1620 timber frame - or is it a witch's hut?

Of a new beginning and a new arrival...

2011-11-23T14:33:00.004+01:00

I was lately considering to delete this blog due to chronic lack of postings. But somehow I couldn't, on the one hand because it shows part of the way we've come with our old house and on the other hand because of you, readers of this blog, who are still regularly checking back here after two years of complete silence.
Therefore, I decided to give it another try - but as we have not been doing so much in and around the house lately, the topics on this blog will slightly change or rather be extended on things like cooking, preserving, gardening, handicraft etc. But of course I will still be blogging about our renovation and restoration projects.

And here is just a very short update - two major changes have occured in my/our life:

New beginning: I quit my job last year in December, after 8,5 years. I had been unhappy and rather frustrated there for quite a while and for many reasons and then I finally realized that filling an executive position (part-time) and being the mother of a toddler is much more difficult than I admitted. I had the impression to fail at both and drew the consequences. So I started on a small own business which developed quite well so far and offers better opportunities to combine job and family. At the moment, I'm not working for money at all though, because...

New arrival: On September 26th 2011, a sunny autumn day eight weeks ago, our wonderful second son was born. Everything went well and the 1st son is a proud older brother. The big brother, by the way, is going to kindergarten by now, isn't that incredible. Barely born, already a kindergarten-kid today...

I hope to see some of you back at my blog - old and new readers: A warm welcome (back) to all of you!!

Life over here...

2009-12-14T11:34:00.000+01:00

No post since May on this blog...

Thanks so much for all of your lovely comments over the past few months - I'm really touched by so many of you checking back regularly on our blog!

There isn't actually much of an explanation for this long silence, just life treating us not too well lately. Nothing really bad happened, but still you feel the time for several final farewells coming closer. And a lot of questions on where to go and what to reach in life. I guess, becoming a mother shook me more than I could ever have imagined before, in so many ways.

The good news: The little one is such a darling! He walks (and runs) by now and is so curious and eager to learn new things every day. And he started to imitate our behaviour, so it's about time to act a bit more thoughtful ;-). He's not quite a big speaker yet, something I noticed with many little boys in our circle of friens. Funny enough, isn't it!?

We didn't do an awful lot on the house this year. Some smaller renovations, some interesting finds - but you didn't miss a lot ;-). We actually wanted to have some more new windows made, but then we found out that our little town will be part of a state-aided reconstrucion program from 2010 on and that there might be the possibility to get some public funding for bigger renovation projects. Therefore we postponed all bigger activities on the house.

And for the rest we didn't make much progress, hubby is still working on the nursery. Well, the little one is only 18 months old - I guess we'll be finished with his room by his 18th birthday :-)

And how are you all out there, dear readers? I hope 2009 was a good year for you - wishing you and your families all the best for the upcoming holidays. I hope to be back more regularly in 2010!

Is love of old things hereditary?

2009-05-04T21:33:00.000+02:00

... our son grows up in a house that is more than 400 years old; he eats in an antique high chair; he sleeps in an antique cot; he rides an antique rocking horse (well actually it is a rocking roe deer, but that is another story); he plays with antique building bricks ...

I think you get the idea of it. And it will be very interesting to watch him grow up to become a person who will either love or hate old things. 50/50 chance, I guess ;-)

And here is what I wanted to show you: We found a beautiful antique swing and put it up in the yard. The little one loves it and so do I:

Hungry as a worm...

2009-05-02T10:44:00.000+02:00

Another loooong silence over here, although I actually have a lot to post about. Being a working-and-diy'er-mom just leaves little time for blogging. We're all doing great and with our son taking his first steps, life became yet more exciting ;-)

We finally began to seriously work on the nursery, it's about time with the little one turning 1 in June... At first we wanted to leave the hated laminate floor in there due to practical reasons. But in the end we were too curious and just had to peek at what's underneath. After several layers (more in a separate post to come), we found: A WOODEN FLOOR, hurray :-) And it seems to be an old floor indeed as the planks are up to 73 cm wide (and 4 metres long).

In this post, I just wanted to show you the traces of a roomer called woodworm. Normally, we have those little holes:

But in that plank, someone must have been really, really hungry:

Some two years ago, we'd probably been in panic and afraid of the house tumbling down. After more than two years in our witch's hut, we are pretty calm. Typical dialogue:

"Oh, traces of woodworms."
"Any fresh sawdust?"
"Not at a first glance."
"Alright then!"

New windows, part III: Guardian angel

2009-02-02T16:42:00.001+01:00

Shortly before Christmas, the new windows were built in, and the day the workers were here, a guardian angel watched over them (and us!). They leaned their ladder against the balcony in order to exchange the windows upstairs:

And a picture to give you an idea in what height that balcony is:

And this is what the place where their ladder stood looked like a mere four (!!!) days later:

I was really shocked when those rotten wooden panels just fell apart as if they were dust. Imagine what would have happened to those workers had they been on the ladder when the wood collapsed. I'd probably never ever have forgiven myself if something happened to them just because of our inattentiveness.

But luckily everything went well and the workers left our place healthy and happy and delivered a great job! More on our new windows in my next post! And yes - that broken patio is yet another project in our long to-do-list...

A little king's throne

2009-02-01T14:45:00.001+01:00

About a year ago, when I was just a few weeks pregnant, we bought a nice wooden highchair for our little one and put it away in one of our barns in order not to tempt fate.
By now our son is 7,5 months old and we took our midwife's advice, not to let the baby sit as long as he's not doing it independently. That happened these days (big milestone for us of course :-)) and we remembered that lovely antique highchair.

I love the thought of generations of babies having sat in there and eaten their mash. The chair is about 100 years old and in really good condition - all I had to do was clean and wax it and that's what it looks like now:

I especially like that bit in the center of the seat: You can take it out and put a pot underneath, obviously the way babies used to learn how to use the toilet in former days :-)

Frost pattern - or: yes, it's cold!

2009-01-13T16:03:00.000+01:00

First of all - although I know I'm late - HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of you out there!

We've had fantastic winter weather for about two weeks now - snow and frost with lows of - 22°C. This showed us once again, how crucial good insulation and windows are. Or have you ever woken up to see frost patterns on your windows?

Or frozen and iced keys on the inside of your doors?

Anyway - I actually love it, somehow special, isn't it?

Tagged! Seven book facts...

2008-11-24T16:03:00.000+01:00

I was tagged by Larry over at Simpson's Folly. Here are the rules of the game:

Share seven random or weird Book facts about yourself.

Well, this is an easy one for me, my pseudonym is "bookworm"...:

1. This is my oldest book:

Martin Opitz: "Collected works"

It was published in Amsterdam in 1646, so it is just slightly younger than our house ;-)

2. This is probably my hardest-to-read "book". It is a diary I bought on a flea market (where else ;-).

A 14-year-old girl writes about her everyday life between 1918 and 1920. The diary is difficult to read because the handwriting is in "Suetterlin". But a very interesting contemporary document!

3. In the beginning of the 90-ies, I travelled to Russia about once a year. And each time I was fascinated by the low book-prices. Therefore I literally bought tons of Russian literature and brought it back to Germany by train. I even had to buy some extra-suitcases... Here's a look at some (and really just some) of my Russian books:

4. In one of those Russian books - Aleksandr Blok's poems - I found false money. 100 $ - and made by obviously the worst forger ever... The paper is almost as thick as cardboard and the print just horrible. But a funny souvenir anyway...

5. I've published two specialised books so far and hope to finish and maybe publish a novel one day.

6. My husband's grandparents used to speak "Plattdueuetsch" (low German) and we got some books from them. Here's an example:

7. This was my favourite book as a child and I still love it: Janosch's "The trip to Panama".

I'm extremly looking forward to the day when I can read this book to my little son!

----

Well, I hope this wasn't too boring!

Part of this game is to tag seven other people. I won't do it because I don't quite know who would like to participate or who wouldn't. So if you read this and thought it good fun, please feel tagged and let me know :-)

Fantastic find - antiquity in the garden

2008-11-17T18:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, hubby planted about 100 bulbs - hoping that some of them will bloom in spring ;-). He ameliorated the soil with the pickax and suddenly he had the impression he was hitting a stone. But it wasn't a stone, it was this clay bottle:

After cleaning it, we discovered a stamp saying "Herzogthum Nassau" (Duchy of Nassau), a lioncel and the word "Selters" (seltzer):

Let's sum up the information: We found a clay bottle once filled with mineral water, deriving from the former Duchy of Nassau. This Duchy was part of the German Confederation and existed barely 60 years (1806-1866). Folks, that means, our bottle is at least 150 years old, maybe even 200!! So very exciting!

But back to the information: The Duchy was situated in what is nowadays a part of the federal state of Hesse.
The mineral water originates from the well in Niederselters/Taunus Mountains:
* The following information is translated from Wikipedia*
The well was discovered in 1536 and soon the water was said to have curative effects. In the 18th century, the water was verifiably exported to Scandinavia, Russia, North America and Africa.
Between 1806 and 1866, the export of seltzer became the Duke of Nassau's most important source of income.

By the way: Niederselters is about 360 km from Hornburg, quite an amazing distance for a bottle of mineral water at that time! It definitely means that the owner of our house (in the first half of the 19th century) was fairly wealthy!

New windows, part II: Choice of contractor and formalities

2008-11-15T21:06:00.001+01:00

The difficulty with our new windows is how to find a fine balance between conformity with preservation orders and modern comforts, especially concerning the energy balance.
Remember: We are a monument :-) and therefore we have to consider quite a lot of regulatory requirements. The most important ones are:

1. Windows must be outward opening (which I love in general but which is a pest when you do your window-cleaning...)

2. Divided-light windows

3. Narrow profiles

After checking several offers, we decided to commission a carpentry from a nearby village to build our new windows. They use local wood and ecologically compatible paint, usually from Auro, which was an important factor in our decision-making. Especially as some of the new windows will be built in in the nursery - good to know no toxins will evaporate.

Here is a drawing of the windows we'll have built in, they are so-called "Kreuzstockfenster", is the English expression for it "crossbar window"?

