We've got upstairs rooms!

Things have been developing pretty quickly over the past few days. The building contractor has focused his guys on getting the back of the house done first so that in the event that we have to move in early or that the work is not finished on time, then we at least have somewhere to live while they finish the front of the house.

To prove it, I've posted some more pictures below:



From left to right, starting top left: this is the upstairs bedroom wall, with Flo peeping 'round the corner; the next one is the entrance to the bathroom and to the right is the entrance to the toilet; the third one is the toilet, a little bit bigger than we anticipated after asking the building contractor to push the wall into the bathroom a little extra; the fourth one is the shower cubicle, where the first building error occurred... notice that the drain is a bit randomly placed when it should be flush with the near wall (but don't dispair, we're fixing it at great expense!); the fifth one is the fitted cupboard in the upstairs bedroom, if we use the full height there's much more space than I anticipated; the sixth one is the entrance to the bathroom, looking back from the bathroom (I'm looking forward to a bit of exhibitionism); the seventh one is the stairwell, just need some stairs (we're working on it); the eighth one is the upstairs corridor, looking back from the bedroom, strangely it seems much lighter now that the wall is in; the final one is a picture of me trying out the new toilet, attempting a figure of eight.

Also this weekend, Flo's been busy trying out a couple of the colours from the pallette to see how they look on the walls in the house. Inspired by the existing green walls which we dearly love, we've been trying out some other shades.


I feel another poll coming on...

A par with the nobility of Europe?

We went to Amsterdam to decide on the tiles for our bathroom and took our soap dish with us so we could colour match the tiles. The sales man (in his late fifties) was quite impressed with it and said he used to sell those forty years ago and that they were quite expensive back then. The name of the (according to him, no longer existing) manufacturer was Richard-Ginori. Time for a Google search... This is what I found:

It was in 1753 that the Florentine Marquis, Carlo Ginori, founded a porcelain factory on his estate in Doccia near Florence, making Ginori the oldest European factory. Having maintained continuous production through the Napoleonic Wars and two World Wars, Ginori moved to their current location at Sesto Fiorentino in 1949, where the designers continue to draw inspiration from the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Marchese Carlo Ginori began producing porcelain at Doccia in 1735; after five generations the family firm merged with the Milanese company Richard in 1896. Ginori porcelain was collected by the Medicis and most of the nobility of Europe — Napoleon's wife, Marie Louise of Austria, ordered an enormous dinner set that survives to this day.

Boika's diet going to plan

 
"I lost 400 grams in 1 month on the Jonny and Flo diet plan" said Boika yesterday evening.

After last month's visit to the vet, we've been pretty ruthless with Boika's diet, only letting her eat her special "obesity" biscuits. She seems to be getting used to the new regime, which involves letting Boris eat his normal biscuits first before letting Boika into the kitchen to eat her special diet.

Initially, she used to get a bit upset as we threw her out of the kitchen at feed times; she'd run upstairs and sulk for half an hour before finally coming downstairs to eat. But now she doesn't seem to mind and just needs to be asked to leave the kitchen... she trots out of the kitchen and upstairs for 5 minutes, before coming back down for her food.

What a very civilised kitty she is! And as a result she's lost about 10% of her original body weight, which means she's about half way to our goal... we think she should be about 3.6 kg, which is about how much she weighed when we lived in Dubai.

Once she's down at this weight, we're hoping that the new house will help maintain this weight, since she'll be able to run around in the back garden, appreciating urban nature. 

Flo's been looking on Marktplaats

Flo's been looking on Marktplaats and similar websites for pieces of furniture for the new house. She stumbled upon this one, an 1890 to 1900 French dresser that she thinks would look good at the back of our main room, for storing books next to the chaise-longue to promote reading while sat in the sun looking out into the garden.

So the question is, do you think we should buy it?

Shall we buy this dresser? 1) Yes 2) No 3) Don't know? View Results Make your own poll

The near end of the deconstruction

After our lovely weekend away, it's back to the daily business of work and house again. The builders have knocked out most loadbearing walls by now and they are being supported by temporary beams until the steel beams arrive.

They have removed the old stairs and closed the ceiling and by doing so created the baby room, which also in size is a baby room! The big gaping hole (once the door to the cupboard under the stairs) will become a wall. You can see that they have placed the old stairs where the new stairs will come, using them as a ladder for the time being.

So things are looking good! Hopefully we can start the construction next week.

Happy Anniversary!

To celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary I decided to suprise Flo with a weekend away in Antwerp, staying at the very pleasant little hotel called De Witte Lelie. The hotel is listed in the Hip Hotel City guide and is very difficult to get a reservation at since it's very popular, but fortunately I managed to get a sweet little room booked for two nights. As it says in the book, staying at the hotel feels more like being a guest at a luxury house party, with very personal service; the hotel staff treated us very well and the breakfast in bed service, included in the price was a fantastic treat!


Flo suprised me by organising a celebration cake, which was a miniture of the cake we had at our wedding. The hotel accomodated the cake very well, offering to keep it in their chilled cake cabinet and bringing it up to our room for us to cut some slices from it whenever we fancied it. It went very well with the bottle of champagne that was waiting for us in the room when we arrived and also with a pot of hot coffee after spending a wet and rainy Saturday walking around Antwerp looking for an antique cupboard for our new bathroom to sit the sink on that we want. As you can see from the pictures below, Flo seemed to enjoy both the cake and the champagne (as did I) and after polishing off the bottle we just had time for a quick snooze before heading off for our anniversay dinner.

For dinner we went to a wonderful looking Art Nouveau building in the Jewish quarter of Antwerp called Dome Restaurant. I didn't realise when I booked the place that it is actually a Michelin star restaurant, but when I told Flo where we were going she'd read about the place. Actually, I was a bit apprehensive when I found out, since our experience with Michelin star restaurants has not been too good. However, my apprehension was short lived since the food, service and atmosphere (although unfortunately not all the clientel) was all excellent. We had an eight course menu and Flo had the wine arrangement. The food was excellent; not over the top, but relatively simple cuisine relying on the natural flavours of the ingredients. The wine selection was near perfect, complementing the food exquisitly. The place was also nicely finished in decor and indeed gave us some more ideas for our own house.

We left the place feeling very content and very full and slept very well that night!

After spending the night walking around Antwerp trying to keep out of the rain, we were ready for our second evening of dining. The choice of restaurant was a good one, since it was much more laid back and bistro in style, with a large choice of French style cuisine. The restaurant was called De Kleine Zavel. Here's what Special Bite has to say about it:

"Near the borders of the Schelde and close to other up-to-date hotspots (Velvet Lounge, Bar Italia, Hippodroom) you'll have to search hard for "De Kleine Zavel". This gem has been well known among culinary veterans for quite a while now.The colonial style interior looks slightly shabby, with a floor producing a tremendous noise even when the place is empty. This doesn't last long though because it's always packed. Studying the menu makes you kind of nervous because it's so hard to choose from. You start getting even more nervous when the waiter starts explaining the daily specials. This takes another 10 minutes. There’s no need to be nervous: everything really is delicious. You should listen well to the sommelier (German red wine!). This is a perfect restaurant to enjoy perfect food and spot some of the Antwerp ‘in crowd’. Tip: Have a drink after dinner down the street in "Cafe Beveren", mingle and listen to the huge organ (just 50 cents)."

I had a fish soup for starter and we both had an Irish steak with mushrooms, rucola and a very rich red wine sauce (with a roast potato covered in the red wine sauce as a side dish)... the steak was roasted to medium rare perfection, thickly sliced and piled high on top of a bed of mushrooms and rucola. We left the restaurant once again stuffed and returned back to the hotel and enjoyed a pot of peppermint tea in bed.

We had a wonderful weekend away and for me it was all topped off with the beautiful new cufflinks that Flo bought me. I feel a bit guilty that I didn't get Flo a present, but next time Flo will organise the weekend away and I'll get the presents!

On the way back we stopped off at Rotterdam, where I managed to find a nice white shirt to go with the cufflinks. A perfect end to a perfect weekend!

Piet Zwart

I got a reply on my ad on Marktplaats. It seems that the kitchen cupboard that went to landfill, was an original 30-ies cupboard, 1939 to be more precise. One of the first fitted kitchens from Bruynzeel designed by Piet Zwart, a famous Dutch designer. We like to think that we have an eye for original designs! :-)

Above the picture from the guy that responded to my ad. He is getting a new kitchen and is willing to sell his. We just need to agree on the price now... And drive to Groningen to pick it up, since that is where he lives! We can always combine it with a visit to my family in Assen.

Apparently Bruynzeel are re-issueing the Piet Zwart kitchens this year too. So that is yet a possibility if we can't find an original.

