1620 timber frame - or is it a witch's hut?

Tschuess and goodbye!

2013-05-31T11:58:00.000+02:00

Dear readers and friends out there!

No activities here for a long time and I finally decided to close this blog. So it's time to say goodbye, I guess:

"Tschüss und auf Wiedersehen!" to all of you.

Thanks for all of your comments and good wishes - they were really much appreciated. It was fun and very inspiring to "meet" all of you!

We didn't move or sell the house or anything like that - it's just not the right time for blogging right now. Maybe I'll continue writing on our adventures with our old house some day in the future.
For the time being, I left only some of the posts that might be of general interest for people fascinated by old houses - if you have any questions, feel free to contact me by leaving a comment.

Take care!

Hungry as a worm...

2009-05-02T10:44:00.000+02:00

Another loooong silence over here, although I actually have a lot to post about. Being a working-and-diy'er-mom just leaves little time for blogging. We're all doing great and with our son taking his first steps, life became yet more exciting ;-)

We finally began to seriously work on the nursery, it's about time with the little one turning 1 in June... At first we wanted to leave the hated laminate floor in there due to practical reasons. But in the end we were too curious and just had to peek at what's underneath. After several layers (more in a separate post to come), we found: A WOODEN FLOOR, hurray :-) And it seems to be an old floor indeed as the planks are up to 73 cm wide (and 4 metres long).

In this post, I just wanted to show you the traces of a roomer called woodworm. Normally, we have those little holes:

But in that plank, someone must have been really, really hungry:

Some two years ago, we'd probably been in panic and afraid of the house tumbling down. After more than two years in our witch's hut, we are pretty calm. Typical dialogue:

"Oh, traces of woodworms."
"Any fresh sawdust?"
"Not at a first glance."
"Alright then!"

Fantastic find - antiquity in the garden

2008-11-17T18:53:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, hubby planted about 100 bulbs - hoping that some of them will bloom in spring ;-). He ameliorated the soil with the pickax and suddenly he had the impression he was hitting a stone. But it wasn't a stone, it was this clay bottle:

After cleaning it, we discovered a stamp saying "Herzogthum Nassau" (Duchy of Nassau), a lioncel and the word "Selters" (seltzer):

Let's sum up the information: We found a clay bottle once filled with mineral water, deriving from the former Duchy of Nassau. This Duchy was part of the German Confederation and existed barely 60 years (1806-1866). Folks, that means, our bottle is at least 150 years old, maybe even 200!! So very exciting!

But back to the information: The Duchy was situated in what is nowadays a part of the federal state of Hesse.
The mineral water originates from the well in Niederselters/Taunus Mountains:
* The following information is translated from Wikipedia*
The well was discovered in 1536 and soon the water was said to have curative effects. In the 18th century, the water was verifiably exported to Scandinavia, Russia, North America and Africa.
Between 1806 and 1866, the export of seltzer became the Duke of Nassau's most important source of income.

By the way: Niederselters is about 360 km from our little town, quite an amazing distance for a bottle of mineral water at that time! It definitely means that the owner of our house (in the first half of the 19th century) was fairly wealthy!

New windows, part II: Choice of contractor and formalities

2008-11-15T21:06:00.001+01:00

The difficulty with our new windows is how to find a fine balance between conformity with preservation orders and modern comforts, especially concerning the energy balance.
Remember: We are a monument :-) and therefore we have to consider quite a lot of regulatory requirements. The most important ones are:

1. Windows must be outward opening (which I love in general but which is a pest when you do your window-cleaning...)

2. Divided-light windows

3. Narrow profiles

After checking several offers, we decided to commission a carpentry from a nearby village to build our new windows. They use local wood and ecologically compatible paint, usually from Auro, which was an important factor in our decision-making. Especially as some of the new windows will be built in in the nursery - good to know no toxins will evaporate.

Here is a drawing of the windows we'll have built in, they are so-called "Kreuzstockfenster", is the English expression for it "crossbar window"?

