Yes, building a new house but how about the current house?

This site is more about building a new house, but one of our concerns is also selling our current semi-detached house (paritalo).

We are trying at the moment to sell it by ourselves on www.oikotie.fi and hopefully we can get it sold soon We plan to move directly from the old house to the new one somewhere in November.

I would be interested to hear from other house builders how did you manage the sale? And the “bridge” financing? Any tips welcome.

Having two house loans at the moment does not feel very good/ safe. Luckily, at least the bank agreed that we can pay interest-only and no loan repayments for an extended period.

I have found at this website which explains quite well in English the steps in selling your house by yourself without real estate agents. This site belongs to Finnish consumer protection agency.
http://www.kuluttajavirasto.fi/en-GB/housing/selling/

summary of the last month

We have been a bit busy lately and did not update the site for a month now. You know, all those trips to swim by the lakes leave no time for blogging :).

So in chronological order a summary of the happenings at the house:

First the insulation for the floor was laid with quite a delay as the carpenters have done an error when installing the walls. Walls should have been installed on 5 cm higher beams, but they forgot to put an additional wooden piece of 5 cm between concrete beams and the wall foot. The plan was to have 25 cm of EPS polystyrene insulation. However, due to this error there was only space for 22 cm of insulation. Hhhmm! The solution was then to put 15 cm of EPS and 7cm of SPU. SPU is a better quality insulation material as it's harder, water proof and insulates better. The idea is that 7 cm SPU insulates as well as 10 cm EPS, or so. Below you can see the place for the fireplace and chimney with the SPU insulation on top.

450m of floor heating pipes were installed

Then the concrete floor was done (about 8 cm of concrete that covered the floor heating)

Thereafter chimney was built from prefabricated Schidel pieces. I took a day off and helped with lifting the pieces to up to 8m on top of the house.

View from the top of the house: There are 2 chimneys holes: one for the fireplace (the bigger one) and the small is for the sauna stove. It was interesting to lift the 25 kg a piece elements on the roof!

Also there has been work done on installing the ventilation ducts in the house and on top of the house and the 2 teraces are almost done.  Also the ceiling insulation for the first floor was installed (10 cm wooden fibre).

Then the windows were made ready with white iron trays and also the white wooden planks were attached under the roof edges as below:

Brick colored roof

After 2 and 1/2 weeks from the delivery date our house has gotten roof. More or less in one day 8.5 tonnes of tiles were installed on the roof. That's a positive example of Finnish efficiency :).  Our carperters then took a break from work on our house and went to bring another house to the same state as ours...

Check out the pictures:

before

and after...

Last weekend we visited Porkkala peninsula in Kirkkonummi. The place is beautiful and scenery is great if you can cope with the winding/hilly road. There we photographed this small cottage below which is resembling the inspiration for our house.

week 20: work on the house goes on

The assembly crew made of father and son (plus their Lapland Shepherd dog) continued working on our house and they're doing a good job as progress looks good.

Here are some pictures of the progress in chronological order:

This is how it looked inside after 3 days

House is getting rain cover (sateelta suojaan), our team working even on Saturday

Et voila!

some serious woodwork happened inside too, here's the upper floor

new generation of carpenters is getting ready...

the brick carrying wall in the making, next to which sauna and bathroom will be built

our wall wooden panels apparenlty are called URSUS. Let's  drink a URSUS beer to it :)

11 May: Day of house delivery

Last night we got pieces of roof (kattotuolit) delivered and today the actual elements of the house were delivered and installed. We took a day off in order to witness this little miracle coming true and had a great sunny day observing house taking its shape piece by piece. With a crazy smile on our faces we did some clearing of the riverside and collected branches into one pile. Photos will tell you more. Happy.

Windows on wheels

The very first element is the kitchen corner with window

Flying terrace door

3rd day. House covered for the weekend

Riverside and a balcony-to-be

Main entrance and living room windows

All pieces seemed to match, only Lapponia House had a delay delivering and the second day didn't go as planned. Workers couldn't do as much as they wanted and were not too happy. There was a night delivery between day 2 and 3.

Week 16: Foundation is fast and furious here/ thriller in the price

The Me-Perustukset team have tried to install the frames for pouring concrete last week Friday. Firstly, they had to wait a day as there was a problem with the steel delivery. Then, our foreman decided to go and visit the site and inspect the foundation to make sure that there is enough steel placed in the frames before pouring concrete.

Unfortunately he came all the way from Lohja in vain as the steel was not yet placed in the frames due to the delays of the steel delivery. He could have called Me-perustukset first and ask if the site is ready for inspection instead of coming and wasting his time...better communication would be nice! Especially as we're paying for foreman's' visits :).

Anyway by Tuesday the frames for the plinth beams (sokkeli) were ready for inspection.The foreman did notice one error as the middle floor frame was misplaced (in mirror image instead) and then the foundation crew made the necessary changes in time.

Inspecting the premises :)

steel reinforcements before concrete was poured

terrace

ventilation hole

the entrance terrace

And after a while at 8 pm same day, the trucks with concrete arrived and concrete started pouring...

 

 Then the concrete was left to dry for one day and on Thursday the frames were removed and the prefabricated floor beams were brought in onto 40-tonnes truck. This was the one we were afraid of... Will the road last or not the heavy weight...

And on Thursday, the super heavy truck came, road was ready and wide enough...but the truck driver was probably not very experienced as he took a too narrow turn from main road to our land and this is what happened...

A super heavy assistance truck was called in to pull the truck with concrete beams out of the ditch.

3 hours were lost but in the end the rescue was successful and the team installed the floor beams and look what became of it...

our house's got FOUNDATION :)

The crawl in space under the foundation

Then the day continued with the last act taking place...
The empty truck was not able to reverse up the hill to the main road...and then another  assistance truck was called to help in... (excuse the video quality)

What a thriller Thursday it's been!  But in the end the foundation crew was able to finish and leave at about 4 pm, I guess ready to celebrate something. Easter?

See also our other post on foundation:
http://project-eco-house-finland.blogspot.com/2011/03/its-question-of-foundation.html

Pictures and comments of the wall structure and insulation

At the Omakotitalo fair we met with Lapponia house representatives at their stand. We got free entrance tickets and "coffee and buns" coupons from them. That was nice, but we're a nice customer too :). I hope they still can make some profit on our house :).

They had on display the wall structure of our future house. Basically they call it "thermo log" because (as I understand it) from the outside and inside of the house it looks like a laminated log but inside the wall structure there is VITAL wooden-fibre insulation and not solid wood. The VITAL wooden-fibre has certain advantages compared to solid wood:
- it insulates about 2 times better (250 mm wooden fiber versus 250mm tick log)
-  one cubic metre of wood makes 10 cubic metres of VITAL insulation
- will not create a so-called "bottle phenomenon," but the structures are breathing

More information can be found from: http://www.vitalfinland.fi/english/pages/why_vital_insulation_/ and from

http://www.lapponiahouse.fi/international/en/company/woodhouse/

This VITAL insulation is being produced from fresh wood or from recycled card-board. Our house package insulation will be made of fresh wooden fibre.

Thermo log wall structure with VITAL insulation.

The view of the wall from the outside. The white insulation is made from fresh wood fibres.

The wooden-fibre wall structure from Lapponia House has received recently the qualification of being "suitable"/ friendly for people suffering from allergies, which is almost 1 in 2 people in Finland.

That sounds good for us as myself and my youngest daughter have some allergies.