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Pollyanna posted:I thought fabric couches got smelly and fell apart quickly? That said, if it really is like $10000 to buy a leather couch that isn’t fake/badly made, maybe I’ll just get a fabric couch as a temporary measure while I save up...or maybe just not get one, cause spending thousands of dollars on furniture is moronic. If you're looking at getting a new one, I got a sofa from Camerich who also sell in the US. It's excellent, very comfortable and looks good, and a big 3 seat fabric one is £2k. https://camerich.co.uk/range/sofas/crescent/deep-three-seat-sofa/ https://camerichusa.com/products/sofas/
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Sep 4, 2019 21:22
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Has anyone installed a wood burning stove in a modern building? The place I am buying is fitted "for but not with" one with a chimney already in place. It's a new building up in the mountains and I think will have very few air leaks. Do they need an air intake? Or is it OK just letting them consume the room air? I would have thought this is a very mature technology but there seems to be no consensus from my Googling.
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Sep 7, 2019 11:26
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Mind blown. I wonder if that technology has reached Valais yet, it's pretty backward here in some respects.
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Sep 8, 2019 00:31
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We have neither AC nor fans but the temperature in the apartment stays magically between 22 and 26 deg C all year. I also can't control the temperature in winter, it's done centrally because Switzerland.
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Sep 9, 2019 12:34
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With tumble dryers you can get models that heat off a heat pump rather than just an electric element, they are quite a bit more energy efficient. I got both an AEG washer and (heatpump) dryer which... wash and dry very well I guess? The washer also has a water softener in it which is probably good for your clothes if you're in a hard water area.
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Sep 9, 2019 22:22
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450m2 seems hilariously big for two people but obviously there's just way more land space etc blah. Do US houses include the garage spaces in the area? I am just imagining having to phone my gf to try and find where she is in the house. B-Nasty posted:From the environmental angle, it all comes down to specifics. A modern, well-built 4000sq/ft house with 2x6 insulated wall cavities, high-quality windows, and tight air sealing uses less energy to condition than some early 20th century, leaky 1300sq/ft row-house. Are US building standards into this kind of thing? Before I Brexited I was planning to build somewhere to passivhaus kind of standard. From what I remember the ultra insulated / vapor barrier thing is more popular in Europe.
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Sep 10, 2019 20:37
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Great job. That looks really nice.
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Sep 13, 2019 09:30
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Untrustable posted:Thank you for the advice. This area, this time of the year, I worry about copperheads. My wife's suggestion was to take the .22 over and hunt them. Awesome idea, shooting a rifle into the walls and floors of a house I'll be renovating. Thread probably going up next week because I will have power and can start the actual work and you can all have a good laugh as I go insane. Your wife sounds awesome
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Sep 23, 2019 14:26
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I have just bought a new house which is great and I love it but it's very different from anywhere I've lived before and I will need advice. It's newly built so we are making a snag list, nothing serious so far. The place is mostly built out of wood and a lot of the interior is unfinished or minimally treated wood. I think this is OK and it's very nice in lots of places e.g. (sorry for weird / lovely phots I was taking pics of all the lamp fitting spots)  but it's also unfinished in the bathroom which is making me uneasy:  Pretty sure back in the UK there basically would be no exposed wood in the bathroom, and if any it would be varnished to gently caress. But this is not the UK and I don't know if this is normal. It's up in the mountains so the air is going to be quite dry. Is this OK?? I want to put at least some wax on the bathroom wood. Most annoying thing so far is that some of the shutters don't quite close I guess because the wood has changed shape a little after they were installed. Also there are no light fittingsinstalled which is I guess normal but even the outdoor ones are just unfinished sockets and making me a little nervous.
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Nov 4, 2019 07:58
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Yeah we definitely can but I guess I'd like to have an idea of what would be the normal way to do it in advance. The building is under warranty and they seem keen to get stuff right so I think we should be able to get stuff fixed. If it's more of a personal preference then that would be up to us to sort.
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Nov 4, 2019 12:26
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TTerrible posted:The view from that window is incredible. I know right  DrBouvenstein posted:Put a few drops of water on it. If it beads, it's treated. If it soaks in, it's untreated. Awesome. Will do. Does it need to be treated?
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Nov 4, 2019 15:32
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Having lived in draughty old houses for almost all of my life and now living in modern draught-free places I'd have to say its a major life upgrade. Wouldn't necessarily trade nice sash windows for grim plastic ones but if you can swing nice replacements I would personally go for it. I forgot to reply: Pigsfeet on Rye posted:Gorgeous view, where is it? Do you have a wood stove? It's in the Val d'Anniviers in Switzerland. Really amazing place and it feels remote while actually being quite accessible. Wood stove is on the list, it is fitted with a chimney but no stove installed yet. I have basics like light fittings to do first, and then deciding between getting decking sorted and the stove. It should be warm enough for the time being and I think a stove will be really expensive so may put it off a bit.