The next steps (protected and listed building) have to be these:

a) submit a building application to the monuments administration

b) wait for their decision and especially the important STAMP of permission

c) after works will be finished: acceptance of construction work by the authorities

We've managed up to step b) and here it is, the stamp of permission:

New windows, part I: Advance information

2008-11-13T15:34:00.002+01:00

Almost two years ago, even before we moved into our witch's hut, I already wrote a post about insulation and new windows. And now we finally start on this huge project. We'll exchange some of the old windows, but don't worry, of course we're not going to rip out the historical ones but only the really ugly windows from the time between 1960 and 1980. Those errors in taste we want to replace by new windows that are on one hand looking like the original ones (construction and material) and on the other hand are well insulated and energy-saving.

We'll go ahead with this project just step by step as it would be too expensive to renew all of the windows at the same time. What makes things really expensive is the fact, that all of the 22 (!) windows in our house are of different size and each one of them has to be a one-off production.

So we decided to start with the kitchen windows (two of them) and the window and the balcony door in the nursery. They probably date from the 70ies and are really not worth keeping:

We've got one old picture of how those windows looked like before they were exchanged for those ugly ones (marked in red):

I'm sorry for the quality of that picture, we only have a paper-copy of it. The picture is part of a description of our house from around 1975 when a whole inventory of Hornburg's old houses was issued by the local authorities.

This is the same view today with horrible windows:

I love the old ones and the new windows are going to look like that again, hurray!

The previous owners - back to 1732

2008-11-07T10:47:00.001+01:00

Just a few weeks before our son was born in June, I finally made it to the town's archive to see whether I could find anything on our house or the previous owners.

Well, one visit to the archive is definitely not enough... But even in a first short visit I found out quite a lot, I was especially excited to see a list of the previous owners back to 1732.

That means of course, that we are still missing information on the first 150 years after the house was presumably built around 1590 but it is a start!

Here are the owners:

1732: Georg Cuno Hannemüller, Balbierer und Brauer

1769: Christoph Nürnberg

1785: Fr. Relicta(Witwe)Dierbergen

1799/1800: Rel. Dierbergen, modo Dan. Hotopff

1808: Hr. Hotop

Christian Steinbach, Fleischer, 48 J.; Marie Osteroth, 43 J.; Sohn: Christian * 1807

1933: Peters, August, Ackerbürger, Bagmann, Emma, geb. Peters, Witwe

Especially the first one is interesting as it says that he was a brewer and a barber. As the cellar in our house used to be a brewing cellar we can be quite sure that in the 18th century, beer was brewed directly in our house. Moreover rumour goes, that Georg Cuno Hannemüller's wife has gone mad after his death and that they had to get her out of the house by force. Quite spooky...

More history as soon as I make it to the archive again! I really want to try and find out more on the people listed above.

Darling, I bought six tons of paving stones!

2007-12-15T16:59:00.000+01:00

"You did WHAT?"
"I bought six tons of paving stones. And two tons have already been delivered."
"Is this what happens when I leave you alone for a weekend?"

Ok, that's about the dialogue I had on the phone with my dear husband last weekend. I was off on a business trip and all I wanted to do was wish him goodnight. And I ended up imagining our yard filled with two tons of paving stones and four tons still to come...

Well, it turned out that two tons of stones are in fact nothing but a small heap. ;)

And it was really a bargain, as it is old sandstone pavement from a farm not far from our place - definitely fitting our original pavement. We payed 120 Euro a ton (including delivery) which is fair enough.

We will now remove an ugly concrete slab from our yard and replace it by pavement so it all looks the same in the end.

My husband has already removed the slab and starts on the paving tomorrow. Really looking forward to the result!

PS Yes, I know I still owe you a post on all the technical details of our new heating. I actually asked hubby to write it, but he kind of plays hard-to-get...

PPS Thanks for all of your comments and questions in the last couple of weeks - they're much appreciated. There is actually a reason for me not blogging for more than a month - I hope to disclose that secret in January. Stay tuned... :)

Another find - what could it be?

