First month is behind us

I visited the worksite last friday, and was greeted by huge piles of insulation-sheets, waiting to be installed. Yes, this means that the dismantling of old ceilings and stuff is more or less complete! Well, there is still _some_ dismantling left, like taking apart some of the old timber-walls. But those are quite different tasks when compared to what has been done so far. Those will be about taking apart original walls, whereas now we have been taking apart newer constructions.

The place has really changed. I posted some pictures of our kitchen from beginning of the project, and here's what it looks like now:

That's Mrs. standing in our future kitchen.

Timber!

It has now been 1.5 weeks since the workers arrived. What has happened so far? Well, they have been busy dismantling the existing walls and stuff. And boy was I in for a surprise. Room that used to look like this:

Now looks like this (picture taken from the opposite corner):

That horizontal beam on top of the picture is going to be dismantled. It's not structurally sound, so we will replace it with a vertical column in the middle of the room. Besides, it looks like ass.

I talked with the head engineer today, and he hesitantly told me that since some of the ceilings are made from heavy-duty timber, and they were load-bearing, they have to leave some of the beams in place. Later I saw what he meant:

Holy crap! And we will be having something similar in parts of the bedroom and (most likely) in the "other" living-room as well! The moment I saw those beautiful, massive beams I started thinking of leaving them exactly as they are. Someone else might sandpaper them and try to make them "neat". But not me. I think they look absolutely beautiful! We might use some chemicals to protect them against moisture and such (I dunno, I'm not the expert), but that's it.

You can also get a glimpse at the ceiling in the last picture. Yeah, it's pretty high up. Idea is that there will not be any low ceilings, that the rooms will be as high as the roof lets them be. This means that one of our WCs will have 4 meter high ceiling... You can see some new woodwork up in the ceiling, that will be removed. It was half-assedly added there in seventies or something. We will be going for an original look, and solutions that are structurally sound.

Oh yes, this thing is going to be so awesome!

Yesterday...

...was the day the builders arrived. First day was spent on setting up the site and cleaning up the attic. Today they'll ship in a electrician so they get power for their tools.

Damn, it's finally happening!