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Nov 5, 2019 18:06
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Failed at DIY Step 1. I need to add hooks to the back of my bathroom doors and the supplied screws are going to be too long. Bought a box and when I try to use them I've bought some loving Torx things. All shops here are shut on Sundays. I probably have the right screwdriver bit somewhere but then will have the spectre of being possibly unable to remove them in the future.
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Nov 10, 2019 09:37
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Feeling very chastened about my screw based knowledge rn. I will buy a torx screwdriver when the shops can manage to be open. Luckily the instruction book for my central heating is 128 pages long (and in French) so I have something to occupy me.
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Nov 10, 2019 15:20
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With underfloor heating bare wooden floors are lovely and warm and with a rug you get the best of both. I'd think that carpet over a heated floor would insulate you from your heating, which seems wrong? Wallpaper should be banned.
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Nov 12, 2019 14:26
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knox_harrington posted:Feeling very chastened about my screw based knowledge rn. I will buy a torx screwdriver when the shops can manage to be open. SCREW UPDATE I bought new screwdrivers and came up to the house. On arrival it turns out I've left both the screws and screwdrivers back in the city. FML. I've now bought more pozidrive screws. Additional screw question: do I need to use any specific type for the outdoor lights? Stainless or anything? I'm quite keen to get them up. The light fittings will just attached to the wood siding.
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Nov 13, 2019 16:33
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knox_harrington posted:Luckily the instruction book for my central heating is 128 pages long (and in French) so I have something to occupy me. I'm slightly regretting that I didn't take up the offer by the estate agent to show me how the heating works.  Snowmageddon forecast for this weekend.
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Nov 15, 2019 09:27
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There's a kind of storage unit inside the entrance to my new place made from pine and unfinished. I gave it a coat of something like Danish Oil https://www.remmers.com/de/holzfarb...000000000066803 gently caress me that stuff is toxic. I ended up fitting an exterior light to escape the fumes (it's - 5C today, not enjoyable doing electrical stuff). Looks great though.  How many coats do I need to do? Sand down in between?
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Nov 16, 2019 20:22
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I think I'd be quite pissed off if a neighbour installed floodlights that shone 24/7 straight into my windows, particularly out in the countryside. Just installed a terrace light which has a diffuser so the light doesn't go straight out, but does illuminate the terrace well and also lights the chalet up and looks pretty.  One of these: https://www.lampenwelt.ch/eckige-led-aussenwandleuchte-tuana.html I'm sure you can find way to illuminate the driveway without the light spilling out all over the place.
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Nov 20, 2019 07:30
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Getting a wood stove installed on Thursday. There's a snow shower and freezing temperatures forecast overnight on Wednesday which hopefully won't be too bad as the installers have to deliver it down the path to the chalet. The thread-recommended concentric flues don't exist in Switzerland and per Herr Stove Installer's advice, rather than making holes in the wall for makeup air I'm relying on the building being leaky enough to feed the stove. Getting one of these babies https://www.jotul.co.uk/products/wood/wood-stoves/jotul-f-167 A snip at Fr4600 installed (1 CHF = 1 USD), amazingly this is one of the cheaper options.
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Dec 9, 2019 23:00
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Bubbacub posted:Does anyone have experience with a heat pump water heater? My electric tank is probably on its last legs, but the two plumbers I've talked to about replacing the tank don't seem very familiar with heat pumps. I have one. My air source heat pump does both the heating and hot water - I didn't get it installed, it came with the house. In general it's an awesome system and once I understood how to set it it's been completely interaction free through the winter. Almost unbelievably cheap to run, the electricity bill has been Fr150 a quarter through alpine winter (1 CHF = 1 USD).
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May 1, 2020 16:04
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I have a terrace on the side of the house that's unfinished concrete. Just started talking to a paysagiste (I guess a landscaper?) about getting a stone terrace and he's mentioned needing a helicopter to get the materials in. Everything is stupidly expensive.
