terve, today german plusvilla received its trademark black fassade finish. the paint i’m using here is again from finncoatings.de and it’s TIKKURILA AQVACOLOUR #5089 (black tar). i’ve started on south side, continued west and finished on east side (unfortunately it has already been too dark to do another photo of that fassade). painting has been really easy as the colour is water-based. i also had the experience that painting the panels takes only few paint while painting the hirsis (wooden beams) needs more paint.

and honestly the paint had its friends from the first moment: all vintage men in the neighbourhood (grandpas!) even liked it immediately and said: “that’s cool! finally something different!”. even my other neighbour dimitrij stopped by with his BMW and went back 10 meters, lowered his window and said: “hey, that colour is awesome. my wife even wants to built a house once again… but now made of wood once she saw this one here. i like because it’s different to the classic b/s you normally see.”

during midday jochen arrived on site. he had a meeting with our window supplier, which is a famous local company called “fa. klöpper”. those guys are in wood business since 5th generation now i think. they have their factory next street to the house where i grew up. we also had mr. kaiser from kamin deele at the site to do a small check up for next procedures.

hei, today we first had a bid foggy but overall sunny weather. as the sky was covered sometimes it was almost the perfect condition for doing the primer oil paint job with TIKKURILA Valtti Base.

i did continue painting all the wooden beams on the terrasse side. this was a bid painful, as my knees have been still hurting from yesterdays moving on OSB-plates i put on the terrasse (as there is no floor yet) to reach outer area. frankly, … i had my doubts whether we would be able to keep in schedule, but TIKKURILA paint had be so easy to handle, that i quickly finished the beams once i didn’t had to move those OSB-plates as our temporary floor. i had been able to quickly finish fassade w/o creating a logistic chaos. by 2 p.m. i had already 2/3 of the job done (we did start at 11.30 am!). TIKKURILA Valtti Base did a great job, as the fassade panels did take less than the expected 10 m2 / liter. i suppose we used less Valtti Base, even if we didn’t saved anything. i would say we had been able to do at least 12 m2 / l. i really wasted the Valtti Base to ensure that the wood gets a good protection. reason for that is - beside the great TIKKURILA product also the great product quality of the HONKATALOT wood. it had been so glissant, that painting was really fun. by 4 p.m. i finished painting the whole plusvilla (and yes, i had enough time to do a tea break with traditional finnish cake by 2 pm).

terve folks, today has been still a rainy day so paint job needed to be skipped for the morning. my father and i spent some time in the morning to clean up the interior of plusvilla from no longer used wood. next was that we started to paint the big wooden beams which are on top of steel foundation in terrasse area. the product we are using here is from famous brand TIKKURILA. it’s called Valtti Base. its a classic primer oil. good thing about this product is its “ease of use”. it’s so easy to handle, that even and idiot can paint his house with it. it paints almost that soft as if it would be water.

here we used the help of german paint expert peer schmattek from finncoatings.de. we will do 1x valtti base and after that 2x valtti aqvacolor with colour code 5089 (black tar).

we are also still trying to find out which are the best economic polygonal stone plates for kitchen and entrance. i’m wondering what brand or what product has been used in plusvilla serial #0001? i’ve investigated intensively here in germany and one dealer suggested to use scandinavian natural stone otta phyllitt pillarguri. but honestly those are far away from your stones (not that dark). i also asked many dealers about schist, but the common opinion was that this material is a complete “troublemaking” stone for such areas as it’s so sensitive.

hei, today has been a very rainy day. HONKATALOT construction staff has left the site early this morning. they did some last things and so the german record for building a plusvilla is now 11 days in total.

parents did clean up the site this afternoon to my surprise. so all wood is now safe hidden from rain. also the roofer did install the base foil on top of the roof. he decided to go with BauderTEC ELWS DUO bitumen foil. this prevents rain from coming into the house. great things is that this arrived almost just in time. another good thing of this product is its feature that the joint can be adjusted (also at a later point) w/o any problem. so it’s cool stuff.

last picture show view from main door to terrasse…

terve, well … after only 11 days the shell of our plusvilla has been finished successfully. HONKATALOT construction duo are finishing their work today. there will be only a few minor things tomorrow morning… but as they also could started first after last weeks monday midday, this equalizes again.

