Day 43a: More Walls Reveal Their Final Colour

On Day 43 (12th March), more walls received their paint, at least two coats for every wall. Apparently our choice of accentuating one wall in every room causes a lot of extra work, because the main paint can be applied rather fast, but then this needs to dry before the remaining wall can be painted. The photo above shows the eastern wall of the sitting room ("Angora").

You can probably guess, whose room this will be. We encountered this paint bucket previously ("Pioni"). The remaining two walls will be in purple.

The final photo for Day 43 is of our future bedroom ("Cashew"). The remaining walls will be painted tomorrow, and we are very excited to see the colour combinations we chose.

All in all it is very interesting to see the walls painted. When choosing colours on the basis of small paint samples, it is very hard to imagine what a whole wall might look like. As a general rule, choose the colour you like, and then take one shade brighter than that, since a whole wall will always appear darker than the sample. Fortunately we did know this rule beforehand, and we decided to make some bold choices of colour. However, the final feel of every room will become apparent once they are furnished.

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 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 38: Walls and Ceiling

It's amazing to see what one person can do in only three days. Due to very intense work schedules, I didn't manage to visit the construction site earlier, and I almost could not believe my eyes (Wednesday, 6th March; Day 38). The photo above shows the living room. All walls in the house are now smoothed with plaster and painted with primer, and the ceiling is installed.

Here's a photo of the ceiling. It's basically white, but one can see the structure of wood through it, which gives a very nice effect. The material is MDF-based, some kind of laminate for the ceiling.

In the meantime, our mason also had visited and put a first layer of plaster on the fireplace, which starts to reveal what it will eventually look like. Just imagine the grey to be some warm "almost-white."

Day 14: Outside Walls Nearing Completion

Today, I only managed a quick visit to the site, and first I thought nothing much has happened at all yet. It took a few more glances to spot the difference. Before the weekend, the gaps between the four modules had been closed only by one panel from the inside of the house, leaving large brown-grey stripes visible (see Day 13). Now the walls have been closed from the outside, too, and the house has begun to look like one complete unit instead of four sections. Also, the unprotected corners of the house are now covered by two vertical planks making the corner also look nice.

Thanks to this trim, one can start to imagine the colour: the house will be painted in traditional dark-red, and the vertical trim in the corners, the window and door frames, and some bits of the roof will be white.

Tomorrow, the panels for the roof will be delivered and their installation will begin – if all goes according to plan.