Kitchen is Coming

A phrase that strikes more fear into my heart than a winter in Westeros. Kitchen is coming. Week 46. Second week of November. This means a lot of things have to fall into place, at least in the kitchen, before then.

But let's take a look back. We actually got our original kitchen design done about two years ago. We naively thought we'd have it installed within six months, but that's pretty much a recurring theme with our renovation. SInce the plastering, plasterboards and underfloor were all done a few weeks ago, it was time to get WohnFitz (renamed from Schäfer & Fitz) back again to remeasure, and a few days later to revise the plans and make sure the equipment we ordered was still available.

As it turns out, the only thing that was no longer available was the double sink in farmhouse style, so we opted for a single basin, but with a draining board. We slightly shifted the island so there was more space between it ans the other kitchen units, and swapped around some presses with drawers.

I still regret not having an oven at chest level, but I'm happy with the overall layout. And given the wonderful 3D renderings from Frau Krieger, we can imagine how it might look quite well.

Yes, it could look like this!

So what has to be done? We ordered the floor tiles last weekend, so they should arrive from Italy in about a week. This is them.

Although there were paler versions of the same range available, we chose these to give a contrast with the vanilla tone of the kitchen units, so they work quite nicely together. We plan on laying them in about four weeks, so we've got that much time to sand down the filler/skim coats on the walls, paint the ceiling, connect the wiring and get the sockets running, apply whatever finish we decide on to the walls, and paint, if required. Not too much, actually, in the scheme of things.

My biggest issue is deciding on the wall finish. Either a roll-on plaster to give a slight structure to the finish (fine sandy grain), or just paint onto the skimmed walls. Then there's colours to choose. I could really do with tips from an interior designer to give some options, as my head is too full of construction details that need to be finished elsewhere.

Anyway. We're getting there, and the plan to move in before Christmas is still possible.

Big leaps!

It's been a full-on couple of weeks since the last update. I had been continuing to install the plasterboard walls on the second floor, but when our friend Sace turned up with the panels for the kitchen floor heating, the focus switched completely to that.

Over most of a day, we put down a thin layer of expanded clay aggregate to level out the hollows left by my poor attempt at a liquid screed, followed by the panels you see below. Once these were down, five heating loops were laid.

We had intended to pour a liquid screed (pumped this time, not mixed by hand), but when we checked the levels, we has less than the 40-45mm clearance recommended by the manufacturer. I have to admit, the liquid screed was more or less a plan B, as we thought it'd be cheaper and we'd have enough height, but originally, we'd discussed a synthetic resin screed, which is what we fell back to. Sace made a few calls, and the next day someone came over to have a look and give us a quote. Three days later, they came a did it. The results were... spectacular.

The beauty of this system  is that it needs no drying out time. So the next day, it was ready to be tiled. Also, you can go fairly thin, down to 1cm or so (we had 3 to 4cm).

If feels so weird having a perfectly level surface to walk on in the kitchen, after about three years of something resembling the surface of the moon.

This of course took away the last large barrier to our kitchen plans. Long-term-readers may recall we ordered our kitchen over 2 years ago, so it was time to revisit that, check the equipment still existed, and make some minor changes. I'll come to that in another post (it's worth it).

But of course, everything else needs to be done before the kitchen install, not least the floor tiles. But before that, the walls and ceilings need to be complete. Right now, the beams are all oiled, and the clay plater has been treated with a silicate-based "primer". The plasterboard walls and ceilings have been jointed and filled, and I've tried my hand at skim-coating the rest of the walls, with fairly decent results.

The skim-coating and filling has also continued into the living room, and once all of this gets some slight sanding and some corners cleaned up, we're actually ready to start decorating!Well, that and the window sills need to go in first.

So, quite a lot of progress in the last three weeks, but the next couple of weeks will be mostly filling, skimming and sanding, I fear.

And for those who like a proper commentary, here's a short walk-through of the first floor as of today. Click here for a large version.

Early August update

Things are moving fast at the moment, so I don't have time to write much, but here's a video taken on the 10th of August, with a walkthrough of the first and second floors. Changes since the last vid include a screed pour in the kitchen to level things out a bit, much progress with plasterboard work, completion of clay plastering on ceilings, and beginning oiling the oak ceiling beams, which look lovely.

Have a look at it big, then compare to the previous vid.

Already this week a lot more has happened, so we'll take a look at that next week.

The beer tap question

The beer cellar location

In the next few weeks, we're going to get into the final stages of the kitchen floor, so it's time to make a decision on something I'd been considering for the past three years: whether or not to install a beer tap in the kitchen. A decision has to be made soon, as it would mean drilling a hole down into the vaulted cellar (the future beer cellar) beneath the kitchen to run a beer line or two up.

The future beer cellar, under the kitchen.

The questions are:

Where in the kitchen would be practical to situate a two-tap font?

On the island is tempting, but too prominent. Beside the sink might be practical, but the hanging cabinet makes it awkward.

Is it really worth it for me alone, and the occasional guest?
My wife is not really a beer drinker, and while I'll have a few beers on the weekends, I try not to over-indulge during the week. Would it be gathering dust most of the time? Do I really want to have to drink most of an 18 litre keg alone?

