ᐅ Hillside House in the Southwest Palatinate – Our Home Construction 2.0
Created on: 9 Sep 2022 18:13
K
kati1337
Good evening everyone
I’m starting a small collection thread here for photos and progress updates on our second building project.
We’ve already moved to the Palatinate region to be closer to the construction site. Now we’re watching eagerly and happily as our (hopefully final) dream home takes shape near family.
One big challenge still ahead of us is the facade design. I really love the Nordic style with brickwork and mullioned windows. That won’t be possible here for two reasons: firstly, no one here can do bricklaying, and secondly, it would stand out too much. We will be going with a rendered facade. How to design the colors of the facade and windows to still create some country house / cottage charm is currently still a work in progress mentally.
Otherwise, I’m sharing our plans here and how it will eventually be built.
The support pillar marked near the kitchen island could be removed for a small extra cost, so that will be gone.
The room for “garden equipment” under the garage will get a partition wall for structural reasons.
It won’t be fully finished living space like in the house, but underfloor heating will be installed, along with a lockable door and a window. It’s meant to store garden tools but also some of the building services equipment, since the utility room (HAR) is quite small, and maybe be used as a party room.
We had three construction companies in the final selection. In the end, we chose the “doer” – a builder recommended to us here by friends and family. No website, no smartphone, but he is on site every day himself working in overalls. He has a very good reputation in this area and now rarely builds single-family homes. We were a bit lucky through personal connections and a very friendly initial phone call to get our foot in the door. So far we are very satisfied with this choice.
I’m starting a small collection thread here for photos and progress updates on our second building project.
We’ve already moved to the Palatinate region to be closer to the construction site. Now we’re watching eagerly and happily as our (hopefully final) dream home takes shape near family.
One big challenge still ahead of us is the facade design. I really love the Nordic style with brickwork and mullioned windows. That won’t be possible here for two reasons: firstly, no one here can do bricklaying, and secondly, it would stand out too much. We will be going with a rendered facade. How to design the colors of the facade and windows to still create some country house / cottage charm is currently still a work in progress mentally.
Otherwise, I’m sharing our plans here and how it will eventually be built.
The support pillar marked near the kitchen island could be removed for a small extra cost, so that will be gone.
The room for “garden equipment” under the garage will get a partition wall for structural reasons.
It won’t be fully finished living space like in the house, but underfloor heating will be installed, along with a lockable door and a window. It’s meant to store garden tools but also some of the building services equipment, since the utility room (HAR) is quite small, and maybe be used as a party room.
We had three construction companies in the final selection. In the end, we chose the “doer” – a builder recommended to us here by friends and family. No website, no smartphone, but he is on site every day himself working in overalls. He has a very good reputation in this area and now rarely builds single-family homes. We were a bit lucky through personal connections and a very friendly initial phone call to get our foot in the door. So far we are very satisfied with this choice.
fm-united schrieb:
The railing looks great. May I ask how long and wide it is? Did you intentionally align the long side flush, or was there no other option? We’re planning something similar. Do you have a photo from the side showing the mounting profiles?
Thanks a lot! 🙂 To be honest, we never really discussed which side should be flush. My contractor is a bit unconventional. One day he showed up in our office and said that for a large project he orders glass railings like this, and if we wanted the same, he could add ours to the bulk order for a low price—normally it would cost more—and suggested we consider it. We then looked up what they looked like, sent him an email saying “yep, we’re in for that price,” and that was the entire agreement. That was all we knew until we arrived yesterday and it was already installed. 😀
I can gladly take a photo from the side tomorrow. Do you mean the long or the short side?
This metal track was installed before the screed. I have no idea how it’s fixed inside, but I’ll try to photograph it.
Edit: It’s approximately 4.80 meters by 1.20 meters (15 ft 9 in by 3 ft 11 in), more or less.
