Over the past month there have been small additions made to the house that have added up to some positive changes and advances. The first big change came when the workers came and "sprayed" on the base coating for the walls. I think I have mentioned it before, but the exterior and interior of the house will have a stucco like finish, which are the most common finishes in Switzerland. For the interior they first spray on a mixture, I am going to say that is similar to a very fine cement, they then smooth this down so it is nice a smooth (but too touch it feels sandy). After this coat they will spray on a white top coat, which will be the final wall (but this hasn't happened yet, they will complete this step later).

The next item that was completed was the installation of the tubing for the heated floors. Typically the windows would have been installed first, as it is challenging to walk around the house with the tubes everywhere but the windows were only ready a week later. First insulation was installed on the floor and then the tubing was placed on top of the foam insulation.

Next Paul went to Appenzell (the neighbouring province) to pick up the windows. He said he never drove home so slowly and carefully, hehe. But I am happy to say that the windows all arrived whole. Lars (a friend of Paul's), Paul and two other helpers installed the windows.

The biggest change happened last week, June 16th, when they installed the "unterlagesboden". This is the sub floor, it is a mixture of sand and cement. This is poured onto the floor, surrounding the tubing of the heated floors. This was poured to a thickness of 8 cm. They say that for every cm that is poured it requires a week of drying time, therefore we will need to wait about 8 weeks before anymore big changes are made. If we do not wait until the floor is completely dry, we could run into mold issues, issues with the tiles loosening up over time and so on. The tiles and wooden floor will then be the next layer on top of this sub floor.

Today they installed the heater and water tank, these will be hooked up later this week, which will also help with the drying of the floor.

While all of these changes were happening inside Paul, Bekim and myself dug up some trenches around the house to install piping for the telephone wires, water and electricity. This was completed over several days. First Paul and Bekim did the water and electricity. They disconnected the tubes/wires going to the existing house, and extended them to the new house. Later Paul and I installed the tubing that has the wires for the telephone/internet/television. We did this now so that we will not have to dig the ground up at a later date.

In Switzerland the end of July, beginning of August is "building holidays" so most building companies are on holidays, therefore the next couple of weeks will be very quiet and then things will start getting fun and exciting in August and September with the installation of what I call in interesting things. As always thank you very much reading and Happy Summer!