Final preparations for the stairs Sunday, 26-Jun-22 21:11:27 CEST

Officially finished Sunday, 10-Jul-22 22:36:03 CEST

Monday, 04-Jul-22 21:11:59 CEST

We received the stairs

We received the stairs and transferred the old house to the new owners.

Monday 27 June

I was thinking on Monday morning that it would be fantastic with a little bit of salad in the smoothie. It was not received well by the rest of the family. I have to refrain from that sort of experiment with the breakfast smoothie.

The salad got holes here and there, but it is still okay. I will use it for salads.

Today, I discovered the first flower of our Common Hollyhock, Acea Rosea. This plant came to our compost heap by itself; we did not plant it there. That does not make it less beautiful, for that matter.

Tuesday 28 June

I worked from the office. Nothing special. In the evening, I took down the temporary stairs for the last time. All of it, including the scaffold. The next time I build a scaffold in the staircase, it will be on top of the stairs. For our convenience, we put up the ladder so that we could climb to the first floor.

Wednesday 29 June

Today was one of the more exciting days since the anhydrite floor was poured into the house. The stairs were delivered. I had the whole day off so I could be around and help if needed. I thought that would not be necessary, but you never know.

	Two carpenters from van Kooten staircase builders came at half-past eight in the morning. It was beautiful weather.
	It is hard to believe, but these are the parts that go into making our stairs.
	This is Gijs. Hij is assembling the lower part of the stairs.
	Sturdy oak wood. While Gijs assemble the lower part, Martijn takes the upper part through the ladder to the first floor.
	Here comes the lower part of the stairs.
	The lower part is resting on two temporary poles.
	The upper part is assembled and must be lowered down on top of the lower part.
	Here the upper part is received by Gijs.
	I helped Gijs and Martijn a little. It was heavy!
	It was a bit of finicking to get the two parts together.
	Things came into place.
	It is a beautiful piece!
	The rounding around the corner sets in earlier so that the stairs form one flow.
	The stairs fit perfectly above the ventilation holes.

 

The outdoor scaffold on the house's north side provided a second stair between the floors. In the hobby room, I opened a window and placed a platform so that you could get to the scaffold safely.

Martijn will be back later to mount the balustre. For the time being, I let the hole open. Fixing it was a task for tomorrow.

I worked for my employer in between the moments I took photos and helped with the stairs. I had a day off, but there was really not much I could do with the stairs, so I decided to log in to work. I suppose I need to compensate for this another time somehow. Usually, that works out very well.

Thursday 30 June

This was regular work from the new home day. Nothing special happened. I reinstated the temporary balustre to avoid anyone of us falling down the staircase hole. This version is a little better for small people. Not that we expect (m)any of them to roam freely in our house anytime soon.

Friday 1 July

Today I had a half-day off in the afternoon with the task of going to the notary to transfer the old house to the new owners. But that was in the afternoon. Before noon I logged in to work. Sometime in the morning, we got flowers delivered. My employer congratulated us on the successful move to the new house!

After lunch, we went to the old house for the last time. We went there with buckets to harvest our "White Currant" Ribes Rubrum berries. These berries are the white version of the Red Currant berries, and they have the same size as Red Currant. They are excellent because the birds think the berries are not ripe, so they leave them.

We left a lot of berries for the new owners as well. Perhaps they will pick them, I don't know.

Then came the estate agent, and we started on the formal part of transferring the property to the new owners. The new owners came a little later. We walked through the house together and inspected the state of the property to verify that it was as expected. Then we went to the notary and listened to a speech held in the Netherlands when owners exchange property ownership. There was also an interpreter because the new owners did not speak Dutch.

When the ceremony was over, we received a gift from the real estate agent. A little toolbox! I like tools, so that was a nice present.

Then we went home. From now on, we only got one home. It feels strange how a property can exchange owners. You hand over keys and sign a paper at a notary. That is how it is supposed to be, but this morning, we picked our berries from our Ribes bushes, and now they are someone else's bushes. We will probably not even drive to that part of the town unless we get a reason to do so.

After the ceremony at the notary, I decided to transplant the remaining bell pepper plants. This is just a colossal experiment from the very beginning. It started on 15 March. Earlier, I transplanted another batch to a place in front of the sea container, but that batch was not that successful. The plants are still alive, but they are not doing much. This batch stayed indoors but got infected by lice. I sprayed them with soap and water, but they had hanging leaves, and the situation was terrible. Now I decided to transplant the rest of the bell pepper plants with and without lice. When I had finished the transplant, I discovered little flower bulbs on the plants. It can actually be some bell pepper; that would be amazing.

