Day 45b: Floors and Bathroom

Day 45 (14th March) brought some more surprises, which warrant another blog post. The tiled floors have now received their grouting. When we had to decide which tiles, kitchen doors, etc., we wanted, we were totally puzzled when they gave us the choice of various grouting colours. Who would've thought of that? Anyway, we thought it looks most natural if we use the good old plain grey concrete colour, which nicely sets the large floor tiles apart while still being subtle. The only thing missing is the final attachment of the tiles replacing skirting boards, which have not received their grouting yet.

Here's a view at the doorstep between utility and shower room. The shower room has smaller tiles, and an elevated door step has been made of these tiles in order to prevent water from flowing out of the shower room.

Another view of the shower shows that the wall tiles also have their grouting now. Here we chose white grouting, which disappears everywhere except around the brown tiles behind the shower.

Also the laminate in the living room has appeared now, in anticipation of a possible early delivery of the kitchen on Monday. Currently the laminate is in the kitchen only. Unfortunately it's completely covered up by corrugated cardboard for protection, so one can only see a small area where the kitchen furniture will be located. By the way, the upright package contains the sauna benches!

Day 44: Floors Tiled

On Day 44 (13th March), the floors were tiled, and that meant pretty much "access denied," because the floors inside both doors are tiled. Thus the only access was via the terrace door.

The small bathroom looks great with the tiles and the light-green paint, very fresh. We can't wait to see the rear wall painted. The paint for that we selected to match an old Finnish poster, so we'll need to get that framed soon, too.

The final photo for Day 44 shows the view into the utility room. In the far end there's the lower part of the door to the outside just visible, still covered up with protective cardboard. Off to the left at the far end, i.e. behind the protruding wall, lie the shower room with attached sauna.

Day 42: Paint, Tiles, and Sealant

This is a weird coincidence: It's Day 42 (11th March) of the construction of Our House, and it's Douglas Adams' 61st birthday! And, no, I wasn't tweaking the counting to match it, it just happened. Fantastic.

A lot of amazing things happened today. The shower room received three coats of sealant paint, which makes walls and floor watertight. Then the tiles were put on the walls. The photo above shows the area, where the shower will be, highlighted by one column of dark tiles. The funny strings everywhere are the spacers between the tiles, they will be removed later when the seams will be filled with grouting.

Here's a view of the utility room just after the first layer of sealant paint had been applied. Before, the walls were painted with a first coat in their final colour ("Soft Ice"), a very light beige.

Also three walls of the toilet were already painted in a light green shade ("Chablis"). The remaining wall opposite of the door will receiver a much stronger green ("Lime") later on. Here the floor had only received some sort of primer, and the same grey sealant paint was applied just after I took the photo.

Finally, the area where all the valves for the floor heating are, also had received the sealant paint, and then the lower end part of the hoses had been encased in plaster. The valves will eventually be hidden behind a panel screwed in front of this recessed area, which will then end up behind the wardrobe of the entrance area.

Day 40: Oven Surprise

The week ended with a surprise on Day 40 (Friday, 8th March). Our mason had been back to Our House once again to apply a second, very fine layer of plaster to the fireplace. The photo above gives the overall impression.

The real surprise, however, is revealed in the second photo: he found a large, thick, matte-black tile and cut it into stripes in order to cover the bricks around the recessed oven door (check to compare). The effect is just fantastic.

I have to explain that, while assembling the fireplace, which was delivered as a kit, we did a few  modifications and improvements along the way. The final modification will be the finish. The kit came with dyed light-grey plaster as the final layer on the surface. However, after some deliberation, we think that this very porous finish will not be practical, since soot and dust can enter the pores. Therefore we will apply standard plaster with a somewhat rough finish, which will then be painted. The paint will close the pores, and this process will also allow for changing the colour if one day we don't like it anymore. For now we will paint the fireplace in the same off-white colour as the corridor and the wall opposite of the fireplace.

Day 39: Fireplace Tiles and Paints

On Thursday, 7th March (Day 39), more stuff had arrived. Maybe you've been wondering what kind of colours we selected for all the walls since we posted a photo of all the possibly options we were considering over Christmas and New Year. It took us a couple of weeks to debate, and finally we submitted our choices to the house company. Now that the paints have arrived, there's no turning back. Here are a lot of buckets, but you can maybe guess whose room will be painted using the buckets marked "Pioni" and "Hyasintti."

The fireplace has had a very subtle change, which we almost missed completely: the mason must've been back, and he installed the small black tiles around the hatch for the fireplace.

Here's a better view of the same feature. These tiles are maybe 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm or so. The glass door of the fireplace will be installed afterwards, on top of the tiles and the plaster.

Here's a close-up of the oven door, which is recessed into the wall, and the bricks have not been covered with plaster yet. I wonder, how they will be sealed later on.

Day 36: Stuff Arrives

On Monday, 4th March (Day 36), a lot of new material arrived, and also a new subcontractor of the house company came to install it all. Quite amazing: one man will spend three weeks in Our House, and when he's done the ceilings will be installed, the walls will be painted, the floors will be done (both laminate and tiles), and also all the built-in furniture including the kitchen will be deployed. The photo above shows all the laminate "honey oak" flooring. We chose this throughout Our House, and in the kitchen it will be complemented by a work surface in the same shade of oak, while the kitchen will otherwise be white.

The next photos show the tiles we selected for the entrance area as well as the utility room, which houses geothermal boiler, ventilation system, washing machine, tumble dryer, and also the ulich.org server computer. And, by the way, this is not a funny design, it's white plaster dust from smoothing the walls, which produces these shapes on an otherwise dark olive-brown tile.

Shower room and sauna will be tiled in a very similar colour, but the tiles are smaller for technical reasons. I guess they can better follow the sloped floors towards the drains.

The next photos shows the large, white tiles, which will cover the walls of the shower room. The sauna walls came readily clad in pine wood from the factory – i.e. in the standard, classical, must-have sauna colour.

The final photo shows the smaller, white-ish tile, which will be used in the kitchen for the bit of wall between work surface and wall cupboards.