2007-09-16T17:34:00.000+02:00

When exposing the foundation wall of our house, we discovered yet another "thing". My readers helped me last time to find out that the first object we found was an eyetooth of a large dog. Thanks Jonathan!

Therefore I try it again, hoping someone will come up with a great idea. That's the corpus delicti:

The material is definitely clay, the whole thing is about 5 cm long. There is a tiny hole in the middle, probably running through the whole of it.

What could it be? An old weight? Some kind of container?

Help - what's that claw?

2007-08-24T09:31:00.001+02:00

At the moment, my husband is exposing the foundation wall of our house due to a problem with rising moisture (nothing severe, I'll write about it once we know what we're going to do about it).

Today he dug about 50 cm deep and there he found this:

The "thing" is about 5 cm long. What is it? A dog's claw?

Any idea will be appreciated! :) :)

Gender equality in diy matters?!?

2007-08-12T00:22:00.000+02:00

I can't quite believe that I'm really going to show you this picture of my humble self, but I'm sooooo angry right now.
Why do folks at diy stores ignore women diy-ers? Why do they answer your husband if you asked a question? Why is there a pic of a man on every tool they sell but never one of a woman?
And - and that's the last straw - why do they sell protective clothing and protective shoes beginning with size XL (clothing) or 40 (shoes), whereas women need (on average) size M and 38? Don't we need any protective stuff because we're not worth it? Or are we just not meant to do any work in a house apart from cooking and ironing and cleaning?
And IF they have anything in sizes actually fitting women - why for God's sake is that stuff pink or purple? What the hell do I need a pink tool belt for? Or a pink tool handle that is black after the first "real" use anyway? Why should I like pink qua gender (I do like pink anyway, but that's not the point, is it!?!)?
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying there are no differences between men and women, but these pigheaded prejudices and stereotypes and that out-dated role model just drives me mad!

Ok, and now let me show you what a woman really looks like as a diy-er - no glamour, neither chic nor trendy, no pink tools, no make-up, quite scary and sweaty AND - she is thoroughly enjoying herself!!!

By the way - I'm refinishing an old kitchen buffet on that picture, but I'll write about that once it's finished. Apart from spending too much time in diy stores, we are getting a lot done in the house, have been talking to several local companies and craftsmen about a new heating and new/old windows and had to deal with one major disappointment. But more on all that once I calmed down a bit :)

Yes, we are a monument!

2007-08-04T18:05:00.000+02:00

It is official now: Our house is a protected architectural monument! Thanks everyone for keeping your fingers crossed!

Two preservationists - the one responsible for our town and one of the superior authority - inspected our house thoroughly (and I, of course, had been cleaning and tidying like a madwoman the night before...). And in the end they decided that the house is "worth" being officially protected and listed, not only for being a part of the old town but also for itself and its inside.
Two main aspects were crucial: On one hand there are several well preserved old parts in the house (doors and doorframes, the attic, the cellar) and on the other hand our house represents a typical example of how this kind of houses were usually renovated in the late 19th/early 20th century.

This is an extract of the mail we got, of course they'll send us an official notification later on, but this is enough for the moment:

That's what it says:
In addition to the urbanistic significance of the building (built around 1600 and renovated around 1910 in half-timbered fashion), the following findings lead to the classification of the building as an architectural monument:

Numerous interior doors of the 17th and 18th century.
Mighty cellar with groined vault underneath the northern axis of the building.
Complete truss of the construction period.
Assumption that the mighty northern house end represents parts of the first city wall before the town's burst of development.

Especially that last bit of information is sooooo exciting. I really have to take some time off to dig in the local archives.
Anyway, we are really happy and the fact that the house is now officially an architectural monument motivates us even more to go on with all of our projects!

