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Neubau Progress: Changing Doors

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While our Rohbau phase of building was done, or as our contract manager liked to think… SET IN STONE… we did want to make some intelligent tweaks regarding doors…

Remember what our floor plan looks like?

If you notice up there, in the “Reduit”, the door opens into the pantry closet. Now, I think you all agree that it doesn’t make sense to open a closet door into the closet and lose all that extremely valuable storage space. We had to change that.

But worse was in the kitchen. Because the kitchen was almost closed off without a door, we decided to keep the door option so that we would be able to totally shut off the sights and smells from dinner guests and sleeping spouses. But as the company had it planned, the kitchen door would open and partially block the windows if you left it open, which we plan to.

Well, that didn’t make any sense… so we put in our door requests and below you can see the slightly amended “new plan”.

Now we won’t have to worry about getting into the pantry and our kitchen door will spend most of its life sitting flush against the entry wall in the apartment. We just had to make sure they actually put our door frames in the correct direction!

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We have a mortgage!

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By the time March rolled around, we decided it was time to figure out our mortgage once and for all. Our list of places that work with Americans despite FATCA requirements had grown smaller compared to last year, so we only had 4 banks to choose from compared to the 30+ that most Swiss have available to them.

Still, Kay went to all of them (ZKB, UBS, CS and a local bank Linth) and told them we wanted to see some offers for either 100% Libor mortgages or 100% 5 year fixed mortgages.

Unlike the US, 20-30 year mortgages don’t really exist here. The highest model offered to people is usually a 10 year fixed mortgage. As I’ve said before, the point of your mortgage is not to pay the whole house back by then. After 10 years, you simply have to refinance your mortgage for another 1-10 years, depending on your plans. If you would secure a 10 year mortgage, it is usually not in your interest to try to “sell off” the mortgage with the house. Unless interest rates have skyrocketed, a 10 year fixed rate is usually more than what buyers would be able to find on their own for the same amount of time left on your mortgage. Buying a place with a 30 year mortgage and then selling it off? Forget about it. It doesn’t work like that here.

Since we are coming to a crossroads in about five years, we do not want to be tied to the flat longer than that. Five year fixed rates are also MUCH cheaper than 10 year fixed rates, so that’s a bonus too.

Kay went back and forth between the banks and let the bankers battle it out… we were just interested in getting the best rate possible, which we made clear from the start! It came down to a very exciting hour as Kay was calling me telling me he’d had both guys on the phone and needed to call one of them back and make a decision…. soooo, we went with the small bank!

Bank Linth bent over backwards to meet our goals and they were very excited that we promised to move all our money over to them. I am a little sad to leave English online-banking and paperwork (ugh, German paperwork… ugh!) but it will be good for me. (Hopefully.) And the advisor at Bank Linth was really the nicest out of all the people we met with.

UBS? I was really disappointed. We have almost all our money with them now and then sent this stodgy old man to talk to us. He didn’t even try offering us a first-time buyers mortgage like ZKB did. And when he heard we had better offers than him, he just said “Oh, that’s too low! We can’t do anything about it.” Not really a salesman in my eyes. I’d much rather work with a small bank and receive the care and attention we deserve. (Ok, I think we deserve it…!)

Homebuyers, did you go for a big bank or somewhere local? How did you make the choice?

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Two and a half vacuums

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Exciting news everyone! I’ve finally bought a new vacuum! …but not just one. I’ve bought two. And a half. Sort of.

Listen, this is just what happens when Kay leaves. I go out into the world and decide it’s a good idea to buy multiple vacuums and carry them home on the bus by myself. I lead a very exciting life, thank you.

Thankfully the employees tied the packs up with little handles so I could manage, and they weren’t Dysons so they didn’t weigh a bajillion pounds.

Meet the old vacuum. An obscure Miele given to us by friends.

I’m not sure how old the Miele was, but I was sure that it wasn’t great at vacuuming anymore. This vacuum also drove me crazy with how hard it was to store. Below is the best you could do to hook the head into the body and usually the huge tube was flailing about everywhere.