Style council

This morning I popped over to the town hall to pick up the stamped drawings/plans and some other paperwork. It was a pretty simple process... the council inspector talked me through a couple of things that he intends to check in the house and he got me to sign as having picked up the drawings. He seemed liked a pleasant guy and even gave me a tatty old business card and said to contact him if there were any problems.

So, we just need to fill in the official form saying that we're planning to start in two days and we can officially start knocking down the remaining load bearing walls. Of course, nothing's as simple as it sounds... what is not mentioned is that they require a copy of some official paper from the building contractor to be included with the form... so we have to wait to get this off the building contractor.

I popped 'round the house to meet up with Scott the carpenter to talk him through the windows that he's planning on double glazing (again... hopefully he'll remember this time!) and also the stairs for which I've asked him to come up with a quote for us. Interestingly, the builders have done some more work since our last visit on Saturday.


They've knocked a bit more wall out from the void space that we're reclaiming, including cutting of the steel beams that were holding up the bit of false wall above them.


More impresssive though, they've already cut out the hole in the floor that's going to acommodate the new stairs. They appear to have replaced the steel beam that was in this floor with a wooden one and they've already put in the cross bracing around the opening.

Looks like the electrician has already been round too, since there are markings on the walls where all the electrical points will be located.


Seems that they've already knocked out some more of the wall where the kitchen is going to be located, which is really opening up the room and making it feel quite spacious and more light. Presumably this bit of wall wasn't load bearing after all?

We've got a valuator coming 'round on Friday... just need to convince him that the work we're doing is increasing the value of the property so that we can convince the bank to pay for it all!

Old pictures

I was just chatting to one of my work colleagues. He also owns an old house in Den Haag, coincidentally built in the same year as ours (1906), but in the other end of the city in Laan van NOI.

Anyway, a while back he informed me that the council of Den Haag have an archive website where you can find old pictures of streets in Den Haag. We got 'round to talking about this again and he managed to find the link to the website.

I just had a very quick look and managed to find this picture...


Our house is about in the middle, with an old Renault parked outside. This one was taken in the 1970s. I'll pass the link on to Flo who I'm sure will enjoy looking through them and finding some more pics to share with you all!

No need for camping....

We just had confirmation from the landlord that we can rent our accomodation for an additional three months, so that is good news! We need the extra time, so that we can also concentrate on a proper finishing. After all, God is in the details (courtesy Mies van der Rohe)! :-)

So we have to decline the generous offer from my parents to borrow their caravan, which was very sweet of them. We thought it would be quite funny, camping in front of our new house!

APPROVED!

On Friday we received a letter from the council. We couldn't quite decipher it, but after sending a copy to our structural engineer, he confirmed that it was indeed good news; they had approved our application!

We still have to do a few formalities; we need to send them a letter informing them two days before we start that we intend to start and we need to pick up the stamped drawings/plans from the town hall. We're also being paid a visit by an inspector on Friday lunch-time for him to walk through our plans to see what we're intending on doing. He might be a bit shocked with the amount of work we've already started, but since we've not knocked out any load bearing walls yet then we're not expecting any problems.

We took some more pictures at the weekend; we'll get them posted soon!

Kitchen cupboard gone AWOL

I woke up yesterday morning and suddenly remembered that I hadn't seen the kitchen cupboard that we left in the house... So we went over to have a look and indeed the cupboard was gone. The building contractor confirmed his men had thrown it away since they thought it was old. Which indeed it was, retro 50-ies old... Irreplacible old.

I was really upset about it. Don't what I was more upset about though, probably my own stupidity (I have a knack for being quite harsh on myself...), since we should not have left it there and I knew that. Or we should have told the builders to leave it there. It is not about the value of the cupboard, but it will be really hard founding a similar one. I have my hopes up on Marktplaats (local eBay site) though, I have put on ad on it asking for one.

We took advantage of the surprise visit and took some more pictures, so have another look later for an update.

A picture says more than a 1000 words...

Or in this case, 5 pictures.... Take a virtual walk from the front to the back of our now very stripped house. The kitchen is starting to take shape and it looks like it will be even bigger than we thought! Note the sun light coming through the ceiling in the back of the house.

(De)Construction recommences!

Last night we had another meeting with the building contractor and we were pleasantly suprised to hear that he'd already started work on the house again, confident that we are getting approval from the council.

