Week 41: 3 - 9 April

Apr. 9, 2023

The highlight this week was definitely in the interior of the house - we finally have painted walls! We have some colour successes and some abject failures but we will live with (and laugh about them) going forward. We made progress in other areas too but the paint is really the first hint that someday this will really be a house to live in.

Exterior Stairs

We’ll start with the exterior stairs this week. You can see here that the header for the doorway into our “stairway cellar” has been poured. The frame will hold it in place while it dries. Alot of other exterior work was on hold this week because it pretty much rained and was freezing cold every day this week.

Our advisor was pretty unhappy with the mess left behind by the guys doing the basement plumbing because of the pile of junk and concrete left behind. Hopefully it will be cleared out soon.

Again, this is standing in front of the front door, looking down into the new cellar area. You can see the concrete header.

Exterior Garage

If you compare this to the photos of last week, you will notice that the concrete blocks are covered now and there is a rough sort of stucco over them.

In this photo, if you look at the side door, you can see the layer of insulation over the concrete blocks with the stucco over it.

Interior Garage

The plumbing has been laid for an interior water spigot.

Here is another view of the spigot plumbing (back by the garage opening) and a look at the plumbing for one of the garage radiators.

Plumbing for the radiator on the other side of the garage.

Just a view of the garage floor and everything there. This will all be buried in concrete. (Hopefully soon!)

A view from the technical room into the garage of the plumbing for water and electric.

Technical Room

Here’s a view into the technical room of everything that will be hidden beneath the concrete soon. To the left are pipes that will eventually connect to things like the well and city water and the water heater. In the center of the back wall is a drain coming down from the first floor and the water connections for a laundry sink. On the back wall to the right are the water connections for the washer.

Another view…on the left are the same washer connections. On the back wall are more drains coming from the first floor. On the right are all of the water pipe connections for the upper floor including water to kitchen and bathrooms but also to all of the radiators.

Downstairs Bathroom

As previously mentioned, the highlight of this week was the interior painting. The painters will return again before we move in for touchups but otherwise, it’s done. We left the walls above the tiles in the bathrooms white.

Living Room

The living room looks fantastic. It’s hard to tell in this photo but it’s a very pale shade of yellow. It’s very cheerful.

Stano’s Office

Anddddddd….we have our first paint failure. This green ended up being a sort of sea foam green which wasn’t at all what was planned. But the painters are gone and a lot of it will be covered with his desk, wardrobe and other various furniture, so we’re just sort of laughing it off and dealing with it.

Interior Stairwell

As you can see, we are still lacking stairs. My goal in this photo was to show the contrast between the downstairs yellow and the upstairs blue. I think the yellow shows up pretty nicely here but the blue looks a lot darker than it is in person.

Landing

Here’s are some more views of the blue we have for upstairs. The ladder is where the top of the stairs will eventually be and the upstairs bathrooms are also painted, with the tops being white.

And here, still on the landing looking into the guest bedroom (left) and Lauren’s sewing room (right). Can you guess what our other paint failure was?

Guest Bedroom

Did you guess that this was our second paint failure? If so, then you would be absolutely correct. This was supposed to be a sort of sage green…which ended up being an awful mint green. The painters are back in Prague, however and we really don’t care enough to ask them to come back…it would probably delay moving in. So we’ll get furniture built into the room and some curtains and it’ll be of a hint than a screaming mint green. It’s too bad though…it would have been really nice if it had been the right colour!

Lauren’s Sewing Room and Office

This room turned out great. It’s a smokey gray blue, one shade darker than the blue in the rest of upstairs. It’s going to look great when it’s done.

Master Bedroom

This is another room that looks fantastic. We extended the paler blue from the landing into the master bedroom and absolutely love it.

Backyard Work

It has really been a challenge this week getting anything accomplished outside. The cold, wet weather means that backyard has turned into a pile of mud and it’s been too cold to continue with the exterior stucco.

Before the rain started in earnest, Saša was able to start working on levelling out the area that will be our first terrace. We’ll have a retaining wall at the back.

Another view of the digging that has been done.

And the view from above.

Another Puppy Update

As we were doing more packing this week, we came across a gift that some of our friends in China gave us for Mia. It was always too big for her but we managed to get Boop into it and she even sat for a photo! So this is her attempt at being a proper Chinese doggie.