I used to store it on it’s end, extend the tube all the way and lean the tube and head against the wall but it would fall down all the time. Cursing, I swore at one point that our next vacuum would be an upright but after a few years living in Europe I conceded that the canister vacuum is more practical for apartment living.

We don’t have so much floor space that we require an upright to push around. It would quickly run into our coffee table, dining set, etc and would probably be much more of a pain to use the attachments for cleaning under the sofa and in the corners than just using a canister vacuum with their handy hoses.

Kay and I went looking for vacuums in the new year but we were a bit overwhelmed by all the options and prices so we chickened out. I have been thinking more and more about the vacuum situation and finally found a solution that should work for now.

Tristar SZ-2190: 69.95CHF

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This is going to be our “main vacuum”. I had a few requirements for the vacuum: Bagless, Small, Affordable, High Power

I wanted to go bagless because Kay and I are both lazy about replacing and buying new bags and it seems like emptying the canister will be easier than dealing with bags. I have heard that bagless vacuums are not quite as good at suctioning, but for 69.95CHF I am willing to give it a shot.

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The Tristar seems like it is a little better about storing itself. It’s not as good as those Dyson’s that wrap around themselves, but its footprint is not too large and it seems easier to tame the hose than the old Miele.

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Another plus is that there are new attachments to use! The Miele didn’t come with any and the two small ones above have attachment points on the vacuum so they are always handy! I already used them today to help clean the dust out of the bottom of my wardrobe and I am a fan.

I chose the Tristar not only because it was 50CHF cheaper than the Dirt Devil I was contemplating buying, but because the canister was a lot easier to get in and out. You just grab it like it’s a coffee mug and out it comes.

And see this? The head and hose profile are so small that it fits underneath our TV stand, something the Miele was incapable of doing. Score!

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This right here is why a canister vacuum is invaluable compared to an upright. If I had an upright, I would just be down there with a tube and hose as well, hoping that they fit under the table. The canister vacuums are just so much easier to maneuver the whole vacuum body around. You don’t have to worry about the canister because it just rolls along with you.

In addition to the main vacuum, I also really wanted to try out a handheld cordless vacuum, which surprisingly was more than twice as much as the main vacuum but still way less than the 399CHF Dyson cordless vac.

ELECTROLUX Ergorapido ZB2933: 179.95CHF (It is SO 20 bucks cheaper online too, argh!)

The Electrolux is so small and light, and it is 2 vacuums in one! You can pop out the mini vac below:

Maybe the novelty of this will wear off if I decide later that it doesn’t do a great job suctioning but for now I’m really excited to either pull this out and run it quickly in the kitchen or pop the handheld out and use it instead of our sorry dust pan. (Which is really due for an upgrade too… the brush is ridiculous.)

And this one comes with attachments too! Maybe I am overly excited, never having owned my own vacuum attachments before…

You can store them inside the stand. I am a big fan of the stand as well, which is like a docking station for power.

See, I was so eager to use it when I got home that this picture you can already see it has dirt in there. Woo. Cleaning.

I thought the Dyson is probably better and has more power than this, but honestly the cordless Dyson’s do not maneuver on the floor as easy as the 180º swivel in the Electrolux and you have to hold the trigger down on the Dyson the whole time you are vacuuming. The Electrolux works more like a normal vacuum cleaner with a simple off-on button so that you don’t strain your trigger finger while cleaning.


Together I feel like these two vacuums take up about the same floor space as the old Miele and I don’t have to worry about any vacuum hoses falling over and attacking me or my limited laundry room floor space. They still cost at least 300CHF less than a standard Dyson vacuum would, which leaves us more in our budget for getting a nice robot vacuum. Three vacuums for the price of one Dyson that give me the ability to vacuum my floors, hand hold and have a robot do it for me too? Yes, please.