The next steps (protected and listed building) have to be these:

a) submit a building application to the monuments administration

b) wait for their decision and especially the important STAMP of permission

c) after works will be finished: acceptance of construction work by the authorities

We've managed up to step b) and here it is, the stamp of permission:

New windows, part I: Advance information

2008-11-13T15:34:00.002+01:00

Almost two years ago, even before we moved into our witch's hut, I already wrote a post about insulation and new windows. And now we finally start on this huge project. We'll exchange some of the old windows, but don't worry, of course we're not going to rip out the historical ones but only the really ugly windows from the time between 1960 and 1980. Those errors in taste we want to replace by new windows that are on one hand looking like the original ones (construction and material) and on the other hand are well insulated and energy-saving.

We'll go ahead with this project just step by step as it would be too expensive to renew all of the windows at the same time. What makes things really expensive is the fact, that all of the 22 (!) windows in our house are of different size and each one of them has to be a one-off production.

So we decided to start with the kitchen windows (two of them) and the window and the balcony door in the nursery. They probably date from the 70ies and are really not worth keeping:

We've got one old picture of how those windows looked like before they were exchanged for those ugly ones (marked in red):

I'm sorry for the quality of that picture, we only have a paper-copy of it. The picture is part of a description of our house from around 1975 when a whole inventory of Hornburg's old houses was issued by the local authorities.

This is the same view today with horrible windows:

I love the old ones and the new windows are going to look like that again, hurray!

The previous owners - back to 1732

2008-11-07T10:47:00.001+01:00

Just a few weeks before our son was born in June, I finally made it to the town's archive to see whether I could find anything on our house or the previous owners.

Well, one visit to the archive is definitely not enough... But even in a first short visit I found out quite a lot, I was especially excited to see a list of the previous owners back to 1732.

That means of course, that we are still missing information on the first 150 years after the house was presumably built around 1590 but it is a start!

Here are the owners:

1732: Georg Cuno Hannemüller, Balbierer und Brauer

1769: Christoph Nürnberg

1785: Fr. Relicta(Witwe)Dierbergen

1799/1800: Rel. Dierbergen, modo Dan. Hotopff

1808: Hr. Hotop

Christian Steinbach, Fleischer, 48 J.; Marie Osteroth, 43 J.; Sohn: Christian * 1807

1933: Peters, August, Ackerbürger, Bagmann, Emma, geb. Peters, Witwe

Especially the first one is interesting as it says that he was a brewer and a barber. As the cellar in our house used to be a brewing cellar we can be quite sure that in the 18th century, beer was brewed directly in our house. Moreover rumour goes, that Georg Cuno Hannemüller's wife has gone mad after his death and that they had to get her out of the house by force. Quite spooky...

And this is how he might have looked like, doing his work as a barber. Well, not exactly him as this in an illustration of 1568, but anyway:

More history as soon as I make it to the archive again! I really want to try and find out more on the people listed above.

A "new" door, aged 250 approx.

2008-11-05T18:49:00.000+01:00

Longtime readers of this blog will remember: I love flea markets ;-)

Last weekend one of my favourite ones took place in Braunschweig, about 35 km from here. We strolled from stand to stand and then I saw it: The door!

It's a baroque door and of course we just had to buy it. It wasn't that expensive with a price of 55 Euro. It would have been more expensive had it not the second hinge missing, which is a pity of course:

But the best thing about this door is: It originates from an old timberframe building here in Hornburg, just five minutes' walk away from our house! We know the house exactly but have never been inside it. The owners have renovated it a few years ago and have thrown out all things "old and ugly".

Isn't it incredible that they - and the majority of homeowners still does that - threw away these fantastic pieces of rural artisanry. I get really frustrated when I think of what's lost forever now but I'm very happy that we saved at least that beautiful door!

It's a boy!!!

2008-07-01T16:45:00.001+02:00

Sad news in my last post - more than happy ones this time!

On June 12th, our wonderful, sweet, funny and beautiful son was born. He arrived more than three weeks early on this side of the world, but he's completely healthy and we fell in love with him from the very first moment when we saw him.

If anyone should be interested in "technical" birth-data ;-) : Length 50 cm, weight 2930 gr, head circumference 32 cm.

Our everyday life has already been completely turned upside down by that tiny and yet so perfect human being and we enjoy every second of it (well, maybe apart from the lack of sleep ;-)!

Welcome in our family, little chap, - we are looking forward to the life with you!

As I won't post any pictures of our baby-son, I hope you enjoy a beautiful flower instead.

Goodbye best cat ever!

2008-05-01T16:49:00.000+02:00

We're very sad: On Monday, our cat had to be put down. Cancer had spread to his lungs and spine and we decided that we had to put an end to his pain.

He found his final resting place underneath an elder tree. Wherever you might be now - we wish you many mice to chase, trees to climb and sunny places to sleep.

Thanks for being such a loyal companion for almost eight years. Thanks for trusting us and making us your tin-openers, for showing your joy and affection every night when we came home from work, for being such a funny chap and making us laugh a thousand times - and for just being a member of our family for all of those years.

You are much missed!

Hibernation is over - DIY-list for 2008!

2008-02-17T15:45:00.021+01:00

Hibernation is definitely over at the witch's hut! Now let me explain why you had to wait for news for such a long time:

The most important reason for me not blogging on house-related things is probably the most wonderful reason in the world: I'm pregnant:) :)! The baby is due in the beginning of July and hubby and I are extremly happy. I'm feeling well most of the time, but apart from working fulltime and travelling to work two hours every day, I don't feel up to any work in the house... Hubby has been doing quite a lot though and I can feel my energy and strength returning with the longer and sunny days of early spring. And I'm not the only one to enjoy the sun:

We made a list of all things we want to finish until the baby (by the way, we don't know whether it's going to be a boy or a girl) joins us in summer:

Courtyard: The pavement in the courtyard has to be finished and the yard cleared of all the excavated material. Hubby did a great job over the last couple of weeks and the part where the concrete slab used to be is already finished. Sometimes he had to dig up frozen soil - he really is my diy-hero ;)

Nursery: In the first months, the baby will sleep in our bedroom, later on, the so-called 50ies room is going to become the nursery. I've never showed you my 50ies room in detail, so here are some pictures before the room is going to "disappear".

I collected all the interior on flea markets, on ebay and sometimes - as long-time readers will remeber - even from the bulk waste.
We're going to change quite a lot in that room, the window and the door to the balcony will be exchanged, we want to install a built-in closet and so on.

Upper bathroom: It will probably be quite convenient to have a working shower upstairs, therefore we have to find the leak in the system (the reason why we don't use it right now) and then to install a new shower.

Living room:
The windows in the living room have to be exchanged. We wanted to do this last year but didn't manage - and now, after our first winter in this house, we KNOW we have to do it. The windows (single glazing) were constantly soaking wet, the frames got a bit mouldy and of course they don't keep the warmth inside... Apart from the windows we'll restore the wooden floor and we want to install a tiled stove.

Lots of things to write about - more regularly than lately, I promise!

Darling, I bought six tons of paving stones!

2007-12-15T16:59:00.000+01:00

"You did WHAT?"
"I bought six tons of paving stones. And two tons have already been delivered."
"Is this what happens when I leave you alone for a weekend?"

Ok, that's about the dialogue I had on the phone with my dear husband last weekend. I was off on a business trip and all I wanted to do was wish him goodnight. And I ended up imagining our yard filled with two tons of paving stones and four tons still to come...

Well, it turned out that two tons of stones are in fact nothing but a small heap. ;)

And it was really a bargain, as it is old sandstone pavement from a farm not far from our place - definitely fitting our original pavement. We payed 120 Euro a ton (including delivery) which is fair enough.

We will now remove an ugly concrete slab from our yard and replace it by pavement so it all looks the same in the end.

My husband has already removed the slab and starts on the paving tomorrow. Really looking forward to the result!

PS Yes, I know I still owe you a post on all the technical details of our new heating. I actually asked hubby to write it, but he kind of plays hard-to-get...

PPS Thanks for all of your comments and questions in the last couple of weeks - they're much appreciated. There is actually a reason for me not blogging for more than a month - I hope to disclose that secret in January. Stay tuned... :)

The walls come tumbling down

2007-11-05T16:54:00.000+01:00

Let's take two steps back, to the time before we got the new heating installed. Before the plumbers started their work, we had to tear down the wall between the boiler room and a small extra room with the oil tanks:

Well, there isn't much to say about it, just look at it. It was so much fun :) :)

After the fun part the part with the tidying up began. Not that much fun and very dusty... But we had ordered a mini-container and so it it was all done within an hour.

And apart from getting rid of those smelly oil tanks we gained some room in the cellar. The tanks, by the way, were professionally disposed, due to the rest of oil inside the tanks.

Other people have beautiful houses, too...

2007-11-03T18:36:00.000+01:00

As my readers probably realized, I took a little break from blogging. This doesn't mean that we didn't move on with our renovations, though. The new heating is finished and working (yes, we have hot water!), we insulated the heating pipes, constructed a drainage in the courtyard, worked a lot in the garden... More on all that will follow very soon, I hope.

Today I want to show you something else. My husband and I spent a long weekend in Brussels, Belgium. We did some sightseeing, some shopping, some relaxing. And although Brussels is definitely not going to become one of my favourite cities, I liked their Art Nouveau houses a lot. Some famous Art Nouveau architects worked in Brussels, Victor Horta probably being the most famous one of them. Here are some impressions of these really special houses:

And now look at those fantastic details:

Small project: a fake door for a fake room

2007-10-07T00:22:00.000+02:00

There is one room in our house that is actually a fake. Or should I say nonexistent? No, more hype than substance - that's the right description. We're talking about the so called "Sportzimmer", well, my personal gym.

To undertand this, you ought to know that I am probably the most unathletic person on earth. But I suffer from a bad conscience regularly and therefore I bought a variety of Fitness Equipment over the years, such as a stairmaster or a crosstrainer. They are used as coat rack or simply collect dust. After we moved into the house, I decided to put all of that stuff into one small room. It is an ugly and really tiny room. And it had an incredibly ugly brown plastic folding door - it was so ugly I forgot to take a picture of it.

Today I painted the door frame (red) and put up a kind of retro-seventies-plastic-curtain. Well, hubby thinks it is weird, I kind of like it, it's cool ;). And definitely the dot on the i of my fake gym...

(before)

(after)

Why I love autumn

2007-10-06T21:22:00.000+02:00

Autumn is my favourite season - I can imagine only few things more beautiful than an Old wives' summer.

I love autumn for its colours and scents

for its late crop

(apples from our own apple tree)

and for its pure air and first frosts, foretaste of winter.

OK, and maybe a tiny little bit because my birthday is in October :) :)

First blog anniversary - and still no hot water!

