a sauna with a view

We may not have doors and windows yet but we already have a sauna,... na na na na na na!!! And at least for today Sus is the happiest woman on the planet.



It's not a big sauna, 1.90 x 2.00 m., but it's enough for us, it leaves enough space in the room for a couple of exercise machines and it's full of fancy features: (click on the blue headlines for more information)

• COLOURED LIGHT: Enables you to immerse your sauna completely in your favourite colour (red, blue, green and yellow), change colours and create entirely new shades.
• LIFTLIGHT: A collagen-forming, and therefore skin firming function which is particularly effective in the warmth of the sauna.
• SaunaPUR: This function brings you very near to the original form of sauna bathing. The heater is pre-heated to 80 to 85ºC and then switched off. As a result a soft and delightful radiation heat can be felt. The big quantity of sauna stones (100 Kg) allows the temperature to drop very slowly and by increasing humidity you're able to maintain perceived warmth at a constant level. If you wish, this process can take place in the form of aromatic steam. The Finns would say: “Loeyly”.
• Sound package: Two loudspeakers inside the sauna can be connected to a HiFi equipment to enjoy the sauna with your favourite music. This is particularly useful for people who like listening to music in the sauna, which normally means that EVERYONE in the neighbourhood listens to the music, as the loudspeakers are outside the sauna... Don't you think this is great, Jochen? (Edorta says he didn't write this. Ok, it's Susanne who wrote this part).
  
• Touchscreen control panel, pre-heating timer, etc.
  

The best of all, anyway, is the view from the sauna. Pictures cannot really show it but, believe me, you can be lying in there looking at the snowy mountains oposite. Isn't that fantastic?



So you`ll be seeing something like this from inside the sauna: (minus the builders' fence, obviously)

We're getting there!!!

Last week the builders finished plastering the walls and they even started to install the floor tiles. Everything is so white... Little by little it is getting the look of the house that we want.







Sus at the centre of the kitchen and living-room area, where the roof gets highest.



The studio/guest-room at the upper floor.



The master bedroom.



The second bedroom.



The sauna room.



And the staircase. (Well. That's where the staircase WILL BE, one day).



Floor tiles at the bottom floor already being installed, seen from the upper floor.



Hopefully they'll be white once we can clean them...



The tiles at the sauna room, as well as in the two bathrooms and the laundry-room, are grey... and anti-slip, because we don't want anybody to get hurt :D

Working inside the house

Juantxo and his team have already finished the installation of the under-floor heating and have also covered it with mortar. This is the basis for the tiled floor which they hopefully will start to install next week.

Sorry for the poor quality of some of the pictures. They where taken with a mobile phone at dusk and there wasn't enough light.

Next picture shows the pipes at the main entrance.



And next, if you manage to see anything, is the installation at the sauna room.



As we mentioned earlier, all that has already been covered with a layer of a special mortar made of concrete and sand.



Kitchen and living-room area.



Our bedroom.



And the winter garden.
Presently, the walls are being plastered, and once that's done, the floor tiles can be laid. The sauna room will be finished first - the sauna is currently sitting in Barcelona, waiting to be installed.

The house hasn't got a floor yet, but it's got a name!

Lizarra = Fresno = Ash = Fraxinus Excelsior

The Ashtree (Esche) is a tree typically found in the Basque Country, it spreads right from the coast to the highest mountains. His branches protect the doors of the farmhouses in spring, and the shepards cut the smaller branches in summer to feed their sheep.

We've got at least half a dozen of them on our plot, they've sprung up wild and are growing fast.

As it's (for the moment) the main and in any case the first tree that we've got in our garden, we have decided to use its Basque name for the name of our house - as every house needs a proper name. The name is considered very important for the house.

So the name will be "Lizarrondo" - Basque for "near the ash", "an der Esche".

Now, the next tree is NOT an Ash, it's a wild maple (Ahorn), that's sprung up out of nothing. It's a very promising little tree, and we're very proud of it!

We're still here

Hi everybody. Are you still there?

It's been very long since we published our last post but, truth to be told, things in Barajuen hadn't moved much until recently. The rythm at the buildingsite has slowed down and we don't know why.

Nevertheless, all the partition walls inside are finished and the contractor has alredy placed all the tubes and pipes for the electrical and plumbing installations. Next step will be to cover it all with a layer of cork and concrete to install the pipes for the underfloor heating installation on top of it. After that they'll install de floor, cover the walls, put in place windows and doors, etc., etc. And most of it should be done by mid-novenber because the guys of the sauna-business already want to come and install it.


Here we've got the entrance area...

...the kitchen with the plumbing...

...the main water supply between the two floors...

...bathroom...

...bedroom...






Outside, they've also finished the facade that now only needs to be plastered (lower part) and painted.

Holydays are over so everybody is back to work in Barajuen

Juantxo, Joseba and their team are back to work after having been on holidays the entire month of August.

They've started to build the walls that demarcate the area of the kitchen, the laundry-room and the bathroom at the upper floor. Now we can perceive a lot better what the open plan area is going to be like.

From the main entrance the first cubicle to the right will be the bathroom.

The kitchen furniture wil go against the wall you see underneath. And the door at the left is the entrance to our future laundry-room.

Next picture shows the view from the kitchen to the living-room.

We´ve decided what our next dog will be

I've always liked big dogs. I love the huge ones actually. My favourite one has always been the Giant Schnauzer, so elegant and athletic as he is.



But considering the area where we're going to live, how much it rains here and the kind of hair that the Schnauzer has - it soaks water as an sponge!!! - we tought that a different option would be wiser. That one was no other than a Doberman. Yes, a Doberman. Everybody gets absoutely shit scared just but hearing the name, even though they're lovely dogs. That's why we wanted this dog; and because since Susanne's family had a couple of them in the past.



But it was Susanne's parents who advised us that it wasn't the best choice if we wanted the dog to remain outside the house because, apparently, they cannot stand cold winters. So we had to start all over again.

And all of sudden, some days ago, while walking on the streets of Rissen (Hamburg), there we saw a stunning dog that somehow looked like an oversized Schnauzer. But it wasn't! It was a Black Russian Terrier!!!



We'd never heard before about the Black Russian Terrier but it seems to be the perfect choice for what we want.

The Black Russian Terrier (Russian: Чёрный терьер), Sobaka Stalina (Stalin's dog), or simply BRT is a modern breed of dog developed in 1953 by the USSR army as a guard dog and police dog. It is believed somewhere around twenty breeds were used in the development of the BRT. Breeds used in the development include the Airedale, the Giant Schnauzer, the Rotweiler, the Caucasian Ovcharka and the extinct Moscow Water Dog. The dog was bred solely by the state-owned Red Star Kennel until 1957, when some puppies were sold to civilian breeders. The breed was recognized by the FCI in 1984.

These majestic black beauties are calm, confident, and courageous guard dogs who love to play with their families' kids and hang out by your side. These dogs have exceptionally stable nervous systems and radiate confidence and tranquility. They're also highly intelligent. It is said they're so smart it's scary. Bred to work as a partner with their owner, they're thinking dogs who respond better to logic than to force.

Besides, he will bring the shopping up the hill from the village...

Next week we plan on visiting a kennel here in Germany to find out more about this fantastic dog but, as I said before, it seems to be the perfect choice for us.


Hopefully he'll join us Easter or summer 2011. Any ideas for names are more than welcome!

The ceilings are done

The ceilings on the top floor and the ground floor are finished.



They are done in wood and given a lick of white paint. The beams in the big room will remain natural as they are now.



Here's a view of the sauna room...



And here's the structure between the two floors just before being closed and finished. We are looking from the master bedroom up into the living room.