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May 4, 2020 16:40
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Jaded Burnout posted:TIL the word "paysage". (landscaper sounds right, yeah). where the heck is your house that you need it airlifting in? It's in the mountains in Switzerland but I wouldn't say anywhere seriously remote. I guess it is a bit away from the road.  Looking off the terrace, there are other villages around the place 
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May 4, 2020 16:50
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MetaJew posted:Totally off topic, but that's a stunning viewm and I have a few questions: Yeah you need a car, the post bus system in Switzerland does go absolutely everywhere but not very frequently and I wouldn't want to rely on it to get places, if you're near a train station that's a different matter but there isn't one up here. In winter the road up here does get cut off if there's a big snowfall but they're pretty good at clearing it in the morning. In terms of supplies there's a good supermarket in the village centre, that's about 1km away and it has most things you need, and then if you get down to the Rhone valley there are decent-ish sized towns. In general it's a small and surprisingly densely populated country and even though you can get to amazing countryside you aren't really ever that far away from other people. This is from when I climbed up to one of the peaks the other day and while it felt pretty isolated you can see the buildings in the Rhone valley about 20km away as the crow flies:  A bit more on topic, I am having to learn lots of French vocabulary for different bits of stone https://www.guber.ch/cms/hp/images/stories/docs/preislisten/2020-PrivatF-low.pdf e: also there's no house number attached to the building and I ordered one because we keep missing deliveries. Having done that I noticed that literally every other house has exactly the same style, colour and typeface and it may be legally mandated to have the correct one (the one I ordered is not like this). It definitely is in Geneva but I can't work out the deal here https://www.ge.ch/adresses-rues-plaques-numerotation/commander-plaque-numerotation knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 23:25 on May 4, 2020 |
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May 4, 2020 23:17
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Jaded Burnout posted:What canton are you in? I've had a poke around and it looks like the rules differ by canton when it comes to the houses themselves. Thanks for having a look, I'm in Valais.
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May 5, 2020 07:50
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Induction cookers are great, previously I would only have considered gas but particularly the Siemens induction hob is as good or better. Layout is super important. I have a home in the city and a holiday home, the kitchen in the holiday home is way smaller but actually better to cook in because everything is right at hand. And I can empty the dishwasher in like 2 minutes. All about the work triangle.
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May 13, 2020 08:27
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How many kebabs can I get for 6 grand? I bought some campus board grips to attach to beams for doing pullups and that kind of thing. Putting them up has been super annoying. They came with these screws which are fully threaded and oversized to the holes in the boards so it's almost impossible to get them flush with the surface you're attaching them to. Also phillips head so the head runs out of the screw. Why would they supply these.  I ended up drilling the holes bigger and in the process discovered my unused 6mm wood bit is not straight. Finally got 2 of them up but it took 10x longer than it should have. I need to cut one of them down to extend them full length. 
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May 14, 2020 16:04
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I have some of the ikea Trådfri bulbs and dimmer pucks and they work really well. They also allow you to adjust the light temperature (though no RGB bullshit) so you can set it to a cold setting when you need to see stuff properly and then turn it to a warm, low setting for the evenings. Very nice. It works a lot better than the expensive built-in Casambi dimmers I have in other lights. But those lights are really great design so... https://www.helestra.de/de/products/bora%20Pendel%20lang%20nickel This is over the dining table, dimmable and raises up and down easily.
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May 19, 2020 10:08
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The offer has arrived from the paysagiste for doing the terrace in flagstones, putting drystone facings on the wall of the house and retaining wall, coping stones on the walls, and putting in railway sleeper steps so you can get from the front door of the house down to the terrace. The good news is no helicopter required. pre:INSTALLATION DE CHANTIER 2,562.50 DALLAGE EN PIERRE NATURELLE OPUS INCERTUM LUSERNA mixte 6,767.00 PIERRE DE PAREMENT GNEISS CG026 8,671.00 ACCES MARCHES EN TRAVERSES DE CHÊNE 1,605.00 TOTAL 20,633.50 Total net TTC 21,111.15  Considering what we really wanted to do was the terrace (dallage) which would be maybe 8.5k total this is quite a lot of mission creep. Having said that I think the chalet will look way better with the stonework and would make it more appealing if and when we come to sell it. My partner and I are going to discuss what we can afford over lunch... These are some examples the paysagiste sent over      
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May 26, 2020 10:44
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Sirotan posted:That quote is uhhhh a lot. What do you have on the terrace now? Nothing, it's just concrete. You can see it here: Looking at the detail of the quote, for the terrace the cost is about 2/3 labour. For the walls it's 50/50. I'd rather have a wooden terrace and render the wall than have stamped or moulded concrete. Can't ever see that looking right. I guess also the idea is to use natural materials from the surroundings. Still, if its unaffordable its a moot point! knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 11:41 on May 26, 2020 |
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May 26, 2020 11:37
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His Divine Shadow posted:We originally wanted a built in microwave but they where so expensive we said gently caress it. Just put a regular microwave in it.... Hmm your dishwasher is raised up, that's a great idea and not sure why I haven't seen it before. Aesthetically a bit less clean I guess.
