Decisions, decisions, decisions

When we signed off the house designs back in November we thought that all the decisions had been made.  By that stage we had decided on the details of the electricals, the kitchen, the sanitary products etc.

 Little did we know that the process would continue at the rate that it has done.  Here are a few things that have been occupying my time of late:

 Paint – we thought we had selected the paint and the veneers to match.  What we hadn’t counted was that the painter didn’t really want to use German Keim, preferring his usual Swiss Kabe Farben.  So a 7am meeting last week at his offices to discuss the technical details of the two paints.

Grout – we have had what seems a long, ongoing saga with the tile grout.  Again, far from the most interesting subject.  Do we have coloured, or grey, if grey which grey.  I then say it need sealing to much tutting from the tiler.  He then investigates and comes back with products… We’re not quite there yet, but it looks like I’m spending a weekend sealing grout.  (The Swiss way of putting you off a job is to add a ‘premium’.  Sometimes this is a ‘risk premium’ othertimes it’s just a ”I don’t want to do that’ premium’)

Kitchen splashbacks – OK so I was being optimistic thinking paint would work.  So we had to go for a new solution.  Problem is that it must be plain white.  And the white must match the other whites (paint and veneers) and must be joint-less.  We’ve found something, again almost certainly at a cost.

Then there have been a series of conversations regarding the details.  How the frame of a door meets the wall, exactly where taps are positioned, where the joints of tiles should be.  These things need site visits and time studying detail diagrams.   They also make a huge difference when there is so little to see.  

view a few weeks ago from kitchen area towards living space. 

Tiling

In our quest to reduce the palette of materials and increase the simplicity of line throughout the house we decided to use a single flooring material.  Given the under-floor heating and the need to have the flooring in the wet areas such as the bathroom we decided to have a hard stone-like flooring. 

Our initial quest was to have a concrete, probably of a similar colour to the floor we eventually used.  However, the number of suppliers in Switzerland was very limited and the cost was high for the desired quality.  After that we explored options with stone (issues with staining) until deciding to use a large porcelain tile, which looked similar to the stone.

The tile is 60cm square with a 3mm gap between them.  Grout (not done on these photos) is going to be a light grey colour, which matches the tiles better than a beige.

 

The downstairs area has been finished – apart from the grout – and the warmer colour of the tiles compared to the concrete is warming the white plaster on the walls.

 

The tiling on the first floor had been started late this week and was to continue probably into the early part of next week.  The newly installed bath is the guide for the tiles on the floor, and the same tiles are being used on some walls in the bathroom.

The only flooring in the main living areas that won’t be tile are the staircase, where tiles could crack if the staircase moved.  The staircase goes in in 3 weeks time. 

Plastering continues

There seemed less progress this week.  Not that we couldn’t see changes, just that after the bigger changes the preceding weeks the changes were felt somewhat less monumental. 

Most of the changes had been continued work to the plastering.  The plastering started at the top and has been continued downwards.  Again, on Saturday there were plasterers in the house.  

 Our son was particularly impressed by their movement around the room.  Standing on towers resting on wheels they used them like enormous stilts to move around the floor.  Effortless, and obviously well practised it was amusing to watch. 

 

Heating

An earlier post gave a view of how the underfloor heating was laid in the floor in the two main floors.  This is is a water-based system powered by a geothermal heat pump.

The pump, an IVT Greenline HT Plus, has been mounted in the cellar.  The pump, which originates from Sweden, takes it’s heat from the base rock – I believe at 17 degrees celsius.  The heat pump then heats water for both the heating and the hot water at about 65 degrees.  An electric pump is needed but consumes about a quarter of what would be needed to heat the water normally.  The electricity is, like most in Switzerland, from hydro-electric sources.

The heat-pump is owned by the local electricity company who also drilled the hole to extract the heat from the rock.  We have a long term contract with them.   We could use this system for cooling in the summer using fan-assisted radiator to extract the heat.  I think we’re going to evaluate this after seeing how hot the house gets in the summer.