Here are some pics of the details mentioned above:
The cellar:

Possible city wall:

Some of the doors and door frames:

Renovating the historic pavement, II

2007-08-02T23:21:00.000+02:00

After choosing the right stones, the brute part of the job began ;) The paving stones had to be pressed into the ground. My husband did it by hammering on a piece of wood with the blunt side of our ax:

It sure was an exhausting job, but we didn't want to use a vibrating plate because the pavement would have lost its characteristic unevenness.
Slowly but surely we advanced

and finally finished this work step:

Then the gaps had to be filled with some kind of grout. We used "home-made" gravel-sand, consisting of the sieved soil we had dug out before.

What next? The gravel-sand was removed by hosing the spot with water, then we refilled it with gravel-sand, hosing it again ....

And this is the final result:

I think it turned out great!

Renovating the historic pavement, I

2007-08-01T20:49:00.000+02:00

Our house and the two adjoining buildings (a workshop and a former barn) form a courtyard of about 150m². The bigger part of it is covered with historic pavement, made of both limestone and field stones.

This is what the pavement looks like in a close-up view (yes, I should weed more often...):

For some unknown reason, there was a spot of about 2 m² in front of the barn where the pavement was completely missing:

As it turned into a muddy wetland after each rain, we decided to pave it. And of course we wanted to use some original old paving stones. We have already learned by now that a lot of missing material that was removed in the process of previous renovations is still to be found somewhere around the place. Therefore we started looking for hidden paving stones. And found some: in the garden, in the flowerbeds, in the former pond and so on:

At first my husband removed some soil (about 20 cm), filled that hole with a layer of gravel-sand of about 10 cm and then fitted in matching stones.

Read more about the next steps and the result in part II of this post...

Our front door: 1944, 2007 and in future?

2007-07-26T23:46:00.000+02:00

We found an old picture of our front door dating from 1944:

Photo: © „Bildarchiv Foto Marburg“

And this is what it looks like now, unfortunately:

My husband added one major change to it last weekend: He enlarged the mail slot... ;) We receive a lot of parcels and our neighbour, an adorable elderly lady, accepts them whenever she can. It went a bit over the top in the last couple of weeks and so we decided we needed a bigger mail slot.

The current door is probably from the 1950ies and really ugly in my opinion... We want to exchange it for an old one eventually (or for a new one crafted after historical examples).

We walked through our little town, taking pictures of other people's doors to get some inspiration. We'll have to (and want to) maintain the structure with that fanlight, apart from that we haven't taken any decision yet. Which ones do you like?

First (failed) try working with clay...

2007-07-20T11:41:00.000+02:00

... or: it doesn't smell the way it looks ... ;)

As described in my last post, we had a hole in our bedroom floor (gypsum) and after getting rid of that ancient mouse nest we had to fill the hole if we didn't want to risk breaking our ankles stumbling into it.

Remember: That was just a couple of weeks after we moved in and we were kind of over-enthusiastic and decided to fill it with clay (original flooring material). My husband organized some clay mixed with straw and poured it into the hole:

And the end of the story? It was far too much clay and far too watery - it actually never dried up and began to mould after some days...

We scraped it all out again and filled the hole with gypsum - the same material as the rest of that bedroom floor...

Finally we layed a carpet:

That's only a temporary solution as eventually we want to lay a wooden floor, but not right now (no time and no money). And a carpet in the bedroom is rather cosy as I must admit ;)

So much for our first adventures "messing around" with clay!

Xylophaga or dry rot?

2007-07-15T21:03:00.000+02:00

No - just an ancient mouse nest... Shortly after moving into our house in March, we found this and were terrified:

We couldn't quite figure out what it was and thought of xylophaga or dry rot. We saw huge bills arise in front of us to save the house or - in even worse nightmares - the house tumbling down.

What happened exactly? We decided to rip out the previous owner's carpet in the bedroom due to a wood worm-infested coco mat underneath the carpet which was meant to insulate the room.

After riping out that stuff and throwing it out of the window *great fun*

we found a strange kind of flooring. We didn't know what it was back then - thanks to the preservationist, we know now that it is a historic gypsum flooring which had to be layed in the middle of the 19th century for safety reasons (fire break).