Working with a reduced workforce until we receive the approval, he informed us that yesterday they managed to knock out another non-loading bearing wall (where the kitchen is going to be) and that his plumber had removed most of the old pipe work, radiators and the old central heating boiler. Both Flo and I could barely hold back our smiles when we heard and both of us wanted to jump straight in the car to go and have a look; removing the remaining walls is going to have such a big effect on the room, it's difficult to really imagine it, so we're keen to go and see it as soon as possible.

We're still uncovering unusual things in the house. It seems that whoever commissioned some of the earlier building work was either on a tight budget, was on a tight timeline or was plain lazy; it appears that there used to be a fireplace where are new kitchen is going to be, but when they bricked off this part of the house, they didn't bother removing the fireplace but instead just bricked it into the wall. This explains the unusual shape of the wall as it currently stands. Also, it appears that the ceiling in the back of the house was installed much lower than it could have been. The builder suggested that he could remove the ceiling and re-install it higher to let more light into the rooms (there's about 40 cm of space between the floor on the 1st floor and the ceiling of the ground floor at present!) but we agreed to leave it as it is since this helps us keep the cost down and will help on the heating bills, plus the ceiling is high enough as it is.

One set back was that the building contractor advised us not to start on the garden until his guys had finished. He said that they're using the garden to store things and they will be making a mess there as they throw things out of the window. He advised that it would be much easier to clean up afterwards if the garden remained in-tact and that if it were to rain when the garden was all dug up then his guys would undoubtedly bring loads of dirt into the house. He did make up for the news however by informing us that he knows a good gardener that could do the work for us, so that's a good lead to chase up.

We went through the electrical plan also last night, which was good timing since we also received the lighting plan from the shop we went to a couple of weeks back. We've been pretty ruthless going through the electrical points and switches and have managed to strip out alot of the work, which should have a significant impact on the cost. Don't worry though... it still remains very practical and we haven't skimped in places where we need the electrical points like the kitchen.

So things are starting to progress. The steel beams that will replace the load bearing walls are on order, but take about 4 days to manufacture. Hopefully we'll receive official approval this week which will give the go ahead to knock out the remaining walls hopefully before the weekend. As soon as this is done we'll go and take some pictures so you can start to get a feel for how it's going to look...

Fire alarms....

I just spoke to the council and the clerk informed me that she had the advice from the fire department back too. We need to put in some more fire alarms. So she will put that in the letter accompanying the license and we're set to go, officially too! Just need to find some nice fire alarms now....

All systems go!

Flo rang the council this week to enquire as to the status of our request for building work. The clerk sounded young and enthusiastic and reported that she'd heard back from the construction department and that they had no objections. She was still waiting to hear back from the fire department and expected to hear something by the end of last week or probably later this week.

We spoke to our building contractor today and passed on the news; he considered that if the construction department had no objections then everything should be fine and that we could commence this week; the fire department were only likely to comment on proposed locations for fire detectors and thicknesses of walls, both of which would not impact the plan. This is good news since it means that we're confident to start preparing to knock down the remaining walls and can order the steel beams that are going to hold up the house when the walls are knocked out.

There's still plenty to work on however. We've had some quotes back for making and installing the new stair case and they all seem rather expensive. So we're going to get some more quotes and see if we can get the cost down there a bit. We also need to source the wooden floor that we're planning on installing in the back portion of the house; we're going to De Oude Plank next weekend and look for a floor. The intention now is for me to install the wooden floor myself; having seen a number of quotes now it's evident that the majority of costs are incurred in the form of labour... it typically costs as much or more to have stuff fitted than the material costs! Since fitting the floor is quite labour intensive but relatively straight forward, there's a fair bit of money to be saved by doing it ourselves. The same goes to painting; it's just not economic to pay someone else to do it!

We also need to finalise the decision on the floor in the front of the house. We're pretty certain that it's going to be a cement based floor, but need to decide on whether it's just painted or whether to have an epoxy layer installed. Painting the floor with a specially made paint is the cheapest option, but we both agree that the epoxy looks much nicer. However, we consider the prices we've seen for epoxy layers to be a bit excessive, so unless we can find a place that offers them at a cheaper price then we'reprobably going to opt for just painting the floor, but getting the builder contractor to level and polish the cement beforehand. Next weekend is going to be busy, since we also need to pay a visit to Decopox to get another quote.