LESSON #421: “It takes less than two weeks to built the shell of plusvilla.”

jochen and i spend almost 2,5 hours on site to make final checks before i can sign the acceptance of construction work. in summary i got to say: the whole grade of pre-fabrication of plusvilla has been excellent (even though we found some minor bugs in shell of building today). the HONKATALOT construction duo had been very satisfied with the overall production quality. there is only one thing which leaves room for improvements for factory: after several adjustments the construction plan is still not that consistent as we would need that: there are often questions where things are not measured consistent, which create confusion as it’s unclear what distances are here and there (and you simply can’t deduct it from other measures).

tomorrow we’ll expect roofer on-site. our roof will be done by peter of fa. hardt. it’s the best roofer here in town. peter is managing director there since a while. they will now first install a canvas cover to protect the just dry wood from becoming wet again tomorrow (we’ll expect a lousy day with lots of rain from what weather forecast is telling us).

hello, today HONKATALOT constrution staff finished exterior fassade. you can see the panels which now hide the roof. unfortunately i just noticed i didn’t switch off the manual mode Bengt was using when borrowing my camera yesterday. well … tomorrows pictures will be better. anyhow… i think the final fassade look of building can now already be pretty good recognized.

we also ordered windows and roof today. also TIKKURILA paint arrived today. this has been supplied by german distributor finncoatings.de.

Hei, my name is Bengt and I’m the official hirvi in the house. I’ve already been to Denmark, Sweden and Finland… and yes, also in several iittala stores (please see the picture of me and the nice girl from last autumn in Helsinki’s Arabia store). Unfortunately Marius is busy this evening. So today I had to visit the site w/o him.

Now it’s time that I’m inspecting our new house. Today my fellow friends from Finland did install the roofing battens. It has also been as same cold like in Finland.

In opposite to the past days we had no rain at all today…

Here is how roof framework is looking like…

As there are many nails lying on the floor I have to be very careful while walking…

But I really like it here. It’s so exciting to see the new house and the huge living room with the big windows. I can also hide behind trees: Look at this!

This is where Marius and Steffi will have their bathroom and sauna later …

I will hang around a bid more now …

Okay. Got to go now. I need to get myself a beer.

terve, when we arrived on site by 18.30 o’clock this evening HONKATALOT construction staff had almost finished roof framework completely. it’s amazing how fast they are raising the house. it’s also impressive to see that they know what they are doing in this chaos of wood. for normal persons the inside of the house might look strange as temporary wooden supports might look non proper, but they are proper - they are only simple (but working perfectly!). for instance you can see that they installed simple wood beams between the pre-fabricated roof elements from finland. doesn’t look perfect on first impression, but it is absolutely perfect as it’s so simple and still absolutely fine. those are there only for fixing the whole roof construction. btw, elements are nailed by a gas-powered nail gun. finally also our beloved chimney arrived today. it’s quite big (and that heavy that it was necessary to lift that into the house by the crane).

when we left the site some folks came around on the sidewalk, inspecting roof framework carefully. they asked finnish craftsmen on whether the roof would be stable enough. those smiled and said “it is wood from finland - it’s stable enough!” and the guy said: “this doesn’t matter!”. well, it does matter! we are using polar spruce here. polar spruce has been grown very slowly. so its year rings are very close to each other due to the nordic climate. this makes this wood a perfect construction wood, as it’s very stiff.

hei, today we had lots of rain again. not that much like in the mid of the week, but still too much to call it “nice weather”. over the night certain brownies did finish the wall framework. you can now already see where windows will be placed. also the house is now fixed on the steel foundation properly. i did spent only 5 minutes on site, as it started to rain really heavy while i’ve been there.

hyvä iltaa, today it had been raining again. from what weather report tells us things won’t become better within the next days. currently i’m watching football (world cup qualification russia vs. germany and result currently still is 0:1, germans play a lousy 2nd half… our excellent goalkeepers rescue save us the result - as usual actually).

i spend most of my time on the site today to do some site clean up work. i picked all pieces of no longer used wood and placed them below the house. it has been quite time consuming. HONKATALOT construction head suggested to give that to neighbours… well… we are in “lippe” and in lippe people don’t throw things they might could use later away. what looks as rubbish for finnish craftsmen costs a lot of money here in germany. especially wood did become very pricey since oldschool energy prices did explode. many people bought small ovens to reduce heating bill… and so price of wood doubled in the past 5 years. so i placed all the wood below the plusvilla for later usage.

HONKATALOT craftsmen did install the windshield earlier this day. you can see it inside of house as its black (no, i’m sorry… it’s not a pluswindshield… it’s a jochenwindshield). so this prevents wind from coming into the house. it’s actually just a small element, but important. later they continued installing the first wooden pedestals near bathroom and entrance. i left site at around 17 o’clock as football was starting soon.

EDIT 19 o’clock: yes!! we are finally qualified for world cup 2010 (however: russia had been the better team in 2nd half).

EDIT 22 o’clock: i’m back from site. i had to bring water to the site, as for some stupid reasons TEKTUS staff has taken the construction water with them. as usual - it was permantenly rainining. we would need the water for safety reasons while welding the L-elements to the steel foundation. i had to drive at least three times to bring all the water there from our current home.