And in this floor there was the hole shown above - and in the hole traces of insects, strange fibers and paper shavings. Thanks to the rests of newspaper we found out that it must be an ancient infestation, it was still printed in Gothic letters.

We immediately called "our" carpenter and he laughed at us saying: "Don't worry, it's just a mouse nest, probably more than 100 years old. Your house won't tumble down because of an old mouse nest!"

You really have to learn to react with calmness to all the surprises a 400 year old house comes up with ;)

In the next post I'll write more about how we refilled that hole...

Discoveries in an old house (I): Eight (!) layers of wallpaper

2007-07-11T22:36:00.000+02:00

I really love our old house!!! Just for fun we tried to look underneath the wallpaper in the bottom area of the walls in our living room. There seemed to be some kind of bulge and we wanted to know what it is. At first, my husband got stock with his finger in the wall, I love this picture :)

Well, the bulge is a - probably very old - wooden plinth:

And sticking to it are eight - yes, 8 - layers of wallpaper. One of them is definitely a 60ies wallpaper...

Layers 1-3, woodchip wallpapers

Layer 4:

Layer 5:

Layer 6 - 60-ies forever ;):

Layer 7:

Layer 8:

And on the clay-wall there seems to be some kind of painting in a still very bright blue. I'm really eager to see that one day:

The preservationist told us that blue colour used to be too expensive, so his guess is that they used little blue cubes (probably with indigo) that where dissolved in water. The walls were then painted with this watery solution. He too is eager to see that wall ;)

Update on monument protection - first decision taken

2007-06-29T16:56:00.001+02:00

Dear readers, please keep your fingers crossed!

After thinking all the pros and cons of getting listed the inside of our house over and over again, we had another chat with the State preservationist today. I asked him a lot of questions concerning the everyday life and especially the practice of renovating in a listed building.
It all seems very reasonable: As all the changes we want to make are conform to the historical monument, we don't have to expect any major problems or conflicts with the Local Office for Historical Monuments.
To give you some examples: If we want to rip out the laminate and put in hard wood floors instead, they would support us but would NOT require a certain kind of wood or a certain laying technique etc. We would even be allowed to tear down inner walls to get bigger rooms (which we won't do). Of course certain changes wouldn't be allowed, like replacing old doors with new ones. Things we never thought of, anyway.

One last thing I wanted to know was whether we'd still be allowed to do a lot of work by ourselves or if everything has to be done by certified specialists. That would indeed have been an obstacle as we love to do things the diy-way. But that's no problem at all.

After this really positive chat we decided to give it a try. We want to have the inside of our house listed, too. The preservationist and an officer of the State Office for Historical Monuments (from Hanover) will look at the house thoroughly and decide, whether it is worth to be listed or not. So keep your fingers crossed, please!!

Upcoming decision - readers' opinions more than welcome!

2007-06-22T22:30:00.000+02:00

Our house is listed as a historical building, exactly as all the other houses in the historic city centre of Hornburg. We have to preserve everything on the outside of the house (facade, windows, roof etc.) and if we want to make any changes, we have to make a building application and get the permission of the State Office for Historical Monuments.

Inside the house, you can change, rip out, destroy whatever you want to. Of course we don't even think of that! On the contrary - we'll restore a lot in our old house (wood floors instead of the laminate the previous owner layed, just to give you an example).

Right now we are thinking of classifiying the inside of the house as a historical monument, too. All the changes we want to make are exactly what the State Office suggests anyway, and IF the inside is listed, you can get a lot of valuable information from the State preservationists for free.
And you can set off all the costs for renovations against tax liability. We tried to figure out how much money we could save thereby - it would probably be an amount between 10'000 and 15'000 Euro. Sounds good.

On the other hand, everyone tells us we're completely crazy because we'd allow the State Office to intervene in our renovation plans. And that we'd never again be able to sell the house if the inside is listed, too. Or for a lot less, which is of course an argument.