Would it make me look like an alcoholic?
I think a nice font in the kitchen would be a feature, and a discussion point, and in keeping with my home brewing hobby. But perhaps not quite the right kind of discussion!

There are other solutions.
I will move to kegging my homebrew in the future, but I like having bottles for sharing, or drinking several different beers in one sitting. And for summer parties, I could always build a kegerator and house it in the old pigsty behind the house, which I will convert to a garden room/home brewery in the next couple of years. For personal use, I can always pop downstairs to the cellar to fetch a bottle, or pull a glass. Or sit down there beside the beer tap to hide my problem :)

So what do you think? If you were a beer geek, would you like to have a beer tap in the kitchen?

July 2014 review

We're at the end of a good month for the Bauernhaus. Despite me being away for over a week, there was continued progress thanks to our brilliant plasterer. Not long after the last post, he put a second layer of plaster on the first floor ceilings, and instead of doing that with the aim of putting on a final, fine coat, he tried to make the base as smooth as possible, so we might be able to skip one more step. I think it worked. It's nicely shaped, though a little rough, but a once-over with a brush will give a nice texture which we can treat with a bonding undercoat and follow up with painting, or perhaps a slip plaster with colour we can paint on.

This has been done for the entire first floor, which is just fantastic. The beams were uncovered during the week, so we could get a real feel for it.  Skip to the bottom for a video, if you want a walkthrough!

Living room

Living room

First floor bedroom

First floor office ceiling

First floor landing

This week I also got back into building work after a week away on business, so I dived into plasterboard work, completing the kitchen ceiling and walls that required it, as well as the office, and some cable reorganising as I changed the lighting plans for the kitchen. The sockets are all ready too, so the kitchen is ready for final plastering, and of course, starting the floor.

 Up on the second level, the ceilings are still at the base coat stage, as it took a lot longer to dry up there, due to the fact there was no preexisting layer of clay plaster to help soak up the moisture.

As a side project, my wife started cleaning up the old window frame we want to install between the bedroom and the office (in the hole in the wall in the photo below).

Although I'd cleaned it with water, it was still rather dark and a little flakey (see
parrt on the right in the photo below), so with a special scraping tool and a Fein Multimaster, it's been brought down to the original wood, and looks the better for it. It will look great once it's oiled or waxed.

And speaking of old things, the former owners dropped by yesterday with this on their trailer.

It's a wash stand that used to be in one of the bedrooms of our house. They'd gotten it restored and gave it to us as payment for letting them store a trailer and log splitter in the barn for the last three years. Might use it for the bathroom!

And if all the above wasn't enough, here's another quick YouTube vid walk-through to show progress.

What a difference a week makes

I had to double-check that it is indeed only a week since I made those last videos. Since then, our plasterer has plastered over all the wall heating panels (easy job for him) and yesterday he and his mate spent about 11 hours pumping clay plaster onto ALL the ceilings. Back-breaking work in a sealed house (all the windows were covered in plastic), making it feel like a sauna. I was sweating and I was only prepping ceilings with mesh, and doing what I could to help.

When he started with the walls last Monday, it was an almost emotional experience to see a room suddenly transform. A real sign that we're on the downhill run to completion, with most of the shitty, dirty work behind us.

There's another small video at the bottom of this post, but now, a few highlights.

The living room is always a good indicator, and I think it looks great now with the base coat plaster on both the walls and ceilings.

The first floor bedroom looking similarly tidy.

It was a lot of effort on my wife's part to wrap each beam, but given the sloppy nature of clay plaster, definitely worth it, as we already invested a lot of time cleaning the beams.

Our plasterer did a test panel with one coat only, but given the varying depths and hence the uneven drying of the clay, it cracks. Not a big deal, as there'd still be a final coat of fine clay plaster to go, but the base coat will now go on in two stages, with the first one keyed as seen in the photos above.

 On the second floor, similar treatment for the walls, which are well cured now as they were done first.

There's a light switch hidden in the photo below.

And the top floor, west side is also done. The only plastering to do there.

All made possible with the plaster mixer/pumper/magic device.

What's important now is to air the place well, as it's going to take weeks for the clay plaster to dry.

Sadly, as I type, there's a storm raging outside, so we can't leave the windows open over night.

And in the spirit of the last post, a quick video view of the first floor, post-plastering.

Walkthrough, June 2014

I thought I'd try something new with this post, and use some videos to give a brief walkthrough of the house. Originally recorded to share with family only, I reckoned it's safe to make public, and give anyone interested a better idea of the layout of the house.

Recorded last Sunday (except the outside ones, which were recorded later), while the house was still nice and tidy after the Tag der Architektur, I've taken each floor separately, as well as a brief view of the outside. Slightly hungover from a party the night before, please forgive any stumbling over the English words for some things :) The pictures stuck on the walls were put there for Tag der Architektur, but as you'll see, i was quite useful for doing a before and after during the video.

If you find this useful, or if there are any aspects you'd like better explained by video, just leave a comment below. I'll do another set in a while after the initial plastering is complete.

You can watch the full playlist by clicking here, or take each one singly below (though I'd advise watching directly on YouTube to see a larger size.

The front

The back

The cellars

The first floor

The second floor

The third floor