did not even do it last summer.

We ordered two stop-cranes via "click-and-collect" for Saturday morning, enabling us to connect the new kitchen crane when the kitchen bench is finished. Non-essential stores are closed for "walk-in-shopping"; you have to order things via "click-and-collect." The Omikron variant of the Covid-19 pandemic is raging in the Netherlands; you can only do regular shopping in food stores. Our son will get his booster jab tomorrow.

Before lunch, I applied protective paper to the northeast bedroom and the hall before the stairs. I reused the paper from the bedroom. It had buckled because the floor gave away moisture, but I will nevertheless try to reuse it. I had placed the rolls with paper and the aluminum scaffold we are lending from the plumber in the bathroom. That way, the rest of the floors on the first floor could be empty.

During lunch, I sat eating when a neighbor cat came along. He sat there and looked at me. It was like he was saying, "I am here, and you are there." It is a great honor to be accepted by a cat. They have their own will. Dogs are much more accessible in that respect. Have I said I would like to have a cat when we live here?

After lunch, I plastered the northeast bedroom. I worked on the south wall. During a break, I got out to the sheep. They had not noticed that they got access to a new area. When it was time to feed them their supplement, I showed them the new area. I brought one bucket with their food, and they followed me. We had to walk at least 50 meters before it got interesting. It was hilarious because they were only interested in the supplement, and suddenly, there was fresh green grass. They did not know how to react. Oh, here is green stuff, yummy. But hey, where is the supplement. I stayed with them for a while, and they started grazing. I thought I could sneak away and leave them there, but that was not possible. I stepped outside their fence and tried to get behind the heap of mud, but they saw me. They ran around the heap and caught me. I still had the bucket, of course. They were just mildly amused by my action.

All four of us returned to the food bucket, and they got their supplement as usual. Then I went inside and continued working on plastering the south wall of the northeast bedroom. After a while, I noticed the sheep took a walk back to the grass to check it out again. I thought they would stay longer, but they were back at their home base shortly after. We will see; they like it to have a new green patch to explore.

I finished plastering the south wall of the northeast bedroom. When my wife finished her daytime work, she joined me and plastered the bathroom ceiling. She used the coarse plaster.

 

Perhaps I can finish the west wall of the northeast bedroom, and when that is done, I can continue with the bathroom ceiling.

I will get muscles from this work. It will look like I am doing bodybuilding. With plastering, I am using a lot of muscle power. It is inevitable, I will be musculus and more handsome from this work. I will need a tan to match my new plaster muscles in the summer. It is too bad I don't plaster with my legs; they will stay skinny. You might think I am plastering with my legs when you see my trousers, but that is just unfortunate droppings.

Friday 14 January

We were unusually efficient this morning. We left our old home to be at the new house, so my wife could install her office workplace before work began. Not only that, we ate breakfast as well in the new house. Then my son and I stepped in the car and drove to the location to have his booster jab. That means that all three of us had the booster. Our daughter has not had it yet, but she is okay because she got her first jab a bit later.

We also brought household stuff to make the stay in the new house a bit more pleasant, like carpets that can dampen the echoes of the living room. Cushions for our garden chairs. We can have them in the living room as well. Lamps above the kitchen table. The living room is far from finished, but I foresee that we will want to be in the house a lot more if we have it a little nicer, which means we will stay there longer and work harder to finish things. The goal is not to stuff heavy things in the living room until it is really finished, but that will take time. We need to find a compromise in this.

It is a totally gray morning, but It is mild weather. I have enjoyed this week of holiday really much. Right now, I am sitting in the car waiting for my son to come back from his booster. Then we will get back to the old house and fetch the carpets because I forgot those.

We got a dirt road to reach our house. It is not a fancy road; it is made of dirt. I like it though, it makes it possible to drive to the house and with the help of this road we were able to build our house. The road is not owned or built by the municipality, but rather the people along the road own the road and have built it. This is a complex construction that I have not discussed before on this blog.

