Everything looks great in the snow

Friday afternoon was made a little more beautiful by a fast-arriving snowstorm. Beautiful for a few hours, at least. The view is from my new office on the 2nd floor.

More color

The new, not quite so expensive tiles in the shower.

The floor in the shower room (which you can't see in this photo) is tile that looks like wood. The idea sounds a little tacky at first, but the illusion is perfect,  and it's very practical. I hope it wears well.

Finally some color

After too long with slow, barely visible progress, things are starting to look like a finished house. The bedroom has been papered. It's a beautiful design, chosen of course by Rosa.  The paper looks to be hand-printed or something close to it. From Farrow and Bell. The guys hanging it complained about it, as is very thin and not very stiff. It looks great, though.

Busy, busy, busy

It's been a busy week at the new old house. The first coats of paint have been applied, and it looks great.

So far only on the 1st and 2nd floors, but the color is a nice change from the color of dust that has been the general look of the place recently. These floors have also been sanded and varnished (1 coat so far).

The bathroom and shower rooms haven't seen such dramatic
progress. The shower room has been on hold waiting for the chape (poured floor) to cure. We had to rethink the tiling for the shower after we found out the price of the lovely Italian mosaics we chose. I had confused the price per sheet with the price per meter square. (Only an order of magnitude off!). The reboot was a good thing, as we now will have some slighly less extravagant lovely Italian mosaics, in a new color scheme.
The kitchen has also arrived.  Jean-Philippe of Wood Fashion in Waterloo designed the kitchen following our wishes, in a classic style. I love the Falcon stove. The stonefitter was making measurements today for the countertop and back wall. We tried not to distract him.
The counters will be Belgian bluestone, from a quarry near Liege. I can't wait to see it. If we are lucky, there may be fossils.

Making Progress

The windows and roof are done, and things are progressing. The attic, soon to be Max's pleasure dome, is now all light and air. The interior finishing will have to wait until January, though, as the manpower is needed to finish the rest of the house.

Because of the long delay for the windows, the first half of November was lost time, so now every moment counts. We hope to move in while the calendar still says January. 

A lesson learned.

The wood frames for the windows are not FSC certified, so the don't count for an additional. €30 per sq meter government rebate. It can pay to check these things beforehand.

The first coat of paint has been applied to the 3rd floor. The Farrow and Ball paint is on order, so the first coat is an approximation of the colors in a good 'domestic' paint.

The plastering is done on the main floor, and the kitchen will come in on Wednesday the 14th. This is exciting.

Blue skies above

The Roofers have finally arrived. It only took them about 3 hours to remove the old tiles.

Fireplaces are great - up to a point

As this house was built pre-central heating, there are plenty of fireplaces.  One per room, in fact. They're not built for wood, though. 1905 Brussels seems a gas-mad place. There were gas heaters in every fireplace, and gas lines leading to the light fixtures on the ceiling. Many of these have been removed, but all the fireplaces remain. Some are beautiful,some, like this one, not so much.

This one is in the back, on the 2nd floor (or the 4th floor - it depends on how you count). Not only is it homely, but it gets in the way of a bookcase we'd like to locate there. It's a big case I made of doussie, a dark African wood. It's 4 meters long, and this is the only wall it fits on in this room, to be Rosa's office and library.

So the fireplace must go, as well as the chimney behind it.  What makes it a big deal though, is removing the chimney above it. It goes also through the attic (soon to be liveable) and onto the roof. That's a lot of bricks to remove. The roofer will demolish it to the attic, and the contractor's guys will do the rest. A lot of work for a bookshelf. But it's a really nice one.