2007-10-03T21:05:00.000+02:00

I started this blog exactly a year ago - time really flies!!

I actually wrote a lot less than I wanted to - the major reason is lack of time, especially as I've started on a new and time-consuming job lately (joined the management). And sometimes the small projects and worries in and around the house seemed just not interesting enough to be written down. But looking back at what I wrote in the beginning is quite funny and I love to have this house-diary and I will try to keep it going.
Moreover I "met" a lot of great people through my blog in this past year, thanks to all of you!

Folks, we are still taking cold showers - that makes more than 10 days without hot water now. Annoying!!! The plumbers arrived on Monday and worked all day, same thing on Tuesday and I was really disappointed when they called to say they have to come back tomorrow (today is a holiday in Germany). Moreover I'm really angry at those two guys - not because the job takes them longer than they expected but because they obviously smoke like a chimney IN the house, although I told them not to. That's sooooo disgusting!

These are some pictures of what the boiler room looks like right now - they got quite far already, although what they did to our poor old beams looks a bit weird... I still hope to be taking hot showers on the upcoming weekend. Keep your fingers crossed!

No more fuel oil - cold shower

2007-09-29T17:28:00.000+02:00

A cold, no, an ice-cold shower might be a nice thing after a long day of gardening on a hot summer day. It is definitely NOT a good thing on cold autumn mornings at 6am before rushing off for work. But that's exactly what we've been doing for more than a week now. And it is our fault, yes it is...

We were always quite aware that we'd have to modernize the heating system in our house and that it would be a major investement. The old oil heating is more than twenty years old and for both ecological and security reasons (I hate those oil tanks in the cellar!) we wanted to get rid of it.

After long discussions, we decided to exchange the oil heating for a gas heating with a condensing boiler. I'd actually have prefered a pellet heating, but it is far too expensive and you'd need storage space of about five cubic meters for the pellets. A space we don't have...

But of course - and I'm getting to the point of this post - we started organizing everything far too late: Last Sunday, we used up the last drop of fuel oil. No more hot water now. Nemesis for lazy homeowners, I'd say :) :)

But hopefully, we'll be back in the 21st century on Monday. That's the day the new heating will be installed. Some preparing works are already finished: The gas supply was installed and we tore down a wall - more on all that tomorrow!

Another find - what could it be?

2007-09-16T17:34:00.000+02:00

When exposing the foundation wall of our house, we discovered yet another "thing". My readers helped me last time to find out that the first object we found was an eyetooth of a large dog. Thanks Jonathan!

Therefore I try it again, hoping someone will come up with a great idea. That's the corpus delicti:

The material is definitely clay, the whole thing is about 5 cm long. There is a tiny hole in the middle, probably running through the whole of it.

What could it be? An old weight? Some kind of container?

The workshop...

2007-09-08T18:13:00.000+02:00

... or welcome to hubby's world!

One of our outbuildings used to be the previous owner's workshop.

We didn't want to change that, but when we moved in, we threw tons of things into the workshop and in the end there was no way to do anything in there - or the be honest: It was even difficult to open the door because of all the stuff in there....

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the chaos in the workshop before my dear husband told me last weekend:

"I'm going to tidy up the workshop."

Several hours later, he called me to come and have a look at it and I must admit that I was stunned by what I saw:

I mean, that looks like the work of a control freak - all the tools are in file! What happened to my chaotic husband? Why does he not do anything alike with let's say his socks?

Anyway - now we're looking for an old workbench to complete the workshop and I'm sure we'll spend hours and hours working in there...

Help - what's that claw?

2007-08-24T09:31:00.001+02:00

At the moment, my husband is exposing the foundation wall of our house due to a problem with rising moisture (nothing severe, I'll write about it once we know what we're going to do about it).

Today he dug about 50 cm deep and there he found this:

The "thing" is about 5 cm long. What is it? A dog's claw?

Any idea will be appreciated! :) :)

Bulk waste

2007-08-21T22:59:00.000+02:00

We're back from a one-week vacation in Switzerland and are now working in the house again. Today we had a funny job to do and carried all of our bulk waste out to the curb. In Germany you send a card to your local waste management enterprise anouncing your bulk waste and on a set date you take it out to the curb where it is then picked up. So this is what it looked like in front of our house in the end:

Those chairs were left in the cellar by the previous owner and got moldy.

A few months ago I wrote how we found great 50ies chairs in someone's bulk waste - and today some people obviously found interesting things in our waste ;) When we came home tonight, two of the chairs and that monster of a freezer were "missing". I hope the new owner will treat them well :)

To complete this post, here are some pictures of our hikes in Switzerland:

Gender equality in diy matters?!?

2007-08-12T00:22:00.000+02:00

I can't quite believe that I'm really going to show you this picture of my humble self, but I'm sooooo angry right now.
Why do folks at diy stores ignore women diy-ers? Why do they answer your husband if you asked a question? Why is there a pic of a man on every tool they sell but never one of a woman?
And - and that's the last straw - why do they sell protective clothing and protective shoes beginning with size XL (clothing) or 40 (shoes), whereas women need (on average) size M and 38? Don't we need any protective stuff because we're not worth it? Or are we just not meant to do any work in a house apart from cooking and ironing and cleaning?
And IF they have anything in sizes actually fitting women - why for God's sake is that stuff pink or purple? What the hell do I need a pink tool belt for? Or a pink tool handle that is black after the first "real" use anyway? Why should I like pink qua gender (I do like pink anyway, but that's not the point, is it!?!)?
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there are no differences between men and women, but these pigheaded prejudices and stereotypes and that out-dated role model just drives me mad!

Ok, and now let me show you what a woman really looks like as a diy-er - no glamour, neither chic nor trendy, no pink tools, no make-up, quite scary and sweaty AND - she is thoroughly enjoying herself!!!

By the way - I'm refinishing an old kitchen buffet on that picture, but I'll write about that once it's finished. Apart from spending too much time in diy stores, we are getting a lot done in the house, have been talking to several local companies and craftsmen about a new heating and new/old windows and had to deal with one major disappointment. But more on all that once I calmed down a bit :)

The Devil's Wall and baroque gardens

2007-08-06T21:11:00.000+02:00

We're on holiday! For three weeks!! We'll be working in and on the house most of the time, but today we took a day off and went hiking in the Harz mountains. Well, having grown up in the Swiss Alps, it's more the Harz hills for me - but they're beautiful anyway. So before I'll be back for "real" houseblogging tomorrow, here are some impressions of today's hike along the so-called Devil's Wall:

craggy paths:

and wonderful views:

and funny graffiti in the limestone - this one dates from 1814, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars!

And the baroque gardens of Blankenburg at the end of the hike:

Yes, we are a monument!

2007-08-04T18:05:00.000+02:00

It is official now: Our house is a protected architectural monument! Thanks everyone for keeping your fingers crossed!

Two preservationists - the one responsible for our town and one of the superior authority - inspected our house thoroughly (and I, of course, had been cleaning and tidying like a madwoman the night before...). And in the end they decided that the house is "worth" being officially protected and listed, not only for being a part of the old town but also for itself and its inside.
Two main aspects were crucial: On one hand there are several well preserved old parts in the house (doors and doorframes, the attic, the cellar) and on the other hand our house represents a typical example of how this kind of houses were usually renovated in the late 19th/early 20th century.

This is an extract of the mail we got, of course they'll send us an official notification later on, but this is enough for the moment:

That's what it says:
In addition to the urbanistic significance of the building (built around 1600 and renovated around 1910 in half-timbered fashion), the following findings lead to the classification of the building as an architectural monument:

Numerous interior doors of the 17th and 18th century.
Mighty cellar with groined vault underneath the northern axis of the building.
Complete truss of the construction period.
Assumption that the mighty northern house end represents parts of the first city wall before the town's burst of development.

Especially that last bit of information is sooooo exciting. I really have to take some time off to dig in the local archives.
Anyway, we are really happy and the fact that the house is now officially an architectural monument motivates us even more to go on with all of our projects!

Here are some pics of the details mentioned above:
The cellar:

Possible city wall:

Some of the doors and door frames:

Renovating the historic pavement, II

2007-08-02T23:21:00.000+02:00

After choosing the right stones, the brute part of the job began ;) The paving stones had to be pressed into the ground. My husband did it by hammering on a piece of wood with the blunt side of our ax:

It sure was an exhausting job, but we didn't want to use a vibrating plate because the pavement would have lost its characteristic unevenness.
Slowly but surely we advanced

and finally finished this work step:

Then the gaps had to be filled with some kind of grout. We used "home-made" gravel-sand, consisting of the sieved soil we had dug out before.

What next? The gravel-sand was removed by hosing the spot with water, then we refilled it with gravel-sand, hosing it again ....

And this is the final result:

I think it turned out great!

Renovating the historic pavement, I

2007-08-01T20:49:00.000+02:00

Our house and the two adjoining buildings (a workshop and a former barn) form a courtyard of about 150m². The bigger part of it is covered with historic pavement, made of both limestone and field stones.

This is what the pavement looks like in a close-up view (yes, I should weed more often...):

For some unknown reason, there was a spot of about 2 m² in front of the barn where the pavement was completely missing:

As it turned into a muddy wetland after each rain, we decided to pave it. And of course we wanted to use some original old paving stones. We have already learned by now that a lot of missing material that was removed in the process of previous renovations is still to be found somewhere around the place. Therefore we started looking for hidden paving stones. And found some: in the garden, in the flowerbeds, in the former pond and so on:

At first my husband removed some soil (about 20 cm), filled that hole with a layer of gravel-sand of about 10 cm and then fitted in matching stones.

Read more about the next steps and the result in part II of this post...

Mouse in the house

2007-07-29T13:47:00.000+02:00

We have mice in the house! Well, this isn't too much of a surprise to us, living in a house with about one million of cracks, gaps, bigger and smaller holes and so forth...

But it IS a little annoying to be woken up at 4.30 am on a Sunday morning because your cat decided to catch one of those mice, to schlep it to your bedroom (luckily not on the bed...) and to play with it, making it squeak like mad. So you get up and decide to take him away his "toy" because you want to prevent the mouse from creeping under a cupboard and from perishing in some place where you can only smell but not remove it. You catch that half-dead mouse that looks like put through the grinder and leave it outside, hoping it won't be there anymore in the morning.
Then you go back to bed, trying to forget about what you've seen and dealing with a mortally offended cat that decides to catch and bite your toes instead of the lost mouse.