We are members of a road association, and all the people along the road chipped in on the costs for the road and had it built. It is expensive to build and maintain roads.

Imagine it is frowned upon when someone is doing something destructive for the road, such as driving on it with continuous tracks. There are two problems:

1. They are full of clay since the vehicle, per definition, has been driven off-road as well. When that clay is lying for a long time, it forms a moisture-absorbing layer that turns into dust when it gets dry.
2. When the vehicle turns, the friction loosens the road's top surface, which gives "wounds" that later turn into potholes.

All in all, it is highly undesirable to have continuous track vehicles driving along the road. It is okay to have them load on a trailer via the dirt road, driving a few meters. It is not okay to have them drive along the whole road.

This was a perfect moment for making an ad-hoc sign in Dutch saying that continuous tracks are prohibited, with a bit of extra artwork. I took a failed fascia board, drew the text on it. I could then find the first pole, and then I mounted the sign on the pole at the beginning of the area. It took less than 15 minutes to do. It was appreciated.

We wanted to experiment with the acoustic in the living room. We brought a couple of carpets for the floor and garden chairs with cushions. The echo situation got a little better; it became easier for my wife to talk to colleagues. We can now chill in the living room a little more comfortably as an added benefit. When we plaster the walls and the ceilings in the living room, all the furniture must be moved out. That is why we should not move in too much stuff, but it is nice to have something.

The rest of the day, I worked on the walls and the ceiling of the northeast bedroom.

Today there was a new press conference from the Dutch government. Some of the corona restrictions were lifted. We can go to shops now, there is no need for click and collect.

Saturday 15 January

We went to the hardware store to pick up more things in the morning. The things we had already ordered to be picked up plus other things. We noticed that the website did not have all the items available that the shops had on the shelves. We had ordered a roller 15 cm wide while we actually wanted one that was 25. It is not that easy to make websites.

We also bought hook profiles that we will use on outer corners to make them sturdy.

The rest of the day, we worked on the northeast bedroom. I more or less finished the plastering of the room. I hope we can start applying primer tomorrow.

After our work in the house, we went to an outdoor party along the road. It was charming. We brought wood for the woodstoves and a bottle of sparkling whine. For me, it was a magical moment when the DJ played two of the songs I made, and the crowd liked the songs. Now, this sounds more special than reality, perhaps, but it was magical to me.

They played Robert de Niro, vote for your future, and Train track featuring miss Donut.

When we came home, we smelled like we had been smoked grilled. It turned out we went early from the party, but that does not matter, there will be more parties. We will try to get that primer on the wall tomorrow, so there is no room for a colossal hangover.

Sunday 16 January

The first part of the day I spent painting the corners with primer. That is because the roller cannot reach the corners. At four in the afternoon, I was done with the corner painting.

Then I could start rolling primer onto the ceiling. I had decided to paint the ceiling first; that way, I could remove spatters from the walls afterward if necessary.

This was the first time I was rolling larger areas with paint. It is literally the game of learning while doing. It does not feel like the end of the world if things would not pan out perfectly well because it is just the primer on the one hand. On the other hand, this layer served as a lesson for later when the final layer will be applied.

The result was not too bad. I even think that one layer of primer is sufficient this time.

My wife worked on the bathroom ceiling while I worked on the northeast bedroom. It got the first layer of top finish plaster.

I worked hard today and was a bit tired after this work. My wife had to drive home while I sat resting on the passenger seat.

Our jackets are still smelling like we have been smoked in a grill. I wonder how long that will stay.

This week we got the PVC floor on the first floor glued. It transforms the feeling of the house. We are sensing how close we are to a finished house. Now we will need to plaster and paint until everything is finished. We will do the northeast bedroom and the bathroom ceiling first to finish the basic functionality in the house. A kitchen sink is also part of the basic functionality, but that is up next.