@kati1337 and @KoalasAreCute, I’m so happy for you that you hit the jackpot with your builder just by trusting your gut feeling, and that apart from the screed delay (which isn’t the builder’s fault), everything has gone so well. Great craftsmen, really fair prices, beautiful results... I hope we might get a little "walk-through" video before you move in? Such a fantastic project, so many great ideas and impressions for us readers, and with every "progress photo," I get excited because it’s so lovely. Ah, when is the handover date again? Still in August?
W
WilderSueden3 Aug 2023 23:01You have a website with a blog. You can probably upload videos there 😉
WilderSueden schrieb:
You have a website with a blog. You can probably upload videos there 😉So far, I haven’t shared anything about the new house. I didn’t have time to blog this time, and I also didn’t want to mix the two projects there^^Climbee schrieb:
We have mostly hardwood floors throughout; fairly high-quality oak flooring, oiled.
1. Use high-quality oil. There are huge differences. The oil we have (our builder applied it to the flooring; we only realized afterwards how good it is) is expensive but truly very high quality. We recommended it to our carpenter, who made our kitchen and other built-ins, and he was really impressed and has been using only that since. Unfortunately, I’m in the office today and can’t check the name directly. It’s a two-component oil, and a good hardwood floor installer usually has a machine to apply it. It looks like an old-fashioned floor polisher. I believe it was the Rubio MonoCoat Oil Plus 2C Mix in natural/clear. We’ve been living in the house for over three years now and I don’t see any reason to re-oil...
2. I’m not light either and I have hardwood in my office combined with the Markus office chair from IKEA. I work from home almost every day (except today...) and after more than two years I still can’t see any marks on the wood. In the basement, we have our second office with spruce flooring and there we use a protective mat.
3. We also have hardwood in the kitchen and would definitely do it again. Sure, you can see some stains now and then, but overall oak is very stain-tolerant. The tannins in the oak cause most stains to fade naturally after a while (even cat mess stains—we tested that...). Once my husband spilled a bottle of olive oil and it spread across the kitchen floor, but after a few days it was no longer visible. That spot was just re-oiled *ahem*. Overall, we are fine with a few signs of everyday life. We have a floor that simply feels warm and lived-in.
4. Cleaning: with hardwood, less is more. We have a robot vacuum that runs through the ground floor every other day. We mop only every few months and that’s enough! Maybe you clean more often if you have toddlers, but our floors aren’t dirty. For damp cleaning, we use a Bissell, add VERY little cleaner, and it works very well.
Tiles: I would never use dark tiles in the entrance area because every smudge shows. We actually like slate and wanted slate slabs at first. Then, when we realized how sensitive they are, we chose tiles with a slate look instead. We have these on the bathroom floor. We like them but I would never use them in the entrance area—you’ll spend forever cleaning. There, we now have concrete-colored/beige tiles. Sounds boring but they are neutral AND above all easy to clean. That would be my priority for the entrance area no matter what style you decide on. Especially with almost two toddlers!
Not too many different floor coverings. We have light tiles in the entrance and guest toilet, oak hardwood elsewhere, and dark tiles upstairs in the bathroom. In the basement, we have a more affordable brushed spruce flooring. Also nice, we just didn’t want to spend on oak there. We would do things the same way again. By the way, our hardwood is not glued down despite having underfloor heating.
Overall, I would recommend keeping the flooring as neutral as possible and not creating a specific style with it. That way, if your taste changes in the future, you can always rearrange the interior without having a floor that absolutely clashes.
That was our general rule for built-in features that are meant to last: neutral and not style-defining. This applies to floors, bathroom tiles, and windows.I need to bring this up again, since the hardwood is now installed in our house and, due to subsequent construction work, it has gotten quite dusty in some spots – I’ll probably need to mop it once before moving in. Now I have no clue what I should use for mopping. What exactly is a Bissell? And has anyone tried those Bona products with cleaners for hardwood floors? They seem to have good reviews. I’m grateful for any tips. I think the vacuum will take care of the bigger dirt, but I won’t be able to avoid at least one mopping session.
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