Moving day tomorrow! And everyone turned up today to finish off their work. Major panic all round :-).

Not that everything is finished though, but it all works enough for us to move in. Only major things left to do are to finish the kitchen (a cupboard missing and the oven not yet in place), finish off the skirting boards and around the windows, do the sauna, and finally complete the electrical work.

Tomorrow morning while we are packing up the moving truck some of the guys will be there finishing off the skirting boards and the electrictian will be there installing the oven and the other bits. Generally I guess it will be another week before everything is basically finished. Although for us there will be several weeks of fixing stuff and arranging everything.

Today we took a day off work and moved more stuff to the house and then spent the afternoon and part of the evening cleaning it all up. Everything still needs a wash and there is plenty of dust hiding everywhere, but it is ready for the larger furniture now.

Some photos of how it is all shaping up.

The good bits…

Hallway from living room (finished), hallway (finished cupboards), bedroom (finished cupboards), and bedroom again (finished cupboards), main entrance (fnished cupboards), kitchen (fridge, etc all working).

The not so good bits…

Kitchen (no oven, no cupboard over bar unit), kitchen again (cupboards not finished), main entrance (window not finished), bathroom (needs scrubbed), fireplace room (eeekkkk!)

Hard to keep track of everything at the moment. So much being done and still to do.

But a quick run down. The kitchen joinery is mostly installed. There is one unit to install, the cuboards above the bar between the kitchen and living room. Everything else is in place, although the oven, range top and sinks need to be connected up still. The laundry installation was finished on Saturday. All the joinery is in place. Just one shelf remaining. The washing machine and drying cupboard can be installed soon along with the plumb work.

The tile work is done in both bathrooms and the toliets are installed along with the shower units. They all seem to be working as well. The basin unit is installed in the sauna bathroom, but needs the plumbing done. The other bathroom basin is yet to be installed. Both bathrooms need to have the ceiling done as well. A door is fitted as well along with another door frame. The sauna door is installed too.

The wooden flooring is about half installed (the living room is done and half the hallway). Most of our own work is done now as well. Friday managed to finish wall papering the exercise room. Saturday painted the ceiling in the main bedroom along with the back of the cupboard. Sunday finished all the wallpapering in the house (bedroom and hallway). So now that just leaves cleaning everything.

Another couple of “grrrr” moment as well. After unwrapping the interior doors that have been sitting around for months (that were delivered before we had a house to put them in) we discovered that the laminating is lifting all around the edges. Plus, of course, none of the joinery lines up with the plumbing connections either.

Some pictures from the last couple of days.

The wooden flooring, our small bathroom, the sauna bathroom, the kitchen, laundry, and laundry, and the kitchen again (installing the bench top).

Few things happening since the last entry.

The ceiling in the laundry is pretty much done (with tongue and groove paneling). That leaves the bathroom ceilings and the sauna. But it wasn’t possible to do them because the floors were being laid the last couple of days. The bathroom/sauna is done now, the other bathroom has been laid, but not grouted. The laundry floor is now sealed, but no tiles yet.

Started to do some more wallpapering on Monday evening, but just as we were starting to cut up the paper there was a phone call that a digger and truck load of gravel were about to turn up! The earthmoving guys arrived about 5 minutes later to do the front yard. They had a miniature digger and little tractor and set about ripping up the yard at almost 6pm. We gave up doing anything and went shopping instead and bought some more ceiling paint and the electric stove for the sauna. Just as we left the truck load of gravel turned up, so it was good timing. They also filled in the carport, which had been just over half a metre too low.

Tuesday we were back again and surveyed the driveway and front yard and then back to wallpapering again. This time the remaining wall in the living room.

The pictures from Tuesday, a panorama of the front yard and then our “feature wall” in the living room 🙂

Colours in this one are a bit off since it was using flash and there is a lot of dust floating around.

Slowly getting there.

Two rooms pretty much completed, or as far as we can do for now anyway. The workroom is fully wallpapered now along with the fireplace room (that room always sounds much better in Finnish :-).

Saturday we finished wallpapering the workroom as well as finished painting the laundry. Also finished off the gibstopping in the heating room as well (nothing has been done there since the heat pump was installed). Today we masked off the fireplace and painted the back wall and then wallpapered the rest of the room and then gave the wall a second coat. That pretty makes it the closest room to being totally finished since it has flooring already as well.

The wood paneling for the ceilings in the laundry and bathrooms, and also the sauna walls arrived on Friday and we had to move all that inside. The second bathroom is has tiled walls as well now and the flooring in the sauna has been started too. The tile guys will be back on Monday to finish off the flooring and some other work in the bathrooms. Once the bathrooms are done they probably start on the wooden floors. They said when they do start that it will take only two days to lay all the flooring.

Not so many pictures this time, but a wide shot of the fireplace room. And winter isn’t far away now either… it was 0 deg when we left for the apartment this evening and it is snowing in Lapland.

Been too busy to put much here lately, but things are coming together slowly. Hopefully not too slowly because we are going to move within a couple of weeks!

Where to start? The tile work is still going on, with the saunas bathroom walls tiled already. The other bathroom has been sealed, but not yet tiled. The remaining brickwork has been cleaned up in the laundry and will be tiled soon. The fireplace room walls have been plastered and sanded and need a coat of undercoat next. The wood flooring has arrived as well, a few days early as well. But that can’t go down yet until the concrete is fully dry. Although determining when that will be is a bit difficult because the moisture sensors being used are detecting the water in the floor heating pipes instead :-(.