Finally you just give up and think

HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYBODY OUT THERE!

Our front door: 1944, 2007 and in future?

2007-07-26T23:46:00.000+02:00

We found an old picture of our front door dating from 1944:

Photo: © „Bildarchiv Foto Marburg“

And this is what it looks like now, unfortunately:

My husband added one major change to it last weekend: He enlarged the mail slot... ;) We receive a lot of parcels and our neighbour, an adorable elderly lady, accepts them whenever she can. It went a bit over the top in the last couple of weeks and so we decided we needed a bigger mail slot:

The current door is probably from the 1950ies and really ugly in my opinion... We want to exchange it for an old one eventually (or for a new one crafted after historical examples).

We walked through Hornburg, taking pictures of other people's doors to get some inspiration. We'll have to (and want to) maintain the structure with that fanlight, apart from that we haven't taken any decision yet. Which ones do you like?

Happy Birthday!

2007-07-22T16:24:00.000+02:00

One of these days in late July is our cat's seventh birthday. We don't know exactly when he was born as he was a foundling. We found him while walking through a forest: He was lying in the undergrowth, beeping for his life, barely two weeks old. He was hand-fed, first we used a syringe, then a bottle. And he was sooooo cute:

He has grown to a fantastic cat of distinct character: headstrong but always lovable, a great companion who brings more life into our house. And even if some people say we're just tin-openers to our cats, I'm convinced that they like us, too.
Here are some good shots of him - I'm actually quite proud of them, everyone out there who has a black cat knows how difficult it is to take good pictures of them ;)

More of own harvest

2007-07-21T19:37:00.000+02:00

Our red currants are ripe! I forgot to take pictures of the harvest, but here's what the red currants ended up as:

Delicious!

Recipe:

Roll out a shortcrust, put ground hazelnut and sugar on it, cover that with a lot of red currants, sprinkle with sugar and add a glaze (2 eggs, sugar and a bit of cream). Bake at 180° C 40-50 minutes, or until pastry is golden.

First (failed) try working with clay...

2007-07-20T11:41:00.000+02:00

... or: it doesn't smell the way it looks ... ;)

As described in my last post, we had a hole in our bedroom floor (gypsum) and after getting rid of that ancient mouse nest we had to fill the hole if we didn't want to risk breaking our ankles stumbling into it.

Remember: That was just a couple of weeks after we moved in and we were kind of over-enthusiastic and decided to fill it with clay (original flooring material). My husband organized some clay mixed with straw and poured it into the hole:

And the end of the story? It was far too much clay and far too watery - it actually never dried up and began to mould after some days...

We scraped it all out again and filled the hole with gypsum - the same material as the rest of that bedroom floor...

Finally we layed a carpet:

That's only a temporary solution as eventually we want to lay a wooden floor, but not right now (no time and no money). And a carpet in the bedroom is rather cosy as I must admit ;)

So much for our first adventures "messing around" with clay!

Xylophaga or dry rot?

2007-07-15T21:03:00.000+02:00

No - just an ancient mouse nest... Shortly after moving into our house in March, we found this and were terrified:

We couldn't quite figure out what it was and thought of xylophaga or dry rot. We saw huge bills arise in front of us to save the house or - in even worse nightmares - the house tumbling down.

What happened exactly? We decided to rip out the previous owner's carpet in the bedroom due to a wood worm-infested coco mat underneath the carpet which was meant to insulate the room.

After riping out that stuff and throwing it out of the window *great fun*

we found a strange kind of flooring. We didn't know what it was back then - thanks to the preservationist, we know now that it is a historic gypsum flooring which had to be layed in the middle of the 19th century for safety reasons (fire break).

And in this floor there was the hole shown above - and in the hole traces of insects, strange fibers and paper shavings. Thanks to the rests of newspaper we found out that it must be an ancient infestation, it was still printed in Gothic letters.

We immediately called "our" carpenter and he laughed at us saying: "Don't worry, it's just a mouse nest, probably more than 100 years old. Your house won't tumble down because of an old mouse nest!"

You really have to learn to react with calmness to all the surprises a 400 year old house comes up with ;)

In the next post I'll write more about how we refilled that hole...

Discoveries in an old house (I): Eight (!) layers of wallpaper

2007-07-11T22:36:00.000+02:00

I really love our old house!!! Just for fun we tried to look underneath the wallpaper in the bottom area of the walls in our living room. There seemed to be some kind of bulge and we wanted to know what it is. At first, my husband got stock with his finger in the wall, I love this picture :)

Well, the bulge is a - probably very old - wooden plinth:

And sticking to it are eight - yes, 8 - layers of wallpaper. One of them is definitely a 60ies wallpaper...

Layers 1-3, woodchip wallpapers

Layer 4:

Layer 5:

Layer 6 - 60-ies forever ;):

Layer 7:

Layer 8:

And on the clay-wall there seems to be some kind of painting in a still very bright blue. I'm really eager to see that one day:

The preservationist told us that blue colour used to be too expensive, so his guess is that they used little blue cubes (probably with indigo) that where dissolved in water. The walls were then painted with this watery solution. He too is eager to see that wall ;)

Update on accident: Concussion

2007-07-05T10:41:00.000+02:00

Just a short update to let you know why I won't be blogging in the next few days: The accident in the diy-store turned out to be worse than I thought. Today I still had a headache and finally went to see the doctor. The diagnosis was quite clear: contusion and a slight concussion.

I have to stay at home until Monday... So let me tell you once again: Life as a DIY-er is dangerous ;) !!

Accident in the DIY store - life is dangerous!

2007-07-04T09:59:00.000+02:00

I was always quite aware of the fact that life as a DIY-er can be dangerous. But I thought of things like cutting off fingers with the circular saw or falling from a ladder. I never thought of being struck down in a DIY store!!!

What has happened? I was looking for new lopping shears - you remember we have a fallen tree lying in the yard - and as the cheaper ones are always at the bottom of the storage rack, I kneeled down to take a look at them. At the same time, a more expensive pair of shears - probably offended by the fact that I didn't want to buy them - fell and hit me on my head! Hey, we're talking about lopping shears, about 50 cm long and 2 kg of weight - falling from 2 metres height. Gosh, that really hurt!!! Thank God I was hit by the grip and not by the blade. Blessing in disguise!

The employees in the store didn't really know how to react, especially when I felt dizzy for a moment. Three people were running around the store looking for a first aid box. Even the director was very nervous, he was probably afraid I'm going to sue for damages ;) In the end I had to keep them from calling the ambulance and suggested instead to bring me an ice-cold beverage can to cool the bruise.

Now I'm lying here on the sofa with a headache and an ENORMOUS swelling on my head. My name is Unicorn, Anna Unicorn...

Fallen tree - what an unpleasant surprise!

2007-07-02T19:41:00.000+02:00

Now that's the kind of surprise I don't like when coming home after a long day at work. When I looked out into the yard - there was our staghorn sumac (rhus typhina) lying on the pavement. It simply keeled over!

Obviously its trunk was rotten. I'm really sad about that loss, the tree was a perfect natural sunshade! Farewell, dear Essigbaum:

Beautiful but uninvited guests

2007-06-30T11:39:00.000+02:00

The year 2007 seems to be a slug and snail year. Back in early spring we really thought they would eat us away all of our seedlings. Much to our surprise, a lot of plants survived and this is what our flowerbed in the yard looks like right now:

It's above all my husband's work and I think he really has a green thumb. I love the slightly unorganized look of it, it reminds me of the cottage garden my grandparents used to have. Some plants are always in flower in our garden - even if it's weeds ;)

And actually, the so-called pest is very beautiful:

To complete this post, here are some nice shots of plants and flowers in our garden. Enjoy!

Update on monument protection - first decision taken

2007-06-29T16:56:00.001+02:00

Dear readers, please keep your fingers crossed!

After thinking all the pros and cons of getting listed the inside of our house over and over again, we had another chat with the State preservationist today. I asked him a lot of questions concerning the everyday life and especially the practice of renovating in a listed building.
It all seems very reasonable: As all the changes we want to make are conform to the historical monument, we don't have to expect any major problems or conflicts with the Local Office for Historical Monuments.
To give you some examples: If we want to rip out the laminate and put in hard wood floors instead, they would support us but would NOT require a certain kind of wood or a certain laying technique etc. We would even be allowed to tear down inner walls to get bigger rooms (which we won't do). Of course certain changes wouldn't be allowed, like replacing old doors with new ones. Things we never thought of, anyway.

One last thing I wanted to know was whether we'd still be allowed to do a lot of work by ourselves or if everything has to be done by certified specialists. That would indeed have been an obstacle as we love to do things the diy-way. But that's no problem at all.

After this really positive chat we decided to give it a try. We want to have the inside of our house listed, too. The preservationist and an officer of the State Office for Historical Monuments (from Hanover) will look at the house thoroughly and decide, whether it is worth to be listed or not. So keep your fingers crossed, please!!

Upcoming decision - readers' opinions more than welcome!

2007-06-22T22:30:00.000+02:00

Our house is listed as a historical building, exactly as all the other houses in the historic city centre of Hornburg. We have to preserve everything on the outside of the house (facade, windows, roof etc.) and if we want to make any changes, we have to make a building application and get the permission of the State Office for Historical Monuments.

Inside the house, you can change, rip out, destroy whatever you want to. Of course we don't even think of that! On the contrary - we'll restore a lot in our old house (wood floors instead of the laminate the previous owner layed, just to give you an example).

Right now we are thinking of classifiying the inside of the house as a historical monument, too. All the changes we want to make are exactly what the State Office suggests anyway, and IF the inside is listed, you can get a lot of valuable information from the State preservationists for free.
And you can set off all the costs for renovations against tax liability. We tried to figure out how much money we could save thereby - it would probably be an amount between 10'000 and 15'000 Euro. Sounds good.

On the other hand, everyone tells us we're completely crazy because we'd allow the State Office to intervene in our renovation plans. And that we'd never again be able to sell the house if the inside is listed, too. Or for a lot less, which is of course an argument.

And even IF we decide to have it listed, it's not sure it will be classified as a historical monument by the authorities as only few of the original structure (end of the 16th, beginning of the 17th century) is left after centuries of rebuilding and adding changes to the house. I'll post pictures of the parts that are most of all worth protection over the next few days, but we're basically talking of the cellar and the attic, some of the doors and door frames and parts of the stairs (still hidden away underneath newer layers).

