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

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.

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 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!

"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... :)

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.

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:

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)