The heating system is running full time now and generating hot water. The floor heating is running on low heat with the heat being turned up slowly. The ventilation duct outside beside the back porch will be moved around the side of the house to lower the noise level and the hole used to make an air duct into the storage room. That will be done when the ventilation guys come back to finish all the roof vents, etc.

The main ceiling has been painted now, which only leaves the fireplace room and main bedroom ceilings to be finished. The kitchen has been fully painted and the pantry only needs another coat. The laundry has been partly painted. The main entrance has been painted and wallpapered and the living room is about two thirds wallpapered last weekend. Hopefully this week it will be possible to finish wallpapering one or two of the other rooms.

The joinery arrived just after the last entry and completely filled the main bedroom. The framework of the kitchen and laundry joinery was already assembled. Since then the stone bench tops were delivered as well as the main kitchen appliances. So that makes all major deliveries completed now. The installation of the kitchen joinery is being done now. Most of the joinery framework in the kitchen is installed and the bench tops should be going in very soon. Probably we will put the doors on ourselves.

The framework for the ceilings in the bathrooms, sauna, and laundry has been done and we are waiting on the wooden paneling for those to arrive. The interior and seating in the sauna is still to be done as well.

Next on the list of things to do ourselves is to finish the wallpapering in the living room, finish the two smaller bedrooms (gym, work room), paint the fireplace room (undercoat) and then paint/wallpaper that, and finally paint the laundry.

Now, a few pictures from the last few weeks.

Newly arrived joinery, the ceiling in the living room, kitchen, and another of the kitchen, the living room with brand new toilets, and the wooden flooring ready for installation.

Shiney white bathroom.

It was back to work from last week, so only evenings and weekends can be spent at the house again now.

A few things going on at the moment. The gib-stopping/jointing is pretty much finished and all the interior (except for the brick walls) are undercoated. Next thing for us to do is probably stipple coat the ceiling. I gave the entrance a try today, but with the lighting it is a bit hard to tell if it worked okay. Have to check again tomorrow when the sun is still shining.

The guys doing the flooring and tile work have been there off and on for the last two weeks and they have done quite a lot already. The brick walls around the bathrooms/sauna have been leveled and a rough plaster done and in a couple of places the final white plastering has already been started. Today it looks as if they have started sealing the brick walls in the areas likely to get wet as well. They have done some of the floor as well. Those areas that will be tiled (entrance, kitchen, fireplace room) have had the concrete floor rubbed and leveled and then sealed. And during the last week the 30x30cm tiles have been put down and grouted as well. They look very good so far, probably even better than they appeared in the shop. The laundry will have the same tile, but we changed it to a 10x10cm version since it follows the drainage curve in the floor better. All the floor tiles for the bathrooms/sauna have been delivered along with the wall tiles for the bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry. Also, after discussing it with the flooring guys, we decided to change back to our original choice for the wooden flooring. Since we probably don’t move until October the long wait for this brand shouldn’t matter at all and they are slightly cheaper.

The well is in use now for water, although it isn’t running all the time. The heat-exchange unit is also running and pumping air through the house. It isn’t generating much in the way of heat at the moment though since too much floor heating would cause the floor tiles to dry to fast and pop off. It’s a bit noisier than I thought, especially since the ventilation intake was installed right next to the back porch. Hopefully a different shaped intake cover can reduce the noise slightly. Inside the house there isn’t much noise, just a little from the air vents, but they aren’t covered at all yet.

Pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Starting to level the walls.

The floor laid in the kitchen, and the fireplace room, the wall tiles (“snow” style, matt white), fireplace room floor grouted, the bathroom/sauna floor tiles.

Electronic valves for the floor heating thermostats.

Panorama, plaster and floor down, living room wall and kitchen.

A week of firsts.

Half the interior is undercoated now and the rest is almost all gib-stopped./jointed. The lounge needs a second going over, the laundry needs sanded and painted and the fireplace room is about half done. Slow work and the ceilings are a bit painful, but it should all be done by the weekend, which is good, because we start work again :-(.

The ventilation guys turned up this week and installed the ducts for the air-exchange heat pump. Not everything is in place yet, but most of it is done. They will be back next week to finish the duct work. The electrician was also at the house today and connected up the heat-pump and the water pump. He even tested the water pump for a while and got some water through! So first water from our well today! The next step is for the plumber to turn on the heat-pump, pressurize everything, and start the floor heating. I probably forgot to mention last time that they had connected up all the water works and the well pressure tank, etc. The amount of pipes looks a bit scarey!

We got the go-ahead to light the fire as well this week, so we have been making small fires during the day to dry out the brickwork in the fireplace. Probably takes a while yet before we can get it going properly.

Had to change our choice of wooden floor (parquet) as well. The basic type stays the same, white oiled oak, but the company we choose first can’t supply any for a month, which doesn’t help us much. Hopefully this one can supply it in the next couple of weeks. Work on leveling and cleaning the concrete floor should in the next few days and also the sealing of the water areas (bathrooms, etc).

Some pictures of the last week:

The interior so far.

Our first fire, water/heating pipes and pressure tank, heat pump and a collection of ventilation pipes.