We really don't know what to do - any of your advice and opinions would be much appreciated!

(This post is more ore less identical to a thread in the discussion forum of www.houseblogs.net, but as nobody answered in that thread, I hope that more people will read my blog.)

New lamp - 100 years old

2007-06-18T20:58:00.000+02:00

In our house, there are 11 rooms - many more than in the row house we used to live in. Therefore we also need a lot more lamps than before. What kind of lamps look good in an old house? Exactly - old lamps ;)

You probably think that I'm obsessed with flea markets - and maybe I am :).
Yesterday, there was a really good one in Braunschweig. We strolled around the market for about three hours, looking for this and that and found this beauty:

The lamp is about 100 years old and in original condition. Few of the glass pearls are missing, but I hope to complete them. We are quite excited about the original suspension and that you can pull it up and down:

The wires are frayed and need to be replaced as they are no longer approved. But that's just a small thing to do and I'm really happy about this find. By the way, we bought it at the price of 45 Euro.

And for 10 Euro, we bought a second lamp:

Definitely not as precious as the other one, but still cute in my eyes. Probably from the 1930ies.

Moreover, my husband bought this little Art Nouveau present for me:

And I found this kitschy nightmare - great decoration, isn't it!?!

Aaaaaahh, I love flea markets!!!

Record collection revealed

2007-06-16T20:47:00.000+02:00

One of the few things I managed to get done last weekend was to assemble a shelf for our record collection. We bought the records on flea markets back in the nineties when everybody wanted to get rid of them because they changed to CDs. That way we built up a collection of fantastic recordings of classical music. Moreover we bought a lot of records in the USSR and later in Russia, records of such great bands as Akvarium, Kino, DDT. Still love them! And now they were finally waken from a 15-year sleep in the cellars of our different domiciles because we finally have enough space to unpack them.

As records tend to be very heavy, we bought a shelf for heavy load in our favourite DIY store. At first I struggled with the instruction sheet:

But in the end it was fairly easy to assemble it - the only problem was, once again, to align the shelf despite the sloping floor.

And although far from being a high-quality piece of furniture, I quite like the look of it in our living room. Here it is, decorated with flowers from our garden, pictures from a journey to Senegal and a liqueur set from another journey to Buriatia:

And most of all I love to listen to all of that wonderful music!

Invasion by birch trees and "the house of peaceful sleep"

2007-06-14T21:23:00.000+02:00

Long time no blog - I had to finish an urgent project at work which meant something like 60 or more hours of work per week for the last two weeks. I'm really exhausted now, but I managed to get all the work AND the final report done in time. And I'm back here again!

In this post I'll write a bit about the things that happened in town, it really was quite interesting!! In my next post I'll catch up on the few projects we've been working on in and around the house. Moreover I found out quite a lot of interesting things on the history of our house - that'll be the subject for yet another post.

Two weekends ago, a huge attraction took place in Hornburg: "Schuetzenfest". I have no idea if there is an equivalent in English for it - leo.org tells me it's a "fair featuring shooting matches". Sounds a bit weird but I guess it's about right.
Schuetzenfests are very traditional - Hornburg's shooting club dates back to the 15th century, just to give you the idea of it. The peak of every "Schuetzenfest" is the coronation of the annual "Schuetzenkoenig", or king of the shooters.

When I came home after work on that Friday, I found loppings in front of my door. At first I thought that the guys of the waste disposal had overthrown our dustbin when trying to empty it. But then I took a better look and saw: several upper halfs of birch trees... Ok, what would you think if you found trees in front of your door which were definitely not there when you left? Well, I had a look up and down the street - and I realized that those trees were standing in front of every house. I followed their example and put up the trees which were about twice my size... But I must admit that it all looked really nice:

In the end I found out it was the volunteers of the fire brigade who cut the birch trees and spread them all over the place. And - you know we're in Germany ;) - on Monday they collected all of the trees and disposed of them.

What else is there to say on the "Schuetzenfest"? On Saturday, oompah bands walked through town, accompanied by members of different associations and societies.

On Sunday morning, we were woken up at 7 am by yet another march through town by the local brass band.
And of course there also was a fair with a shooting stand, carousels, candyfloss and fried sausages. I visited it with my sweet little godchild. She spent the night with us and called our house "the house of peaceful sleep". Cute, isn't she!?!

Last weekend a flea market was organized and the whole town was closed for traffic. We too had a stall at the flea market, trying to get rid of some of our stuff. It was fun sitting there, talking to some of the neighbours and even earning some money ;)

And last but not least, here's some more own production...

I made elder flower jelly, yummy!!

Own production

2007-05-27T23:19:00.000+02:00

We did a lot of work in the garden this weekend and my husband started to put up the guttering. I'll write about that once the project will be finished.

Today I wanted to show you this:

I made elder syrup, six bottles. I love elder syrup, especially on hot summer days, it's a very refreshing drink. I didn't have to go very far to pick elder bloom, we have elder trees in the garden. There is a popular belief saying that an elder tree should grow next to every farmhouse to protect it - we have definitely got enough of them!

Recipe:

Add 5-6 elder umbels to 1 litre of water and leave it for at least 24 hours. Strain the elder water into a pot, add 1 kilo of sugar and boil it up. Then add 20 grams of citric acid and boil it up again. Pour it into heated bottles.

Rescue mission

2007-05-24T21:44:00.000+02:00

I've always dreamt of finding something really nice or precious in someone's bulk waste. In Germany you send a card to your local waste management enterprise anouncing your bulk waste and on the set date you take your bulk waste out to the curb where it is then picked up.

Yesterday morning I was driving to work rather fast as I was already late for the day's first meeting. Driving around a corner, something green twinkled in the next side road: Full braking, setting back, picking up three beautiful and original 50ies chairs, slamming the trunk and driving to work like a madwoman. Five minutes later it started to rain and the chairs would have been ruined.

And these are the reason for all that madness:

They'll complete my 50ies room and are in good condition. All I have to do is clean them and I'm really happy about my treasures!
.
.
.
And yes, I was late for the meeting...

Bringing in the harvest

2007-05-22T20:26:00.000+02:00

I proudly present - my first rhubarb pie, made with rhubarb of own harvest!

It was REALLY delicious :)

Recipe:

Roll out a shortcrust, put ground hazelnut and sugar on it, cover that with a lot of rhubarb (chopped into 2-cm pieces), sprinkle with sugar and add a glaze (2 eggs, sugar and a bit of cream). Bake at 180° C 40-50 minutes, or until pastry is golden.

It took us a mere...

2007-05-20T18:45:00.000+02:00

... three months to put up the mirror in the master bathroom!

I never showed you the master bathroom before - probably because it is one of the few rooms that didn't need any renovation at all. It was the previous owner's pride and she spent a HUGE amount of money on it.

I'd probably have chosen different materials and colours if I had 10'000 Euro to spend on a bathroom (as she did), but who cares - I didn't spend them ;). What I really like are the green tiles on the floor because you don't see every single hair lying on the floor as you do on white tiles...

All we had to do was to buy a new cabinet and a washstand. Did I mention we don't have 10'000 Euro to spend on the bathroom? Well, all we got was IKEA... And we are still looking for a nice lamp.

We installed the washstand about two months ago and there was just one more thing to do to finish the bathroom: The mirror had to be put up. It's obviously the small tasks we keep on delaying, but today we finally managed to do it and this is what it all looks like. Please notice the red roses outside the window. Very romantic, sitting there, watching red roses grow :) :)

Can't get enough of blogging...

2007-05-18T01:06:00.000+02:00

Just a short note to let all of my German-speaking friends and family know that I finally decided to write a second houseblog, this time in German. And yes, it happens at someone's urging ;) (... you know who you are, don't you...)

Anyway, whoever wants to read on in German, this is the place to go.

But of course I'll also go on writing on this blog, just as I did before!

Ticks

2007-05-17T08:56:00.000+02:00

Usually I don't have any problems with all kind of creepy-crawlies - but what I really, really hate are ticks. Not only because they are disgusting but because several friends of mine caught borreliosis (Lyme disease) after a tick bite - and one friend even came down with meningitis. Terrible!

Why am I writing about this in my blog? Well, we have a real plague of ticks this spring because we had hardly any frost in the winter. They are everywhere in the garden - I'm even wearing long sleeved shirts, long trousers tucked into my socks and wellies when I'm mowing the lawn. Looks ridiciulous and is incredibly uncomfortable... But unfortunately, we find ticks everywhere in the house, too. The reason is him:

Our cat loves to stroll around everywhere in the garden and therefore has ticks sitting all over him. And of course it's me who has to remove them. Yuck! This was the last one, look how nasty:

Kitchen - the result

2007-05-14T18:33:00.000+02:00

I wrote so much about all the single work steps in the kitchen yesterday and forgot to show you the result of all that work... Seems a bit like a Freudian slip - the project is the reward for a DIYer, not the result :)

Here are the pictures: Before

And after:

Well, that is just the side we worked on, the rest of the kitchen still looks like in this old picture (previous owner's picture). Although I don't like the kitchen cabinets and we'll exchange them in about two years, I really love cooking and eating in this kitchen, especially as it is big enough to sit there even when there are ten of us.

Kitchen - sloping floor and building in appliances

2007-05-13T14:03:00.000+02:00

Back in February I wrote that we'd make some changes to the kitchen that the previous owner left behind - I wanted to paint it over in white. Well - we didn't do that at all... We decided to do a major renovation in about two years' time: new flooring and ceiling, new windows (divided light windows) and a new kitchen. So all we did at the moment was to build in the appliances we had taken with us. And that really was a terrible job!

We bought a new countertop and had to make all of the cut-outs for the appliances at first. But the difficulties started only after that. Try to align the countertop horizontally when you have an extremly sloping floor - the spirit level almost drove us mad... We didn't really understand yet why the floor is sloping (apart from everything being a bit like that in an old house :), but we'll see what really happened when we'll do the flooring.

At least we caught a glimpse of the different layers of flooring after we riped out the old appliances. There is an old hard plaster flooring right at the bottom, followed by a parquet (approx. 30 years old) and the actual red cork flooring.

Here are some impressions of my father-in-law G. and his brother K.-H. working on it. K.-H. is an electrician, definitely a good profession to have in your family ;)

K.-H. also exchanged the fixing of some pipes - the old one existed of pages of a newspaper - of 1968!!! I actually wanted to take a picture of it, but my husband has immediately thrown it away because it had a - admittedly unpleasent - mice pee smell...