In the evening, we had new neighbors come to our place and eat and celebrate that we had finished selling the house. I made a salad from our homegrown salad bed.

Saturday 2 July

Today we decided to go to the farmer's market. It is a market where you can buy many biological vegetables and local producers of farm products. The weather was charming, and it was lovely to bike to the farmers' market. At the market we met our chimney specialist. I talked to him about the chimney that he still needs to come and have a look at.

At the market we bought cheese, bread, and vegetables. Before biking home, we bought two cups of coffee and drank it under an apple tree.

When we came home, I found that I could harvest the french beans I sowed on 27 April. On 9 May, they got transplanted to the bed along the west side of the sea container. The runner beans have not produced any beans yet. They got lovely red flowers, though!

The pumpkin plants are doing well; there are about 5 pumpkins on each plant. You could notice the tip of the flowers of the corn.

DW sorted and cleaned the berries we picked yesterday at our old house.

I cuddled the bell pepper some extra today to ensure they survive at their new place. They got extra water. The plants started hanging with their leaves when I decided to transplant them, so it was about time to do something with them. It looked like the lice had jumped ship and decided to go elsewhere. The root systems of the bell pepper were well developed; it was about time they got more breathing room for their feet.

I made a holder for the let garden door. It is an experiment; we will see how well it can hold the door.

In the evening, I started on a new project in the flower garden; Removing common reed, Phragmites australis. It is growing reed in two chunks along the road on both sides of the flower garden, and I started working on the right reed plant. It had started sending both runners and roots into the garden. I was dragging one root, which had grown below the Phlox Drumandii that I transplanted on 31 May. Before I started, there were two plants left of the Phlox; now, only one is left. But the common reed is gone at that spot. I am afraid it will be a long-running fight against the reed. Everything growing above it will need to be removed. I need to plow deep to get to the roots of the reed. Right now, I think I will put compost on to the places where I dug for the reed and then leave the soil open. That way, I can monitor the success of my reed removal campaign. Perhaps I will need to remove rests here and there.

Sunday 3 July

Today is my birthday; I am now 55 years old; It is what it is. This morning while still in bed sipping on my tea I tried methods to display the video of the door holder I made yesterday evening. I included it into the Word document in the same way as with audio files and run my export program and the result was that the video became like an audio file. It is easy to make it into a video control but that means I have to change my export program for word documents. That will be cool. The size of the video was 31 Mb so it is a big file but I have room on the webserver so that is not a big issue. The program will need to determine if the included object is sound or video and make the correct control for it. From making a door holder to programming my blog export python program, it was an unexpected turn of events. Last time I talked about my blog system on this blog was at the end of May 2021.

We did not do any particular DIY on the house. I took the brushcutter and cleared thistles along the road and on the west side of the property. All this material will need to be collected and disposed of but that is a far more intense job than cutting down the thistles so before getting carried away with cutting I stopped and started loading our small trailer.

DW cleared a path around the helophyte filter so that we can maintain that area and keep an eye on runners from the reed we have growing there.

It was nice weather all day. I found that the gooseberry bush in the flower garden most of the berreis had become ripe sweet.

In the background you can see the santolina in full bloom.

You would think that I finished the job with the thistles that I started in the morning but I just let the thistles be. I have to work on that another day.

Instead I started on a new project. I hope this is not the way I will do all things, start new projects but not finishing ongoing projects, that would be sad. I started clearing out weed from our pond. It had something meditative of it fishing out the weed. I tied a rebar piece to a rope that I threw into the pond. Then gently pulling the rope back dragging the weed out of the pond. I don't know what the stuff is growing in the pond. It is green when it comes out in various shades of green. Really beautiful. After some time it becomes gray. It is like strands of fiber but it is not strong so you cannot make any rope with it. I don't want this stuff to take over the pond so I remove it. We will see how successful I am in this.

From time to time I was congratulated by friends and family. It is nice they care about me but it is weird when I don't care about my own birthday. It feels fake on my side but since they made an effort of congratulating me I need to show them appreciation because they are worth it.

After dinner I went out and continued to fish stuff from the pond. It was a beautiful evening. The sun went down below the horizon and colored the sky orange and red. Strange as it is I care more about a beautiful sunset than my own birthday. My new rebar method was highly successful so one hour before midnight I had cleared the central parts of the pond. It became to dark to work efficiently.

Here ends this week at the new house. I am happy. We are happy.

The main event of this week was the new stairs!