And even IF we decide to have it listed, it's not sure it will be classified as a historical monument by the authorities as only few of the original structure (end of the 16th, beginning of the 17th century) is left after centuries of rebuilding and adding changes to the house. I'll post pictures of the parts that are most of all worth protection over the next few days, but we're basically talking of the cellar and the attic, some of the doors and door frames and parts of the stairs (still hidden away underneath newer layers).

We really don't know what to do - any of your advice and opinions would be much appreciated!

Aliens among us (wood floor, part II)

2007-04-22T13:13:00.000+02:00

After scraping off all the rests of glue, we decided to grind the floor.
And here we encountered the first problem: Of course we could have rented a big grinder and would have grinded the whole room within a couple of hours.

But that big machine would not only have stripped the floor but would also have flattened it - which we wanted to avoid. The planks are all uneven and we wanted to keep that historic structure. Therefore, my husband grinded every single plank with a small swinging grinder:

What a horrible job: noisy, dusty, backaching and it took him days... But I must admit that I really love the way he looks while doing it - like an alien ;)

And here is a first try at embedding a little video:

And a picture to compare the floor before (top) and after (bottom) grinding:

By the way: The length of the single planks is remarkable! They are about 5 metres long - all of the study's length!

Of course the now open-poured floor needed further treatment. We read a lot about different possibilites to treat a wood floor and talked to "our" carpenter. In the end we decided to do it the traditional and purely organic way:
First we lubricated it with linseed oil, which - nice side-effect - kills every wood worm, just in case there was still an active one in that floor...
Did you know it is dangerous to leave a cloth soaked with linseed oil in the house? It can catch fire!! Seemed quite scary to me and therefore I left all the jars we used outside in the yard before we disposed them. Better take no risks!

After lubricating we applied beeswax and then polished the floor with a hand floor polisher - a tool that my grandmothers both used as a matter of course but that is hardly purchasable nowadays. Thank goodness there is ebay...

And the result of all the labour is this:

I really love it!!

Wood floor, part I

2007-04-20T18:32:00.001+02:00

As I wrote before, we started off with painting the study. After we finished the painting in salmon, we wanted to rip out this ugly carpet:

Underneath the carpet we found: - another layer of carpet...

And beneath the second carpet we found a really beautiful old wooden floor, hidden away under a layer of red varnish and rests of the carpet's undersurface though...

Alright, I have to put it into perspective: WE thought it a beautiful floor and decided to renovate it. Family and friends reacted about this way: "What a horrible floor, traces of worm holes everywhere and those splinters of wood are dangerous!" Well - the wood worm is long gone and anyway - it's not really a surprise to find traces of a wood worm in such a house, is it? And you can always wear slippers in order to avoid splinters!

First of all - we riped out the whole carpet:

And then I scraped off all the gluey rests of carpet with a hand scraper - quite a tiring work that didn't do any good to my back...

Read about the grinding in the next post...

Windows, heating and insulation

2006-11-22T09:02:00.000+01:00

We need a new heating system! There is an oil heating of about 1988 in the house at the moment and our first bigger investment will be to modernize the heating system. We definitely won't go on heating with fossil fuels - too expensive and, more important, not ecological at all. Moreover, personally I don't feel safe with all that oil in the cellar of a - partly - wooden house...

At first we wanted to go for a pellet heating system because it is based on renewable resources. Well, and I simply liked the thought of heating with wood, sounds somewhat "natural" (I admit, I'm an "eco-kid" of the eighties, socialised with Greenpeace and WWF, whale-saving and demonstrating against nuclear power stations...).
But we realized pretty soon that this solution is far too expensive for us. The investment costs are really high and the wood pellets themselves become more and more expensive, too. Therefore we decided to go for gas (central, not in tanks). Later on we might combine it with solar cells, but this is a bit difficult, as the cells mustn't be visible from the street (listed building).

Next point to it: INSULATION... Take a look at our windows (again, not a good picture, sorry...)!