One more suprise waited for us: We don't have a three-phase current in our house!! Therefore, the oven had to be connected to a single-phase current... K.-H. told me I wouldn't be able to use all of the hotplates at the same time - of course I tried it immediately and so far we had no blown fuses :)

And this is one little detail I changed this weekend and which I really like: I sticked blackbord-film on one of the kitchen cabinets and plan to write the daily menu on it. It's the details that make you feel at home...

Old gardens and a planned swimming pond

2007-05-01T22:15:00.000+02:00

I never wrote much about why we actually bought an old house instead of constructing/buying a new one just as all of our friends did. Well, there are many reasons for it - such as the atmosphere in an old house, its history, the lively neighbourhood and - the GARDEN.
I've seen so many newly built houses in ugly development areas, each one standing on a tiny little piece of real estate and surrounded by a desert of mud that one day will become a garden. What we have is an old garden with many trees (pears, plums, a willow, lilacs and even a ginkgo tree) and shrubs (I haven't classified them yet...), moreover lovely rambler roses and many more plants and flowers.
We enjoy the garden very much, it's our little oasis and it definitely helps us to accept the fact that we probably can't afford to go on holidays for the next two-three years. Here are some impressions of the beauties in our garden:

Right now I'm thinking of constructing a swimming pond in the rear part of the garden. There used to be a "normal" garden pond already until a few years ago when the pond was transformed into a kind of dumping ground by the previous owner. My husband has been trying to get rid of all the loppings, rumble and stuff over the last weekends, but there is still a LOT of work to do. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the original condition, what you see now is the result of about 4 days' work!

The excavation for the pond seems really huge, so probably we wouldn't have to make it much bigger to transform it into a swimming pond. But of course we'd have to make it deeper, as a swimming pond should reach a depth of not less than 2 metres. We didn't reach the ground of the existing pond yet, but I guess it is about 1,60 m deep at the moment.

I'm reading a lot on swimming ponds and it seems really interesting to me. You don't need any chlorine or similar disgusting stuff, the plants on the edge of the pond can do all of the water cleaning. Anyway, I'll keep you updated on this new project... Does anybody of you have any experience with building and using a swimming pond?

Aliens among us (wood floor, part II)

2007-04-22T13:13:00.000+02:00

After scraping off all the rests of glue, we decided to grind the floor.
And here we encountered the first problem: Of course we could have rented a big grinder and would have grinded the whole room within a couple of hours.

But that big machine would not only have stripped the floor but would also have flattened it - which we wanted to avoid. The planks are all uneven and we wanted to keep that historic structure. Therefore, my husband grinded every single plank with a small swinging grinder:

What a horrible job: noisy, dusty, backaching and it took him days... But I must admit that I really love the way he looks while doing it - like an alien ;)

And here is a first try at embedding a little video:

And a picture to compare the floor before (top) and after (bottom) grinding:

By the way: The length of the single planks is remarkable! They are about 5 metres long - all of the study's length!

Of course the now open-poured floor needed further treatment. We read a lot about different possibilites to treat a wood floor and talked to "our" carpenter. In the end we decided to do it the traditional and purely organic way:
First we lubricated it with linseed oil, which - nice side-effect - kills every wood worm, just in case there was still an active one in that floor...
Did you know it is dangerous to leave a cloth soaked with linseed oil in the house? It can catch fire!! Seemed quite scary to me and therefore I left all the jars we used outside in the yard before we disposed them. Better take no risks!

After lubricating we applied beeswax and then polished the floor with a hand floor polisher - a tool that my grandmothers both used as a matter of course but that is hardly purchasable nowadays. Thank goodness there is ebay...

And the result of all the labour is this:

I really love it!!

Wood floor, part I

2007-04-20T18:32:00.001+02:00

As I wrote before, we started off with painting the study. After we finished the painting in salmon, we wanted to rip out this ugly carpet:

Underneath the carpet we found: - another layer of carpet...

And beneath the second carpet we found a really beautiful old wooden floor, hidden away under a layer of red varnish and rests of the carpet's undersurface though...

Alright, I have to put it into perspective: WE thought it a beautiful floor and decided to renovate it. Family and friends reacted about this way: "What a horrible floor, traces of worm holes everywhere and those splinters of wood are dangerous!" Well - the wood worm is long gone and anyway - it's not really a surprise to find traces of a wood worm in such a house, is it? And you can always wear slippers in order to avoid splinters!

First of all - we riped out the whole carpet:

And then I scraped off all the gluey rests of carpet with a hand scraper - quite a tiring work that didn't do any good to my back...

Read about the grinding in the next post...

Easter fire in Hornburg

2007-04-11T21:02:00.000+02:00

There are good news today - we're definitely back online! Sometimes I wonder how we all lived happily without any knowlegde of internet, e-mails, instant messenger etc. Did we actually communicate at all?? :) Anyway - we're back to blogging and I'm looking forward to it!

On Holy Saturday night we went to see Hornburg's Easter fire - and I had the impression that all of the town's 2800 inhabitants were sitting and standing around that fire, drinking beer and eating sausages ;) The fire was quite impressing and I was really happy it was far away from our house...
Easter fires are a wide spread custom in Northern Germany and trace back to pre-Christian times. The fires were thought to banish winter and cold and were probably also part of a fertility cult.

In time for Easter our garden looks quite springlike already - my dear husband worked a lot on it lately. I think he did a great job:

And someone really loves that garden :)

I hate customer hotlines

2007-03-30T16:45:00.001+02:00

Well, dear friends, I was definitely too optimistic. It wasn't a question of one or two more weeks - we're still not online! The other day we had, once again, a really nice phone call with "Miss No-Name", the provider's voice-operated customer hotline.

Husband: "Hello, this is S., I... Oh no, it's only a computer...
Miss No-Name: "Do you wish information on DSL or on our new and wonderfully cheap cell phone rates?"
Husband: "DSL"
Miss No-Name: "Sorry, I didn't understand you. Do you wish information on DSL or on our new and wonderfully cheap cell phone rates?"
Husband: "D - S - L"
Miss No-Name: "Sorry, your voice was not recorded properly. Do you wish information on DSL or on our new and wonderfully cheap cell phone rates?"
Husband: Throwing the receiver in the next corner, picking it up again and shouting "DSL, you f* computer".
Miss No-Name: "You wish information on DSL, you will be connected."
Five minutes and a terrible mutilation of Beethoven later:
Miss No-Name: "I'm sorry, no adviser is available at the moment. We will call you back. Thanks for using our voice-operated customer service."

Well, but I don't give up hope. We are intelligent human beings, we will defeat the computer and I will continue my blog. Just to make you curious, this is a short list of what I'd actually want to write about:

We survived the move

First finds - of cigar models, mummified cats and blackboard-fragments

Xylophaga or dry rot? No - just an antique mousehole

We found a wonderful wooden floor beneath several layers of carpet: grinding it, lubricating it with linseed oil and polishing it with beeswax

A chat with Mr. Seehafer, the head of the district's historic preservation agency

Laying carpet in the bedroom

First experiences with clay as a construction material

Steps and stairs everywhere

Installing a kitchen

and much more....

Still alive!

2007-03-09T13:13:00.000+01:00

Just a short note to let my readers know that we're still alive! We did quite a lot of work in the house and I have lots of interesting things to write about - including first experiences with filling holes in the floor with clay/loam (sorry - I couldn't find out which one is the right English word for it).. But it reminded me a lot of a fresh cow pat :)

But as we have no internet connection yet, you'll have to be patient for another week or two. To be continued...

Starting off with painting

2007-02-23T23:26:00.000+01:00

We thought it might be a good idea to begin with a fairly easy job and do the painting in what will become our office. And first of all we drove to the DIY store to get the essential materials. Two hours later we left the store with some more things than we actually wanted to buy - with lovely new toys such as a fantastic grinder...

I wanted to mix a terracotta shade for the office...

... which turned out to be rather salmon, slightly pinkish. But it looks really nice and friendly.
Painting a clay wall is actually more complicated than we expected: the walls are the opposite of even and that makes painting really funny. Here's a picture to give you an impression:

One day we want to lay open these clay walls and I'm looking forward to it - but at the moment it was quite convenient that there was well preserved woodchip wallpaper on the walls...
To complete this post I'd like to show you what the room looked like before we painted it over. Well, I'd say that any pinkish is better than that "two-colour-thing" :)

Finally OURS

2007-02-21T23:20:00.001+01:00

I'm so happy! The house is finally completely ours! It feels so right and I'm looking forward to making it our home.
We spent about two hours with the previous owner on a last "tour de maison", making sure everything was still in the agreed condition. Then she gave us last instructions concerning the house and some information about our future neighbours. And then the moment had arrived: hand-over of keys!

The picture is of a rather freaky colour, but the battery of our camera was very low :). I'm the one on the left, the previous owner on the right. Oh, and don't forget to look at the beautiful old key... More news coming up soon - but now I need a good sleep to be in excellent DIY-form tomorrow!

Patience, patients and insurance

2007-02-20T20:28:00.000+01:00

OK, I still think that the delay is a nuisance, but I've calmed down by now :) - and I must admit that sometimes I just lose my temper. This - admittedly old - joke is quite close to the truth: "Lord, please give me patience, RIGHT NOW!"

The delay gives me time to care for two patients: One of them is our cat, who had an operation today. He had some kind of ulcer which had to be cut out. A pet coming out from anaesthesia and trying to walk around but constantly stumbling and toppling down must be one of the most miserable sights I can think of!

The other patient is me - quite typically I feel as if I caught a cold. Often happens to me when I'm on holidays: no stress, no appointments, no responsability - seems to be a signal for my body to get ill. But I'll survive!

This afternoon we had a chat with an insurance agent concerning the building insurance. We were quite surprised that the previous owner was heavily underinsured - which is really a fact and not only a sales strategy by the agent. We'll change that as soon as possible. Building insurances base upon the so called "Value of 1914" (later multiplied by a certain factor). The basic value of our house amounted to 20'000 Mark in 1914 - a very interesting piece of information!

