Author: Peter

This week I was on a role. The wall insulation in the bedroom went smooth. As I had read you could plaster directly on this, I gave it a try and the finishing is really nice!
Next step plaster plate under to roof to finish off and protect the insulation there.
During the weekend I had a talk with Marc about different finishes of walls, since he did not know one of my favorites glass fiber wall covering. I decided to show him by putting it on the hall way walls. It suddenly seems so much more done, but also it starts to scream for us to decide on colours.
With the nice weather outside a nice morning spot to have tea is on the stairs of the backdoor. There I saw the window still had the wrong skirting around it, to i decided to fix that. And then there still was a lot of pruning to do. According to tradition you can prune up to Easter, so we had to hurry (although nature does not show to much signs of waking up with the cold nights we have) Carool and I took a new approach, I send him a lot of pictures and we called to discuss them. I am starting to get the hang of it so the cutting went quicker and more sure. For the last tree I gathered aabout all the extension cords from the house to reach it. Lot’s of wood came from the trees, so lots of small branches to burn.
As the wind was not very favorable at some point the neighbor came to as if we could stop for now. Timo turned out to have lived there since his childhood. He told he had found this blog by accident and enjoyed reading it. He also had some nice stories about the old neighbors that lived in hour house before us. I am looking forward to go into more detail about the history of the house.

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During the week it was beautiful spring weather. So every tree got a change to loose a lot of access branches. Unfortunately this wood cannot be use in the pellet heater, and as we where getting low on pellets I ordered another pallet. If all goes according to plan that should last us till the prices drop again early summer.
With the corona crisis going on, I figured I better get some bulk plaster plate and some other building materials just to be sure I can continue building, even when construction stores will be closed as well. The plan was to use Mati’s trailer, but with a coworker that was tested positive that plan failed. ABC charged 88 euro to move the order the 2,5 km, which I thought was to much, especially for a bit order like this. Good thing Voldemar tipped me that the new online car rental CityBee also has vans, so I got an account, added drivers license, selfie and payment method and I was good to go. There was a van in front of PuuMarket, in between our house and ABC, so no access km chargers. The car unlocks with the app and I must say I am happy with the service. (Follow the link above for 5 euro of your first ride if you are a new customer) Marc and Mattias helped to load and unload the material and after and hour and 9 minutes and 5 km the order was in the garage for 13,51. Much better than that ABC’s offer.
Later on I started with the insulation of the bedroom wall facing the neighbors.

In between all the work in the house the days are getting longer and the weather is getting nicer. Triggered by a friends post on Facebook, I contacted Carool to teach me online how to prune the old neglected apple trees in the garden.
We started with on to get the basics down. I took pictures, send them to him and he marked which branches to take out.
As I have a electrical chain saw I thought it would be handy to also have a power plug on the outside of the house, so I adjusted the light I installed in the fall.
While waiting on feed back for the first tree, Mo and I decided to take out the two trees just on front of the garage. The had hardly any apples, stand to close to the building and don’t add to much to the garden. Once they where cut, it looked so much better already.
And of course the nice thing about pruning is, you have something to burn as well. This early in the year it is not so much a problem.

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This week we have mainly been sanding and painting. Besides we took measurements for some sliding doors to cover the space under the roof. It becomes a pretty nice unity.

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After the canalization, there was also a need for water. This was already prepared, so it was relatively easy to connect to.
After that the left over floor tiles just fit in the toilet space and we found a nice sink with a little cabinet and a mirror. Once that was all in I started to sand down the big beams on the ceiling so we can stain them with the white wash.

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After another week with other priorities, it was finally time to extend the canalization system to upstairs, so I can connect the toilet and a sink there.

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After the physical cable was brought into the house it took another two weeks before a technician came to weld the glass fiber to the terminator.
After that I went to the Telia store to get the fiber optic plan, only to find out they could give out everything at the store except for the fiber optic patch cable. For which another technician needed to come. After a year of waiting this last frustration could be added to the pile.
But then finally, I had the 100/100 Mb internet connection running on my own router, so I could finally do some port forwarding!

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After a rough week the bright light was that the Fiber optic cable is now in the house at the spot where I planned to have it.
Next week we’ll be in the Netherlands for a celebration and a family dinner.

After a long silence there was finally contact from the contractor that would pull the fiber optic internet cable. This time they brought some heavy equipment. which turned out to be a good thing. The under ground pipe where the cable should go through was blocked in 4 places.
Besides I finished the walls for the toilet and went shopping for a toilet with Martijn.

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This was a short week as I have to go to Malta for work. I did add some insulation and walls to the upstairs toilet room. Besides I put a digital thermometer in the sauna. This ds18b20 waterproof sensor is connected to a Sonoff basic which is running tasmota firmware, so it can be easily added to the home automation software. I created an automation to switch on the salt wall LEDs once the sauna hit 70 degrees.

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