Hanging house in the Southwest Palatinate - Our House Construction 2.0

Aha. So the son is supposed to know at the age of 10 whether he wants to take over the business in 20 years or not. Otherwise, you have to train someone in their early thirties to become a master so that they can take over the business in 20 years... but they won't be employed as a master until then because it's not worth it. So he has to keep slogging away as a journeyman, with the vague promise of becoming the owner in xy years. Of course, for money that he can't even save as a journeyman...

All of this seems very unrealistic to me, dear 11ant.

Well. I know this from my own family. Parents run a medium-sized company, son realizes early on that he is interested in the business field (!) and sets his training accordingly. If after training you don’t know whether it’s for you and whether you will continue to aim for the foreseeable goal of taking over the company, then as a senior you should also know early on that you need to look elsewhere.

No one will only realize in their late thirties that Dad actually has an interesting company. Either you have the ambitions earlier, or not at all.

@kati1337 Have you actually found a solution for your terrace/slope design by now?

Yes, sort of. =) We hired someone again to take care of the essentials. He’s handling the paving of the access path and driveway. He’s putting a small flower bed in between. He’s installing curbstones around the house and a splash guard – I had completely forgotten that you need that here in this region and with plaster. And a terrace between 40+50m² will still be made, as well as some paved edging (so that all the doors behind the house can be reached without walking through the mud). The slope can be left as it is, says the general contractor. We will try to fit a staircase in there ourselves, and we’ll green it with ground cover plants and shrubs. We actually wanted to plant something there that can be harvested – currants and stuff like that. Maybe we’ll do it, depends on how much our budget hurts next spring. In any case, we want to let it get well-rooted to additionally stabilize it. For all the fancier ideas we had, there’s not enough money in the first step. But a property also grows and thrives over time. It would be boring if everything was perfectly finished in the first year.

Otherwise new: The general contractor called today that my “special request” is possible without extra charge: I wanted the stairs to have white risers. The plan before was completely oak solid wood. It will still be wood, but the risers will be white instead. I like that better, makes it look a bit more rustic, I think. And today we chose the pattern again (last week I said that from now on the standard has to be enough for everything). The baseboards, standard were wood, white, and 40-60mm. Now we’re getting wood, white, Hamburg profile, 80mm. Extra charge per piece 4.50 gross. For the whole house that will come to 270-350€, depending. Here’s a picture from today. We took the strip on the far right. That is, by the way, also our parquet floor. I’m super excited about it.

What still gives me some headaches are the mobile network colleagues. I would be fine if one of the connections was ready in a month, but that’s wishful thinking. We are getting fiber optic from Inexio (which is a total communication failure), and regular copper cable from Telekom, they are bringing us some kind of stripped-down DSL line – which I might actually prefer over nothing at all.
At Telekom, the black cable runs into the house. Inexio has meanwhile managed to lay the empty conduit into the house. No one has finished the house connection yet. At Inexio, the connection appointments are still to be coordinated (?), at Telekom the status is still "tiefbau". But the cable has been hanging out of the wall for weeks.
Can anyone tell me from experience if it’s normal that it still says "tiefbau" even though the cable has been laid? Or should I call?
I actually didn’t want a Telekom connection, but we work from home and I can’t bear another year of internet via a mobile SIM.
Question 2: We ordered a fiber optic connection from Inexio, so also a tariff. Can I still exercise my right of withdrawal as long as the tariff is not active? I really can’t wait until they – if they ever – eventually finish. But I also don’t want to have to pay for two tariffs if they do get around to it next quarter.

The paving and planting sounds really great. The rest will come bit by bit. I think you only really notice how to best arrange everything after living in it for a while anyway. We have been planting and digging in the garden almost constantly for nearly six years (when we moved in, apart from a few shrubs, it was just a lawn with half a hedge). It’s also nice to see how everything develops over the years.

I would have chosen the Hamburg profile too, and I believe it’s definitely worth it. After all, you’re not ripping off a new baseboard from the wall, but I wouldn’t have liked just a plain strip without any profile either.

What kind of parquet flooring are you getting? We are having one from Joka installed in August, of course with baseboards in the Hamburg profile, with which we have already had good experiences within our family circle.

And unfortunately, I don’t know what Stellstufen are. Do you mean Setzstufen?

The black cable hangs into the house at Telekom. Inexio has meanwhile managed to lay the empty conduit into the house. No one has finished the house connection yet. At Inexio, the connection appointments are still to be coordinated (?), at Telekom the status is still set to "civil engineering." However, the cable has been hanging out of the wall for weeks.

It's the same with us. Our shell builder/electrician pulled the empty conduit into the technical room and also directly pulled the cable through because it was long enough. Telekom doesn't know about that, though.
They have outsourced the laying plus connection in the technical room to an external company. We are in direct contact with them, and the technician will drop by spontaneously in the next few days if he is nearby.
The company is very straightforward and annoyed with Telekom themselves. They say they will only report the status to Telekom once everything is finished. Until then, it just says civil engineering in the portal.