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May 26, 2020 14:04
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Jaded Burnout posted:Is that in swiss francs, or euros or..? I guess it doesn't make much difference at the moment. Yikes. Swiss francs. I'm going to need to dig into the quote as I was expecting the walls to be less than the terrace, but they're more than half the cost. In the quote he said we can save some money by doing less precise stonework, gonna find out what exactly that means. quote:Il y a des techniques de finitions avec le prix qui varie, dans cette offre, j’ai choisis de vous proposer la qualité de finitions au top
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May 26, 2020 16:47
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ntan1 posted:Yup - products in the US have a markup built in, so that you hit the normal price when they are marked down. Aahaha. You don't know how good you have it.
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May 27, 2020 09:51
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peanut posted:One all-custom place quoted $7,800. A catalog place will probably be around $3,500 (waiting on quote). Honestly, I can't afford the first option so I'm 90% sure I'll choose the second company. T O T A L C O O R D I N A T E What does the rest of the kitchen look like? In the absence of anything else I like FJH, 1FL, 1UF.
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May 28, 2020 11:10
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I would favour the dark teal colour. Goes with the wood, the stainless work surface and fridge. I guess the issue is whether it gets enough natural light to avoid being a bit gloomy.
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May 28, 2020 11:45
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~exterior design thread~ I asked the paysagiste to come up with some ways of saving money on the terrace remodel and thought I would report back. We definitely could save money - going for a wood or composite terrace and just a white render on the walls cuts the cost in half. It's super tempting but I worry about longevity of the wood. For the walls, we wanted a dry stone wall look, if we just go for a stone clad look that's a lot less, maybe 50% less for materials, but the cost to lay it is the same. On the below link the cheaper stuff is Luserna Mélangée CG015 vs Luserna Mixte at the bottom which is the dry stone. http://www.forclazpierresnaturelles.ch/produit.php?id=90&titre=Luserna Looking at other peoples' terraces, wood seems to get hosed up pretty quickly, but stone flags will basically be permanent. and this poo poo looks fantastic  We are currently at a bit of an impasse: pretty much for sure the rectangular flagstones, I am not really keen on the stone clad so the choice is white render the wall or dry stone it. Late edit: looking at the photo, health and safety here is very different, you wouldn't see a terrace with no barrier and then a kilometer drop in the UK knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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May 31, 2020 22:40
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Jaded Burnout posted:Personally I think the white render would be a nice contrast to the stone flags. He's quoted for crépi à l'ancienne which as far as I can tell is lime mortar. So yeah then painted over the top. http://www.techni.ch/technifin/haupt/batiment/sujet_0037_02/0037_02.html
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Jun 1, 2020 10:14
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Jaded Burnout posted:Personally I think the white render would be a nice contrast to the stone flags. It's a tough choice. While it's generally traditional the chalet itself has kinda modern looking details compared to some - the wood is more panelling than log cabin, for example, and it's all very neat and square. I am quite keen to get a more rustic look, which was why I have been leaning towards the stone. On the other hand, as I've already complained it's a load more expensive, and as you say white render would look really crisp. You get the idea from this side. I do think the wall (and front of the retaining wall you can't see from here) will look better in stone than render, and will give a much more rustic look. The "front door" to the house is just off to the left of the photo on the top floor, we will get the path extended and oak sleeper steps put in so people can access the terrace without going through the house.  Neighbours are having something delivered:  eta: it's amazing how much exterior copper work there is around here, all the guttering and downpipes on my place are copper and that's pretty common. I feel that back in the UK it would have been nicked within a week. One neighbour is just having the trim round his car parking space re-done in copper, bonkers. knox_harrington fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 15:42
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I'm having a problem with massive ants coming into and possibly eating the chalet over the past week. Looking them up they seem to be carpenter ants which sounds Bad. They have mostly ignored bait stations so I've attacked what I think is the n'est with some insecticide. No banana for scale but this guy is about 2cm long  Per the paysagiste: "Pour moi ce n’est pas des charpentières" so we will see.
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Jun 15, 2020 10:02
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knox_harrington posted:Per the paysagiste: "Pour moi ce n’est pas des charpentières" so we will see. Ant update: the paysagiste is convinced they are not carpenter ants but wood ants, and are not eating the chalet. Still recommends spraying everything in persistent insecticide ourselves, and not getting in pest control people as "that gets very expensive". Which given what the terrace is costing, lol. Materials for the terrace arrive tomorrow and work starts on Thursday. Exciting!
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Jun 16, 2020 11:02
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