Delay

2007-02-19T09:40:00.001+01:00

In my last post I wrote that we'd be working in the house from today. Well - we are not...
We had to learn the lesson that oral agreements obviously don't really count nowadays. And I really feel like I've been taken for a fool - we sticked to all agreements while the previous owner doesn't.
We agreed that Febuary 21st would be the date of transfer of ownership but that we could go into the house and do some work on it from February 10th (first agreement), as she moved out already in January. Then she called to say that she wouldn't manage and that we could go in on the 15th, then the 17th, then the 19th... Quite annoying!!
Well, we are definitely in that house on Wednesday, because from then on, it is OURS and we could - metaphorically speaking - throw out whoever and whatever is still inside. Yes, the impression you get from this post is right - I am really pissed off! Especially as I'm on holidays from today and have to waste three days of it instead of working in the house :(

Although after a little yoga session I would have to admit that all in all we had few problems, I heard of quite some other stories people went through. And of course I still have a lot to do in the old flat, no lack of work there. But still ...

Time to say goodbye...

2007-02-11T11:49:00.000+01:00

... dear kitchen and dear wood burner. You did a good job and it isn't easy to part. But there is no place for you in our new home, I'm afraid!

Yesterday, we sold the kitchen furniture and our wood burner. We got 650 Euro for it, which is almost the price the moving company asks for the move.

We bought the kitchen in 1999 and it moved twice with us. And it is definitely too small for the new kitchen.

And so we sold it to the next tenant - we'll only take the appliances with us. Still we're not going to buy a new kitchen for the new house (although I'd love to, but that would be far too expensive), but agreed with the previous owner that she'd not take out the kitchen. Of course, there will be work to do on her/our kitchen as I don't really like it:

I think I'll grind it first, paint it over in white then and set some coloured highlights, fitting the red corkfloor. Looking forward to it, we'll probably start working on it - keep your fingers crossed - on Monday 19th, just one more week to go!!!

I'm a bit sad about leaving the wood burner behind, though. I really loved sitting in front of the fire on cold winter evenings.

But the chimneys (there are two of them in the house) are walled in and would need major work done. I'm sure we'll reactivate them one day, but not right now.

Last night I needed a bit of distraction from the packing and so I went to a concert with a friend of mine: Callejero Quartett, playing flamenco and jazz. Great evening!

Sunday riddle

2007-02-04T11:56:00.001+01:00

We are still packing and I'm having nightmares of packing cases and packing material. And every day I say to myself that we urgently have to get rid of some of our stuff. And everyday it is absolutely impossible to decide what we should get rid of. Okay - we're not messies or so, but we are mad collectors and suffering from bibliophily. And that's not a good combination for any move!

We have packed 150 (!) cases filled just with books, all together we're probably moving with about 300 packing cases - and of course a lot of furniture. Madness is what I call it!
At least I convinced my dear husband that it would be a bad idea to organize the move by ourselves. First we planned to hire a van and ask a lot of friends to help us with the lugging. But after my husband lifted me up for a few seconds last week - I admit I'm about twice to three times heavier then the average book-filled packing case - and had a back-ache for the rest of the week, he agreed to hire a moving company. Therefore I'll have to find a cheap offer next week.

And here is a Sunday riddle for you: What is wrapped up in this modern art look-alike package? The solution follows in about three weeks time, when we start to unpack :)

Another "victim" of the 5-things-you-didn't-know

2007-01-20T17:19:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Chris at the Emery Restauration, I'm the next victim of that "5-things-you-didn't-know-about-me"-thing... Thanks for tagging, Chris - you and Mandy will at least have to invite me to spend a winter holiday at your wonderful place to make up for it again :)

1. I'm the granddaughter of a Russian nobleman
Well, this sounds a lot more glamorous and interesting than it actually is. My grandfather belonged to the rather impoverished Russian landed gentry. He was an officer in the White army during the Russian civil war and emigrated to Western Europe in the beginning of the 1920s. He spent the rest of his restless, homeless and obviously not very happy life in Germany, France and Algeria. My grandfather died in 1953, twenty years before I was born and I'm very sorry we never had the chance to get to know each other. But it is actually due to him that I studied Russian, worked in Russia and did a lot of travelling in Russia, from Karelia to Siberia and the Mongolian border. And I'm writing a novel based on his life...

2. My childhood-dream...
... was to become a successful and famous skier. I still love skiing, but I'm quite happy I don't have to wear that pink nightmare on my ears anymore...

3. I was arrested by the police...
... for disturbance and breach of domestic peace. Well, only for a couple of hours, but I'm still a little proud of that. I demonstrated with a lot of other idealists against the construction of a new training area for the army which would have destroyed a unique ecosystem. The end of the story: the training area was never built!

4. Dinu Lipatti playing Bach makes me cry
If there ever was celestially beautiful music, it is Bach's chorals played by Dinu Lipatti shortly before he died at the age of 33.

5. I'm a medical wonder
Or that's at least what my doc kept on saying after one of my fingers was broken in a robbery in Sicily. Well, I didn't realize it was broken as it didn't hurt at all and when I finally went to see the doc, he x-rayed my hand three times because he couldn't believe that a fracture could possibly be so stable. Good luck, I guess, and a lot of healthy Alpine milk during my childhood :)

That's it - and come on: I never promised it would be interesting!!!

A walk along the border...

2007-01-15T22:11:00.000+01:00

Long time no blog... Our life means mainly working and packing at the moment, not really interesting. Just to give you an impression of our flat right now:

See what I mean? The only one to be happy is our cat:

We'll move to the witch's hut on February 24th and will start renovating on February 15th - more interesting things to write about then.
Yesterday we went for a walk near Hornburg (where the witch's hut is located). And we walked along the former border between the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany.
That's what the so called "Kolonnenweg" (situated about 200 metres behind the border on former GDR's territory) looks like - it is 1378 kilometres long and stretches from Travemünde on the Baltic to the Czech border, near Hof in Bavaria.

And here are some more pictures of the landscape close to Hornburg:

Christmas with a Crazy Cat and the countdown is on

2006-12-27T22:31:00.000+01:00

At Christmas you are meant to spend a peaceful and contemplative time. OR you have a cat like ours... For some reason, Christmas trees make him freak out and he's quite obsessed with taking possession of the tree. The result of it looks like this:

And because tree climbing is so very exhausting, it's always a good idea to have a catnap on a bed of fir needles:

And well rested, you may prefer to fool around with the wrapping paper and ribbons:

Or with a kitchen roll:

And then finally, you go to sleep:

But seriously, we spent a few nice and quiet days and have now started to clear things out and pack our stuff. We ordered 150 packing cases and hope that'll do. The countdown is definitely on now!!

Six bananas and an UFO

2006-12-23T14:03:00.000+01:00

Yes, I admit it: I do have a soft spot for the design of the 1950ies. And yes, I do know that the 50ies are about 330 years younger then the rest of our house. Nevertheless I decided to make one of our 11 rooms my "50ies room."
And therefore I'm regularly to be found on flea markets on weekends, always hoping to find nice and completely unnecessary but cool bargains. My dear husband just raises an eyebrow and resignedly carries back home all of my finds ...

Last weekend was especially successful - just 1,5 hours and Euro 12,50 for a vase, an ufo and six bananas... What looks like an UFO turned out to be a so called "table sun" (or face tanner/ sunlamp). Well, I wouldn't want to try it out, but it looks soooooo cool!

Six bananas is what I call this wardrobe. I love the combination of black and yellow!

And of course some other things will end up in my 50ies room, such as this fantastic kitchen cabinet which I bought in summer (when we didn't even know yet that we'd buy a huge old house - must have been destiny) and is hidden away in the cellar at the moment due to shortage of space:
And these three chairs, all found at different flea markets, the pair of twins even being Thonet chairs:

And some decoration:

I'm sure you agree with me: My 50ies room is going to be cool!!

Christmas in Quedlinburg

2006-12-18T21:25:00.000+01:00

Although I'm not in much of a Christmas mood this year, we decided to visit the Christmas market in Quedlinburg, which is about half an hour's drive from home.

Quedlinburg is an extremly beautiful old city and is listed as one of UNESCO´s World Heritage Sites. Read more about the old town! And of course being the proud owner of a timber-framed building, a walk through the old town of Quedlinburg is like a walk through paradise :) There is also a bookshop, selling a lot of interesting books on the topic and of course we couldn't leave without buying another one...

But apart from all the fascinating old buildings, they had this really nice Christmas market labelled "Advent in the Courtyards" - everywhere, people opened their yards and sold a lot of beautifully hand-crafted gifts just as well as delicious food and mulled wine. Here are some pictures:

Time flies

2006-11-28T22:03:00.000+01:00

First of all for everybody at houseblogs.net: This post is off-topic and has nothing to do with our house but a lot with my general love for beautiful old things. If you don't want to know anything about my latest not-house-related bargain, don't go on reading :)

For everybody else: Isn't it just beautiful?

And look at the clockwork - fantastic craftsmanship!

I bought it recently and I love to wind it up every morning - it makes me feel quite aware of passing time.
What makes the watch even more special to me is the fact that it was made in a Swiss watchmaking manufacture, where my Dad used to work back in the late Sixties. My Dad died last year, completely unexpected, and I miss him a lot. Now the watch seems like a small regained earthly connection between us...

Paps, this is for you:

Я долго стоял неподвижно,
В далекие звезды вгладясь, –
Меж теми звездами и мною
Какая-то связь родилась.

Я думал... не помню, что думал;
Я слушал таинственный хор,
И звезды тихонько дрожали,
И звезды люблю я с тех пор...

Afanasij Fet 1843

Windows, heating and insulation

2006-11-22T09:02:00.000+01:00

We need a new heating system! There is an oil heating of about 1988 in the house at the moment and our first bigger investment will be to modernize the heating system. We definitely won't go on heating with fossil fuels - too expensive and, more important, not ecological at all. Moreover, personally I don't feel safe with all that oil in the cellar of a - partly - wooden house...

At first we wanted to go for a pellet heating system because it is based on renewable resources. Well, and I simply liked the thought of heating with wood, sounds somewhat "natural" (I admit, I'm an "eco-kid" of the eighties, socialised with Greenpeace and WWF, whale-saving and demonstrating against nuclear power stations...).
But we realized pretty soon that this solution is far too expensive for us. The investment costs are really high and the wood pellets themselves become more and more expensive, too. Therefore we decided to go for gas (central, not in tanks). Later on we might combine it with solar cells, but this is a bit difficult, as the cells mustn't be visible from the street (listed building).

Next point to it: INSULATION... Take a look at our windows (again, not a good picture, sorry...)!

You could just aswell try to heat the street outside, the wind whistles through the chinks and gaps just about any song you like... Now, of course we want to keep these old windows and frames, anyway we're not allowed (and never would!!!) to put in new windows of another kind (again: listed building).

Our windows - this just as an interesting and uttterly off-topic detail - must open towards the street instead of towards the room (in modern houses). This makes window-cleaning quite an adventure :-)

But back to topic: we thought of adding "inner windows" in order to improve the insulation. But they mustn't be too sealed either, this would influence the climate in the house which we want to avoid. And we're talking of 22 (!!) windows, each one with a very individual size - that would mean 22 one-off productions... We also thought of insulating the inner walls - but my father-in-law, an engineer, convinced us that it would be a nonsense from the point of view of construction physics.
Any other ideas?

Being lazy...

2006-11-12T14:39:00.000+01:00

Lying on the sofa on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I'm wondering whether this kind of lazy weekend will occur ever again for the next decades once we'll be moved in our house... No, no, don't worry, I'm not panic-stricken, not at all :)

Not so many news at the moment, though, apart from at least twenty new ideas every day. Latest one: we could open a Bed & Breakfast in the witch's hut, a longheld wish of mine...

Apart from that, we receive bills just about every day right now - real estate transfer tax (a HUGE bill...), a charge for the priority notice of conveyance and - and this really makes me laugh - we were charged with another 15 Euro by the municipality for the information that the municipality will not preempt. They are really quite creative inventing different ways to fill the treasury!

Here are some pictures of the inside - they are not really good, and I'll take some more next weekend when we'll move some of our plants to the garden before the first snow. But you'll get a first impression - and of course the interior decoration is not ours but the previous owner's.

And next time, I'll write a bit more about the windows and our problems (and plans) concerning the insulation...

Entrance hall - I love the tiles:

Guestroom:

Livingroom:

Of doors and keys...

2006-11-04T22:15:00.000+01:00

Some of the doors in our house have extremly ugly modern door locks and door handles, white plastic material. Not really a sign of good taste or authenticity... Therefore, I started looking for old door locks and was really happy to purchase this on ebay for only 6 Euros:

I received the parcel today and after opening it, the scales fell from my eyes and I knew, why it was so cheap - the key is missing. Now we have two possibilities: Either we fix it onto a door we never lock OR we learn how to open doors with the aid of a picklock. I'd prefer the second alternative - and I realize that as a do-it-yourselfer, you might need skills that you never thought of before :)

The cat

2006-10-29T17:31:00.000+01:00

Today I'd like to introduce our cohabitant to you:

OK, and here he really is:

These pictures might give you an impression of our stubborn and eccentric, but undoubtedly sweet and lovable cat!

He's definitely going to be helpful in the new - old - house as he's a great mouser. And I'm pretty sure that we do have mice in our house...

He loves to make us presents of half-dead mice, one day we even found the remains of a rat in our livingroom after he had finished it off. Yuck!

Plans and foosball??

2006-10-26T10:47:00.000+02:00

I promised to post floor plans - here they are:

I'll write about our plans for the single rooms over the next few weeks - we will move in only by February 15th, still a long time to go until we can really start on the renovation.

It is rather difficult to draw those plans properly because there are not just two floors as the plans might suggest. There are actually a lot more of them, because there are steps everywhere in the house - two lead to the kitchen, five to the office, another four to the bathroom - very charming!! Must be a paradise for playing hide-and-seek...
Some rooms are not very high, up to 1,70 m (approx. 5,6 ft. I think) only. No problem for me really, as I'm anyway nothing but "a walking metre" (well, 1,64 to be correct). But my dear husband keeps on banging his head against the beams...

Speaking of my husband - listen to his newest ideas, which remind me a bit of the "Man Room" at Chris and Mandy's place:
As you've seen on the pictures, two adjoining buildings belong to our house. One of them is now and will remain a workshop, with a workbench and our collection of never used tools which could not possibly be left behind in the DIY superstore. But that is yet another story...

What I actually want to share are my husband's plans for the other building, which was now used as a room for seminaries. And MAYBE, it'll soon be our "billiard and soccer room"... S. (my dear husband insists on an pseudonym for this blog, so let's call him S.) is determined to buy a snooker table and a table soccer... Why not add a one-armed-bandit and a Carrera track, just to make it perfect!? Well, the Jury is still out...

Off-topic: Now this is what I call a really good joke! You probably know the game called table soccer, don't you? In German, we call it "Kicker". And an American friend told me they call it "Foosball". Means: Americans use a (derived) German word for it and Germans use a (derived) English word for the same thing. You probably call that "intercultural skills" nowadays...

The signature

2006-10-20T09:34:00.000+02:00

It's done! We signed the contract yesterday morning!!

I think we did quite well - we needed exactly one month from our first glance at an internet ad to the notary's appointment, a few sleepless nights until the decision was made and a lot of bureaucracy...

Yesterday's signature was the most important signature of my life - okay, after my dear husband objected quite vehemently, I specify: the most important signature of my life apart from the one on our wedding day... However, there is no way back now and just for one moment of shock before I signed I had visions of two academics, trying to live in and maintain a house of 1620. Honestly, my husband being an analytical chemist and myself a historian - we are not quite what you would think of as the perfect do-it-yourselfers, are we!?!

But it is a challenge, a dream come true and I'm really looking forward to the next months and years! We can now start to make plans for 10 rooms (on 200 m²) , for two adjoining buildings and a garden of 1019 m². And I have many ideas... Later on I'll post a ground plan so everyone can imagine what I'm writing about.

Water alarm?

2006-10-12T12:02:00.000+02:00

No posts for almost a week - I was caught by the first cold of this season...
As far as the house is concerned, everything is going well. We had an appointment with our banker the other day and - to make it short - they'll give us the money! We are now thinking about the different possibilites of financing. We are not sure whether it's better to chose a conservative financing with little risk or one with more risk but the possibility to reduce our debts earlier. Suddenly a lot of decisions to take...

But here's another (more) interesting story:

Our house is situated in "Wasserstrasse" - means Water Street in english. Sounds like any houseowner's nightmare, doesn't it? And in fact there really is a creek flowing underneath the pavement. BUT - and that's the interesting thing about it - it's absolutely necessary that it continues flowing, as the following example may show:
In the Seventies, the city council decided to regulate the creek. Within the next couple of years, the old timberframe buildings began to move and slump. Fortunately, this was quite an obvious development and the people in charge led the creek back in its natural channel. Almost immediately, the houses moved back into their original positions. Amazing, isn't it!?!

Means of course, that the cellars of these houses are always a little dampish, but as I said before: perfect wine cellars. The cellar in our house is, as the carpenter told us, even older than the rest of the house, probably 15th or 16th century. Really great!! Here's a (not really good...) picture of it:

I'm sorry!

2006-10-06T12:49:00.000+02:00

Just to complete yesterday's story: I took a day off today and had enough time to try and organize all of those documents. Unfortunately, the owner of the house forgot to give me power of attorney, and actually I had no right to see or get copies of any documents concerning the house. BUT, the civil servants were really friendly and helpful and I got everything. Therefore I quite officially apologize for yesterday's grumbling!

Tonight I'll have another chat with the carpenter and I'm sure he will have more interesting things to tell about the house.

Hopping mad

2006-10-05T15:45:00.000+02:00

I'm always writing about "our house", but officially, it's not ours yet. We agreed with the owner about the price and when we can move in. You would think those are the most important points.
But it's really getting complicated now!! German bureaucracy!!! Or have you ever heard of Grundbuchauszug (abstract of title), Flurkarte (land register map), Baulastenverzeichnis (register of building charges)? Of Katasteramt (land registry office), Bauamt (building authority), Amtsgericht (district court)?
Well, I have never ever had anything to do with those - and it turns out to be a real bureaucratic nightmare. You spend hours and hours making (useless) phonecalls, trying to find out who can hand you out all of those documents - and especially, when those people are working. E.g. tomorrow, they are open from 9 a.m to 11 a.m and you have to appear personally. Lovely - and how should I manage to get there in time, when I'm working from 8.30 a.m. to 17.00 p.m.?? *grrrrrrrrrrrr*
Sorry for bothering you with this stuff, but I'm a tiny little bit annoyed at the moment. And my dear husband preferred to go on a business trip right now. Good timing!! Telling me: "Oh darling, could you please organize all those documents? You're so good at it!" :-)

I post some more pictures of our lovely home just to make sure it's worth running to any department at any time:

Annexes and courtyard:

Garden:

"Our" street:

Good news!

2006-10-04T22:41:00.000+02:00

Now, that's what I call good news: our house is probably not going to tumble down within the next hundred years... Well, that's quite enough of a perspective for me really...

We made a "tour-de-maison" with a carpenter, specialized on restoring old timber frame buildings. The most important information: the substance and materials of the house are in a good condition. Probably no bad surprises waiting...

The carpenter - quite a fascinating guy - told us a lot of interesting things about the house. Well, he actually "read" the house. After one glance he knew, that the roof truss doesn't date from 1620, but from about 1750. A real youngster, don't you agree!?!

Guessing from the construction of the attic, we now know that our house belonged to a hops-growing farmer (drying hops on the attic). There are even left a couple of 200-year-old hops sticks. Amazing!!

The cellar of the house has a wonderful arch vault and will make up a great wine cellar...

From the outside, one of the main beams is covered up with wooden planks. The carpenter is convinced, that an inscription or at least some ornaments are hidden behind the planks. I definitely want to reveal the secret next spring! Although I'll maybe have to "struggle" with the local responsible for the protection of historical monuments about this plan...

May I present:

2006-10-03T09:42:00.000+02:00

This is our future home - or should I say our little witch's hut?

It's a timber frame building, dating from 1620. You find this lovely house in a small German town called Hornburg. Hornburg counts about 3000 inhabitants and 400 (!) timber frame buildings. Want to know more? www.hornburg.de

We had been looking for an old house as our future home for quite some time. But either the buildings were in a shabby condition or much too expensive. Found this one more or less by coincidence - or was it fate? Anyway, good old internet told us about this house, we went to take a look at it and knew, no felt instantly: that's it!

As you can imagine, there are lots of things to check before buying a 400-year-old house and there will always be a lot to do and mend in and around the house - and that is exactly what my husband and I are going to tell you about in this blog.

Have fun reading about our adventures and feel free to write (ingenious...) comments!