On the garden front, we're still waiting to get a quote off the guy who came 'round a few weeks back. Seems that gardeners are in high demand, particularly now that the weather is getting better! Rather than wait though, we're chasing up another quote from a lead from Flo's mum. Since she gave us a good lead for getting a lighting plan done (for which we've received a quote but not the plan yet), we thought we couldn't miss the chance of another good contact for the garden. We've therefore sent off an email to Voshol; the gardener happens to be a neighbour of Flo's mum and despite being busy, he's reported as being interested in carrying out the work.

We've decided to hold off on all non-critical work on the house in the short term such as the division at the front of the house and installing wine racks in the cellar. This is to concentrate on the critical stuff, but also to give us more time to decide on what we really want for these. As long as we plan the critical stuff, we can accomodate fitting in the ancillary things later. We're finding it difficult to visualise the house up front; there's so much that's being changed that it's difficult to have a feel for how it's going to look and so we run the risk of making some inappropriate decisions if we try and decide on everything up front. This also makes it a bit less stressful for us in the short-term... and extends the fun and games in the long term!

Looking for antique furniture and saved by technology

Yesterday we decided to drive up North to an outlet that supplies old furniture to retailers called Havenloods23, in a place called Dronten. Once a month they open up to the public and on their website they appeared to have some interesting stuff.

So we set off late morning on the 1.5 hour drive; while we were leaving Den Haag we heard on the radio that the A4 motorway had been closed between Amsterdam and Den Haag for construction, so we were a bit worried about the drive back, but we continued on regardless.

We found the place with no problems; the Volvo's got a built in GPS navigation system and despite being a rather basic one, it does the job pretty good once you get used to it.

Unfortunately, we only stayed at the place for about 30 mins. It was smaller than we expected and although they had some interesting stuff, most of it needed a fair bit of restoration work; we got the idea that the stuff they had on show was generally stuff that they couldn't get rid of to the shops that they supply. So we ended up not getting anything... the search for a set of drawers to place the bathroom sink on therefore continues.


On the way back we were saved by the Volvo's navigation system. It tunes into the traffic signal that is broadcast over radio so it knows where all the traffic jams are. When you enter in your destination, it calculates the quickest route; if there's traffic on the route then it offers an alternative route than circum-navigates the traffic. So despite the motorway being closed, it only took us about an extra 10 mins to get home since we took a detour via Utrecht rather than going via Amsterdam. It worked really well... even Flo, who's always been a bit anti navigation systems was impressed! I like the way it tunes into the free radio signal; my TomTom that I use in the Ghibli has the option of traffic avoidance, but you have to subscribe to the service at about €40/year and it depends on being connected to a mobile phone (via Bluetooth) in order to get the traffic information, which again costs extra money. We were a bit reluctant at having the built in GPS when we bought the car, but I think that it's certainly something we'd consider if we bought a new car, although both Flo and I are still a bit reluctant to become such a slave to technology.

Marble tiles for the bathroom?

Since I was released early from work today because of the lovely first day of summer, I had some time to go back to the bathroom place. They had called us with the good message that there was a cheaper solution than the hand made slab of belgian hardstone that we wanted for the shower basin. The solution was basalt, also a natural stone. Only drawback was the order time of at least 10 weeks. So the best and nicest way forward seems just tiling the whole floor. Just need to decide on the colour now!

And for the walls we'll just stick with the good old Metro tiles. They'll make a nice contrast with the modern taps that we have in mind.

Latest news on the house

For all you readers out there, some news on the new Jonny and Flo residence!

I called the council yesterday and spoke to the clerk that is handling our building license. She had an answer back from the responsible council construction department (all okay) and is still waiting to hear back from the fire department. That should be this week or next week at the latest. With all the fire alarms on our drawing, we don’t expect any problems there….

So that means that we can finally start the building next week! We are still waiting for the final quote from the building contractor, which he should send us today. We negotiated the quote down by about 50%, so no problems there. Apart from us wondering whether he was having us on with the first quote or that my newly acquired negotiating skills as licensing manager are finally paying of. We like to think the latter.

Meanwhile, we are still chasing up the guys from the stairs and the garden for a quote. The building contractor suggested going to www.hornbach.nl to get a ready-made stairs. His guys can adapt that to fit. Something to look into this weekend, since it will probably save us quite some money. That we can then spend on nice things… Like a chest of drawers for the bathroom? That is what we will be looking for on Saturday at this place: www.loods23.nl

We are both so looking forward to moving into to our new place, potter around in the garden, have people over for dinner at our long table, having a rain shower in our bathroom, relax at the chaise longue in front of the double doors opening on to the garden and last but not least the house-warming party! We'll let you know the date soon hopefully!