Moving In (not really)

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Our House


We arrived in Vienna on 8 August, and quickly verified what we suspected; our house was not ready to move into.  We are adapting, although on a daily basis, and learning quite a bit about European construction techniques.  At this point we have no power, water, plumbing fixtures, kitchen, or even space to move our goods into, but each day brings good improvement.

16 August Update

The "Heurigen" or small winery, three doors away from our house, which is very pleasant to visit both in summer and winter.

Pötzleinsdorferstr. 103

Front of our house

New kitchen/breakfast room. We replaced all the windows in the house, and cut in new doors in the lower wing of the house.

View from backyard. The church tower is just behind our house.

Sara in our (future) bedroom. Note the in-wall radiant heating and cooling coils! In the hot summer, we will circulate cool water from the well through the house floors and walls.

Preparing for future wiring in our house :-)

Part of our wine cellar. That passage way actually runs under the small street to the church, but is now blocked with a grate. The priests used to store their wine in our cellar...

Wine Cellar (no electricity yet... )

Central Control for radiant heating/cooling. Note the powdered foam insulation; this is used often instead of rigid foam insulation. (look at the kitchen floor)

In-ceiling radiant heating/cooling coils. Note how the tubes set into pre-made recesses in the wallboard.

Our kitchen.

Kid-landia.

Fussboden heitzung (radiant in-floor heating coils in shower). Note how the tubes are laid in the plastic form. Childrens bathroom.

Kid-landia (study/playroom)

The lower floor is our bedroom, and the upper attic is my office and the laundry/storage room.

My office-to-be.

We quite literally ran into Derek in Zell am See when we went to pick him up from language camp. We were a day early, but surprised each other in the street. Mother and child were quite happy to see each other (and child was happy to have Mother buy him an apfelstrudel).

View of the front of our house from across the small courtyard of the church (itself build in 1730).

Bruce, notice the two bottom (1 inch) layers of insulation foam, then the top insulation layer of foam. The plastic black guide is just that - extremely thin and only a guide for the tubes prior to the cement being poured.

There are 3 layers of insulation under this tubing!

Derek and Emilie at the Wörthersee in Kärnten - we got away for two days.

Sara's kitchen begins to be installed - 70% progress quickly, then a complete stall as it awaits power, water, workers...

This outside walkway was installed in 4 hours by two people!

What we would give to have this work in California.

August 27th

Our house on the left, across the street from St. Aegidius church.

August 27

Further kitchen progress. Slow water torture. Actually, we finally HAVE water (only cold, but hey...)

August 27

Grace's room. The floor is finished! Paint very soon (and perhaps, electricity after that :-)

August 27

Kid-landia. Sorry it's dark, but no lights yet. Well, no wires either! But, the floor is finished!

My office.

16 August 2001.  We have been in the GartenHotel Glanzing for a week now... a hot and humid week.  The house is progressing more quickly than we are used to in America, but still has far to go.  Today was a highwater mark; most of the kitchen was installed!  We are tentatively planning to move our furniture et al into the house next Wednesday, although that would not allow us to actually live in the house, and much of it would remain under construction (im bau).   Out of a combination of boredom and heat avoidance we drove down to the Wrthersee in Carinthia for a long overnight, staying in the great SchlossHotel Moosburg.  Sadly, both Sara and I were pretty miserable with food poisoning, but mustered enough energy to take the children swimming at the lake - a classically warm and well tended area.