You could just aswell try to heat the street outside, the wind whistles through the chinks and gaps just about any song you like... Now, of course we want to keep these old windows and frames, anyway we're not allowed (and never would!!!) to put in new windows of another kind (again: listed building).

Our windows - this just as an interesting and uttterly off-topic detail - must open towards the street instead of towards the room (in modern houses). This makes window-cleaning quite an adventure :-)

But back to topic: we thought of adding "inner windows" in order to improve the insulation. But they mustn't be too sealed either, this would influence the climate in the house which we want to avoid. And we're talking of 22 (!!) windows, each one with a very individual size - that would mean 22 one-off productions... We also thought of insulating the inner walls - but my father-in-law, an engineer, convinced us that it would be a nonsense from the point of view of construction physics.
Any other ideas?

Floor plans

2006-10-26T10:47:00.000+02:00

I promised to post floor plans - here they are:

I'll write about our plans for the single rooms over the next few weeks - we will move in only by February 15th, still a long time to go until we can really start on the renovation.

It is rather difficult to draw those plans properly because there are not just two floors as the plans might suggest. There are actually a lot more of them, because there are steps everywhere in the house - two lead to the kitchen, five to the office, another four to the bathroom - very charming!! Must be a paradise for playing hide-and-seek...
Some rooms are not very high, up to 1,70 m (approx. 5,6 ft. I think) only. No problem for me really, as I'm anyway nothing but "a walking metre" (well, 1,64 to be correct). But my dear husband keeps on banging his head against the beams...

Water alarm?

2006-10-12T12:02:00.000+02:00

No posts for almost a week - I was caught by the first cold of this season...
As far as the house is concerned, everything is going well. We had an appointment with our banker the other day and - to make it short - they'll give us the money! We are now thinking about the different possibilites of financing. We are not sure whether it's better to chose a conservative financing with little risk or one with more risk but the possibility to reduce our debts earlier. Suddenly a lot of decisions to take...

But here's another (more) interesting story:

Our house is situated in "Wasserstrasse" - means Water Street in english. Sounds like any houseowner's nightmare, doesn't it? And in fact there really is a creek flowing underneath the pavement. BUT - and that's the interesting thing about it - it's absolutely necessary that it continues flowing, as the following example may show:
In the Seventies, the city council decided to regulate the creek. Within the next couple of years, the old timberframe buildings began to move and slump. Fortunately, this was quite an obvious development and the people in charge led the creek back in its natural channel. Almost immediately, the houses moved back into their original positions. Amazing, isn't it!?!

Means of course, that the cellars of these houses are always a little dampish, but as I said before: perfect wine cellars. The cellar in our house is, as the carpenter told us, even older than the rest of the house, probably 15th or 16th century. Really great!! Here's a (not really good...) picture of it:

Hopping mad

2006-10-05T15:45:00.000+02:00

I'm always writing about "our house", but officially, it's not ours yet. We agreed with the owner about the price and when we can move in. You would think those are the most important points.
But it's really getting complicated now!! German bureaucracy!!! Or have you ever heard of Grundbuchauszug (abstract of title), Flurkarte (land register map), Baulastenverzeichnis (register of building charges)? Of Katasteramt (land registry office), Bauamt (building authority), Amtsgericht (district court)?
Well, I have never ever had anything to do with those - and it turns out to be a real bureaucratic nightmare. You spend hours and hours making (useless) phonecalls, trying to find out who can hand you out all of those documents - and especially, when those people are working. E.g. tomorrow, they are open from 9 a.m to 11 a.m and you have to appear personally. Lovely - and how should I manage to get there in time, when I'm working from 8.30 a.m. to 17.00 p.m.?? *grrrrrrrrrrrr*
Sorry for bothering you with this stuff, but I'm a tiny little bit annoyed at the moment. And my dear husband preferred to go on a business trip right now. Good timing!! Telling me: "Oh darling, could you please organize all those documents? You're so good at it!" :-)

I post some more pictures of our lovely home just to make sure it's worth running to any department at any time:

Annexes and courtyard:

Garden:

"Our" street: