The garden concepts

Harrie came around last Saturday with three concepts he had thought up for the garden:

The order as shown is the order he presented them and like all good artists, he had named all three of them. From left to right: F&J island, stairway to heaven and levels. Click on a picture to see a larger version.

Since the garden is long and small and located on the north east, it was not that easy to come up with a solution, but we thought he did really well... He explained the process he went through to come up with each one of the concepts and the ideas behind it.

He told us to think about it for a few days before we took a decision on the final concept that we'd like before he'd start on the definitive plan. There was no need though, since we both like the third concept he presented best. It only needed to be renamed, so from now on we'd like to call it F&J levels. Apparently the third idea was his first one! The idea is that there are two levels in the garden; your eyes follow the way the big concrete tiles are laid and the plants need to be able to do well with little direct sunlight. We thought the lay-out was great for a garden party and already started to imagine the way people would group together in the different sections.

Next step after the final plan, with details and plants in it, is to find a good gardener to execute it. We have some thoughts on the execution as well! We are really happy with the way Harrie talked us through the process and also with the final concepts. Wish all things went so smoothly....

Sea bream in a salt crust

Sundays are the days for croissants and coffee, long lazy brunches and nice slow cooked dinners. Last night I thought I'd break in the Jamie Oliver in Italy cookbook, as pictured in the last post and make some salt crusted seam bream. The little chisel and hammer to free them of their crust always look great in restaurants, but two whole fish and a kilo of sea salt look a bit daunting when uncooked.

So when Jonny was updating his parents on the status of the house, I started on the bream. It was a matter of stuffing the bream with a whole load of fresh herbs and lemon and then placing them on a bed of salt, mixed with a beaten egg, some lemon and fennel seeds. If only my salt had looked a bit more like wet sand, it would have come out perfect. But I overdid the water splashing, so it looked more like a mud pool after a tropical rain storm. In the end, it didn't really matter, since water has the positive quality of being heavier than salt and sinking to the bottom of the dish. It tasted nice and that is what matters!

Furthermore, the weekend was a house-weekend, more on that later.....

Happy birthday Jonathan!

For a pre-birthday dinner we went to restaurant PUCK (www.puckfoodandwines.nl) for some pre-birthday food and fun with Sander and Alexandra. Food was okay, service was typically Dutch, but the company was very good. We compared notes with our guests on all the constructial work and interior design (they just bought a house in de Pijp in Amsterdam), talking it through to the wee hours of the morning. Such a project, building and decorating a house... They gave us the good tip of the shop Nijhof in Soest, which apparently sells everything, from second-hand tiles (toilet?) to posh fittings for the bathroom. Now on our agenda to visit next week!

This morning we had a hearty birthday breakfast, not a fry-up, but a posh organic smoked salmon on toasted muffins with hollandaise sauce. Yummie! Sounds like something you could put on your restaurant menu without any problems! If we complete this house project well, maybe a B&B could be our next one. Until then, our friends and family will be welcome chezcorcutt in grey The Hague! And maybe you will even get some home-made pasta, since Sandrex got us a pasta machine for our birthdays. What a fabulous present, we had been wanting to get one for a long time! Now Jonny can try all the 'Jamie in Italy' recipes from the book Sinterklaas gave him last year. Oh and me... for now, will start with pasta vongole for the first time. Special request of the birthday boy....

No load bearing walls?

Flo and I popped 'round the house after work today; as you can see from the picture below, a fair amount of work has already been done.

This used to be the kitchen, but will ultimately become our new living room. Below is a picture of our kitchen and dining room; you can see that the builders have been busy removing the floor, revealing the cement ceiling of the cellar.

The building contractor is pretty confident that non of the internal walls are load bearing. He's already gone ahead and taken out all of the walls upstairs, as you can see below. This will become our bedroom and bathroom.

If it does indeed turn out that non of the remaining walls are load bearing, then the renovation plan gets a real boost, since we'll no longer be constrained with a 6 week wait for the council to approve our plans. We'd better get a move on with planning the interior... seems we'll be busy this weekend.

Mysterious Valentine rendezvous

Following on from my e-Valentine card, I arrived at the new house, which was dimly lit from the inside. As I approached the front door, a broad smile crossed my face as I was confronted by a large display of candles, most noteably arranged in the shape of a large heart!

The candles led a trail towards the back of the house, where I stumbled across an attractive female bearing a bottle of champagne and a pizza in the shape of a heart. As I approached the pretty girlie I began to recognise her face... it was Flo! 

(De)Construction begins...

The builders started work yesterday, removing ceilings, radiators, bits of wall, floors... they're scheduled to take 2 weeks before they've exhausted all the work that can be done prior to receiving permission from the council to knock down some of the load bearing walls.

We managed to get rid of the kitchen without having to pay the builders to remove it. We placed an add on www.marktplaats.nl and within 10 minutes we had an email from a lady wanting the kitchen, no doubt tempted by the word "free". However, we ended up giving the kitchen away to a friend of the building contractor, more due to convenience than anything.

We also placed an add on Markt Plaats to sell the lights in the front room and Flo's managed to negotiate on these too. Next up for sale are some wash basins!

We're still waiting to hear back from the structural engineer for his concept designs for removing the load bearing walls. Hopefully, these should be completed before the end of this week, since this is the critical path task at the moment; it is anticipated to take 6 weeks to get approval from the local council to knock out the load bearing walls.

Tonight I'm meeting my secret admirer at the house; I received an e-Valentine's card asking to meet me there. I wonder who it is...?

Some history behind our new house

One of the initial things we fell for in the house was the Jugendstil facade, it obviously also being the first thing we saw... However, all the art history in school really didn't pay off and I kept forgetting what era it was, let alone the name. So we decided to look it up last night.

Jugendstil is defined as a style of architecture or decorative art similar to the French Art Nouveau. Art Nouveau advocated the use of highly-stylized nature as the source of inspiration and expanded the "natural" repertoire to embrace seaweed, grasses, and insects. Correspondingly organic forms, curved lines, especially floral or vegetal, and the like, were used. Art Nouveau did not negate the machine, as other movements such as the Arts and Crafts Movement, but used it to an advantage. For sculpture the principle materials employed were glass and wrought iron, leading to sculpturesque quality even in architecture (Source: Wikipedia).

Interesting! We are slowly moving towards the idea of incorporating some Jugendstil elements on the inside of the house as well. Just have to find some original stuff that we can re-use. We are getting more and more excited about this house!

Googling, we also discovered a link to a historic site about Den Haag. And our house also featured in there (http://historie.denhaag.org/anvov2.htm), with the facade being a fine example of Jugendstil! It is so nice to have a house with history! :-)

Exciting discoveries in the new house

On Saturday we popped 'round the new house to let the building contractor in, so that he could pull up some floor boards to see what sort of beams are supporting the house in the back... seems there's loads of room in the floor for running the plumbing etc.

Anyway, while looking around the house, we noticed that there is indeed a pathway running along the back of the gardens in our street, as you can just about make out in the picture below.


On further investigation, there is indeed access to the path a bit further down the street (see below). However, there's a locked gate preventing unauthorised entry, so we just need to track down a key, I'm guessing from the local council. Oh, and of course we'd need to knock a hole in the wall at the back of the garden and install a gate, so we need to decide if we can afford it and whether there's any value in doing it (i.e. would we actually use it?).


We've also discovered that there's an original ornately plastered ceiling above the false ceiling that's currently hanging in the front of the house. We've also found an original tall arch that's been hidden by another false ceiling, which is just crying out to be made into a feature in the house! I've not been able to get a good picture of it, since it's pretty well hidden, but as soon as the ceiling gets removed I should be able to get some decent shots.

Both Flo and I are getting increasingly excited with the house; it seems the more we probe the more exciting little things we uncover about this old house!

Next step is to try and sell the old kitchen, a couple of toilet/bathroom sinks and a load of fairy lights... so if you know anyone or any fairy who needs them please let us know!

We want to be in a magazine!

The brief to the designer was that we wanted to be in a magazine with our new house. His own house featured in VT Wonen Magazine and that is also how we got in touch with him. He seems pretty confident that our good taste will carry us far.... Although he did mention they don't pay for the pictures.

It seems everybody involved in the house project is enthousiastic and very keen to start. Things are looking good chezcorcutt!

Preparations on the new house begin...

Today we met up at the new house with the designer, the building contractor and the structural engineer... and spent the first hour chatting and drinking coffee. A good sign of things to come; at least we all get on!

Looks like knocking down walls is going to be feasible, but there's going to be at least a 6 week wait while we submit paperwork and calculations to the council for approval; it could take as long as 12 weeks to get approved! But the important thing is that it's all feasible and so our original designs are looking good to base our plans upon.

Next steps are finalising the floor plan, deciding how we're going to support the wall that we're knocking through and what floors and doors we want! We're going to try and sell the kitchen that's currently fitted and we already have some nice ideas that will make the house a bit more novel. Looks like the kitchen is going to be a bit different to the original plan too.

Flo and I are both pretty keen to get started!

Boris very content with news of forthcoming move

In response to Boika, her brother Boris mentioned he was very excited with the news of the move to Anna Paulownastraat. "There is a lot more space to chase Boika around", he was reported as saying. Furthermore, he said to be looking forward to the prospect of having a proper garden. Although, if he could please have a say, no more mirrors on the garden wall this time. It does NOT make the garden look bigger....

Boika disgruntled with news of move

Boika, arguaby the prettiest kitty in Den Haag, was clearly upset when she heard news of a move to Anna Paulownastraat. "I'm very happy where I am", Boika was quoted as saying early today. "There's plenty supply of biscuits and it's very warm here on top of the radiator".

Only time will tell, but Boika is not afraid of "taking this all the way to the kitty unions". "I've not even been invited to negotiation talks" complained Boika this evening. 

Jonny and Flo are home owners!

Today we visited the notary to sign over the house and to pay lots of money! But now it's official... we have our own house. To celebrate, we just couldn't resist popping into the shops to purchase a bottle of champaign so that we could toast together. As you can see, even Jesus gave his blessing.

Kitchen shopping

We drove over to Rotterdam at the weekend, primarily to shop for some clothes, but we popped into Kookpunt as we were passing. Turns out we got a few ideas for the new house; we popped into the coffee shop and saw the kitchen they have in there.

It's more the form of the kitchen than anything. We're starting to lean towards the idea of the wall since it offers quite a few practical advantages to the previous ideas that we had.

As can be seen from the picture above, there's space for fitting lighting and electrical points on the kitchen side of the wall and it feels a little more enclosed.

Like I said, it's more the form of the kitchen than the style; I'm not a huge fan of the mosaic tiling. However, we saw this riveted aluminium finish and we both like copper too, although this may prove to be a bit expensive!

We also discovered the M-System at Kookpunt for the kitchen units. We like the way that they don't look fitted and that it should be simple enough to fit them into a custom made "space". They also look quite industrial, but should still turn out to be far cheaper than getting an off the shelf fitted kitchen. Just have to see if we can fit our own surface to them.

So things are progressing...