When we move we are looking into buying a robot vacuum to clean our floors while we are at work, but for now I’m really happy to have a new vacuum and a handheld. Maybe, just maybe… having two vacuums will spur us to hoover a bit more than we normally do. 🙂

…as for the old Miele, we’ll be moving it to the cellar in the new place where our laundry room will be so that we can use it for cleanup down there from time to time. (But it better keep out of my way… or else!)

How many vacuums do you have?

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Neubau Progress: II

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After we first visited in March and went through all that crazy contract stuff in April, the long waiting game began. It would be over a year before our flat was done, but it was also the time we started making our “changes” to make the place ours. Kay’s father told us to budget 10-15% of the buying price (yikes!) for all of our additions, but we decided to limit ourselves to a much lower percentage and cap changes to 15k.

When we entered into the contract the “rohbau” (structural foundation) phase was already finished. The electrical and kitchen appliance work was almost done too, which meant if we wanted to make any big changes we had to act fast.

During our visit in June, all the beams were off and they had these structural supports in place in the living room:

Looking out to the left you can see our huge terrace. (Insert happy grin!)

The second bedroom isn’t enormous, so I’m already plotting how to get two desks, bookcases and a guest bed in there.

As it turns out, by the time we got around to asking about it, it seemed like all the kitchen appliance and electrical work was actually finished. That meant that they had already drilled and installed tubing for our electrical tubes for our outlets, oven, refrigerator and pipes for the sink and bathrooms.

This meant that we had to be pretty happy with how the kitchen was laid out, because there would be no affordable way to change it at this point. See those purple tubes? They are for the stove. I’ll just have to be at peace with it in the corner, but that wasn’t really on my list of worries. I was more concerned about what was going on in the bathrooms…

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Neubau Progress: I

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I should have shared all these pictures a while ago, but I’ve taken my sweet time doing it. I mean, I was busy writing weddingbee recaps when I took these last March!

We cheated a little during our first inspection and just went to some other flats in the same row that already had the wooden beams taken down so that we could get an idea of the true height of the ceiling.

I was standing next to the kitchen entrance on the left, the hallway to the door was to the right and closer in the foreground to the right is the hallway to the bathroom/bedroom. If you notice, this particular flat doesn’t have the built in wardrobes behind that big concrete pillar on the right. The plan would look like this without the built in wardrobe:

Was that big block with all the wiring really necessary to put there in the middle instead of by one of the side walls or up inside the réduit? If that could be somewhere else, there would have been a lot more layout possibilities with the flat. I mean, yeah it’s sort of a handy donut hole for wiring (there are other holes in the kitchen and the bathrooms) but I feel like they could have planned it a little better. The thing about hallways here is that you really pay a premium for that extra floorspace, but you can’t utilize the space for tables or sofas. It’s more “walking area” than “living area”.

Taking away the built in wardrobes does open up the space a lot, but to store coats, shoes and other things you would have to buy or build some storage next to the door. We never had a coat closet in either of the flats we’ve lived in together and I’ve never had one in the flat I lived in alone, so we are both looking forward to having a place to store all our winter and summer coats. Between the two of us we really have a lot of ski jackets, trekking jackets, etc, and now they are all piled up on a poor coat stand by the door and half are shoved under the attic roof in the laundry area.

Second bedroom. Those floor to ceiling windows will be nice!

Looking out our bedroom windows.

Standing in the master bath where the tub will eventually be. I’m obviously really excited about showering here someday. Kay thought the master bath is small, but I think it looks huge, don’t you?

Another view from the living room into the kitchen.

When we viewed the flat without the wooden beams up, Kay still thought it looked overall small, but I was happy with the size. I seem to have better spacial skills (whereas he wins with directional skills) and I was happy with how large it is. The bedrooms are not enormous, but the living room is huge for us and the kitchen will be a big upgrade.

Theoretically we could  have a baby here if forced to and it should be large enough that we can set up some kind of guest room. This makes it OK in my book!

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