First weekend

Well, we have the (new) set of keys and the house to ourselves. It feels slightly weird as we’re now moving from a project to a home. Our son doesn’t want to leave when we visit which I guess is a good sign.

The weekend was a full one. The most important job, one that I decided I could do rather than pay for (on the basis that the builders didn’t want to do it so would have charged a premium), was to seal the grout between all the tiles. It’s not a particularly difficult task, it just takes a lot of time. First I scrubbed the floor with a strong acid-based cleaner, then mopped it all off and then sat, with a fine artist paintbrush, and liberally painted all the lines. Some heavier-use areas will get a second coat (the bathroom already has).

We also visited the local garden centre, who employ some really knowledgeable staff. Given the time we were really interested in getting some herbs and things such as tomatoes that could be planted now, and bags and bags of compost. Yesterday afternoon the spade went in for the first time. I can confirm that under the 10cm of clay which is called ‘topsoil’ we have small rocks. After several hours of rather physical work I realised that the garden is bigger than I had thought (the flat terraced land is about 200 square meters then the rest is made up of slope, paths etc.)

My wife spent Saturday or errands. We collected a parasol from a shop in Zurich, then ordered the table for the garden, then a trip to Ikea for some more ‘Gorm’ units for the storage room – all with a rather frustrated 2 year-old in tow. I’m hoping that the storage room is a decent, stable enough temperature for the wine, otherwise I think there will be wine storage units on the list of things to get.