Dressing room

We've been checking furniture shops lately and we've already made up our minds about some of the things that we're buying. One of those is the dressing room.

It's an independent, no-windows space, separate from the bedrooms, and it's not large but big enough for the two of us. These are the drawings that we got today from the shop.



It's got several metres of open space to hang things of any imaginable length, some open cupboards and a fair number of drawers.



What follows is a completely inadequate computer-created image. The furniture will be plain white in reality, and why they've put in that scary floor-pattern remains a mystery, but in fact the floor will be plain white tile as the rest of the downstairs floors. No, we've no intention of returning to the seventies, never liked the seventies, and there won't be any psychedelic circles anywhere, promise!

Maximilian

Good news. We haven't finished with the house yet but we're getting involved in a new project: Maximilian. That's the name of our future new dog. A Black Russian Terrier that we're bringing from Warendorf (Germany). Hopefully, that will happen in August.

Sus got an email this week from Bettina Pelkmann from Russian Pearl - the breeder -, telling us that the mother of our future dog is already in heat and that she will be mounted shortly.

The mother is Jonka. She's a 72 cm high and 53 Kg beauty.





And Yuri will be the father. Yuri is a 75 cm high and 60 Kg massive but sweet animal, winner of several championships.



With those parents you can imagine what our new "baby" is going to be like in two or three years.

The driveway and the front yard

Finally the company that we contracted to do the driveway and the front yard was in Barajuen last week so that part has also been finished.

The driveway - the steepest part of it - is made of conventional concrete, with a 10 cm deep reinforced base. The front yard and the car park area, instead, are made of deactivated concrete.



Deactivated concrete consists of a special mixture of cement and granulates in which a superficial layer of cement is washed out before it completely sets, leaving granulates to appear in relief whilst remaining secured to the assembly.





This kind of finish is widely used in rural areas and even in historic parts of cities because the visible granulates give the surface both colour and texture, thereby showing a rustic or ancient look that matches very well in that kind of surroundings.

Giving the house the final touch

Outside Juantxo is working on finishing the stairs on the sides of the house, installing some decorative stone edges and, specially, trying to solve the problem that we've had this winter at the terrace on the north, where we had water leaks into the house.

The kitchen is finished

Even though there're still a couple of details pending, our cozy, little kitchen is completely finished.

Superb balcony

Joseba and his crew are about to finish all the woodwork in the house. What they've already finished last week is the railing at balcony. We've got a very cool spot there, with lots of space and fantastic views.

The urbanization is done

Little by little we're gettiing closer to the end of the project. One of the major works that has been done recently is the urbanization of the plot. Iker, the guy with the big excavator, was in Barajuen a couple of weeks ago to give the plot its final shape. The piles of soil have desapeared, the holes have been covered and everything has been leveled. Everything looks great now.





After Easter holidays, the 2nd of May or so, the guys who are going to do the concrete paving in front of the house and in the car-park area will be here. Juantxo has already installed the formwork.





The next step will be to plant grass all around the house. And also some fruit trees in the area in front of the house that you see in the picture underneath. It will be a titanic task for us because we have hundreds of square meters to plough. Just as well that "Trallas", one of the guys from the neighbourhood that we meet at the sociedad and in the bar, will let us his big tractor.

Installing the kitchen

The kitchen furniture and the appliances were brought last week and have started to be installed this week after we solved a couple of problems with some plugs and switches that were not in the right place.









Behind the kitchen, in a separate room, is the laundry-room, where we keep the washing machine, the deep freezer and some more storing space.

The washing-machine, as Susanne wanted, is elevated to make its use more comfy when loading and unloading its 8 Kg capacity.

Staircase (II)

Joseba has already installed the steps of the staircase. It's not completely finished yet but it is a very comfortable staircase. He's doing a good job.

He's also painted the structure of the staircase in white. Sorry for that one of you who didn't want to :-( but we really like it. It is much better integrated with the color of the walls and therefore the entire structure looks much lighter.

The open raisers also let the light from the window upstairs iluminate the floor downstairs as we had planned.

Building the staircase

This week Joseba started to mount the staircase. It's a cute, tailor-made, oak-wooden staircase.





We projected it open so that the light could come down from the big window upstairs to the bottom floor. Therefore Joseba is building it with no risers at all.





We also decided that we wanted it to be white - except the steps -, as the rest of the wood inside the house. But it is such a nice piece of wood that... I don't know. What do you think? You can give us you opinion voting at the survey that you'll find at the top-right corner of this blog.