5 The Workforce, all the firms who built my house

I shall make a point of referring by name to all the firms who have worked for me. This is not so much for advertising purposes, although if it does serve to get a good firm more business, then that's great. No-one is paying me to mention them. I just happen to think good workmanship deserves appreciation.

They were an impressive team and I owe them gratitude for creating not a mere house but a unique home in which it is a delight to live. After all the work had been completed, bar a variety of last details, I held a house-warming party and "unveiled" a stone plaque on the front base dedicated to the main contracting firms, while in the entrance hall I hung a framed collage of every single craftsman's name or logo. My intention was not just to say thank you but also and chiefly to make sure that future generations, after real craftsmen have disappeared, are reminded of their work. Nobody had done that sort of thing before and it caused a good deal of comment, but the sight of Jens Götze, the plumber, (who is not given to sentimentality), bending down to show the plaque to his small son, was sufficient confirmation.

Note: Building a house obviously involves many different areas of expertise. I have given the German job titles, which may or may not tally with similar English job descriptions.
And P.S.: Exactly three years after I moved in in June 2006, I can say truthfully that every piece of workmanship in my house has lived up to expectations. Everything functions as it should and none of the fearsome hurricanes has so much as rattled any of the handmade roof tiles, though several buildings in the street lost quite a number of their shallower modern tiles. Now there's a subject I should like to know more about - the aerodynamics of pantiles.

Translation: Architect or Construction Engineer (literal translation)

Harald Kellner's work is specifically civil engineering and not architecture. That is, the firm does construction both above and below ground and hydraulic engineering. They were recommended to me by my estate agent and at the time I write this, September 2007, the engineer in charge of above-ground building, Dietmar Frohn, has just completed a second house for me and has now set up in business on his own. His job is not only to supervise the actual work, but also, and mainly, to guide me through every aspect of the entire process, including drawing up all the plans, handling the financial side, negotiating with the firms and checking their bills as they come in, sorting out any problems and making sure that I understand all the technical jargon. I so enjoyed the fascinating process of building my first house that I asked him straight away to undertake the next, and this, I feel, says it all.

After the end of the German Democratic Republic the 1990s saw a surge of very necessary renovation, and one began to see historic houses return to former splendour. Before taking on this firm of engineers I had a look at other examples of their work, which included quite a variety of buildings, some new, some restoration jobs, and several public buildings, such as those shown below:

Translation: General Builder (literal translation)

Following the advice of the engineers I hired a general builder to take on most of the work. His name was EckhartVogler and his men were a delight to have on the site. How often had I been irritated by noisy and offhand workmen in England. Vogler's men were polite, quiet (no radios running all day), absolutely punctual, tidy and helpful. I spent some of every day on site watching and photographing the progress and in the course of about nine months got to know them pretty well. The foreman, Roland Goett, nicknamed Kalle, had been with the firm for years, needed no telling what to do and came up with lots of good ideas and useful improvements. He has a very dry sense of humour and is a master of understatement, particularly when dealing with his boss, who can be excitable at times under pressure of too many concurrent building sites, but who evidently treats his men well. Many of them have worked for him since their apprenticeship, and he addresses them all by affectionate-sounding nicknames. When I commented to Dietmar Frohn on how well the builders performed he seemed mildly surprised and assured me this was not at all unusual.

Eckhart Vogler's contract covered not only the raw building but also the timber-frame facade, roofing, internal plastering, external rendering and painting, tiling and most of the flooring. I chose to enter separate contracts with other firms whom I had already got to know or who were recommended to me for all the plumbing, sanitary and heating work, the electrical work and, most importantly, all the windows and internal carpentry. After the long planning period building actually started in September and the roof was on just before Christmas. The long winter of 2005-2006, with temperatures down to -15 C, slowed up the internal plastering and the laying of underfloor heating by about two weeks. Dietmar Frohn, in charge of managing the entire works, became very popular with the workforce for his firm but tactful handling. He was on site daily, sometimes several times, always with his mobile ready to chase anyone who threatened to cause delays.

Translation: Bricklayer

On both my houses Poroton hollow core bricks were used. They are quick to lay and provide plenty of insulation with their vertical honeycomb interior. They dove-tail into each other sideways and have only a very thin layer of mortar on the horizontal surfaces. In fact the process looks a bit like Lego. Various firms manufacture them. Mine were from Wienerberger who produce a similar brick for the UK called Porotherm. Having been through several winters I can say confidently that the house feels cosy and the air seems to contain enough moisture to discourage catching colds. This looks like advertising but it's just my attempt to put in a word for brick building.

The front wall of the house required a different wall construction the fit in with the timber frame. The sections between the woodwork were closed with white porous conrete blocks (called AAC - autoclaved aerated concrete, I think), but as the wall thickness was determined by the thickness of the timber this would have left an insulation problem on the north side of the building - not good. The solution was to attach polystyrene 2 cm thick, then wood wool boards of the same thickness with net reinforcement to hold the plaster. And it certainly seems to work.

The bricklayers, three of them most of the time, were keen, friendly, efficient and hard-working. They got to work by 7 every morning and finished at 4, with a half-hour break at 1. No sitting around and no alcohol on site, though they were pleased to get a crate of beer for after work. The foreman wasn't flummoxed by any of the odd situations my crooked site presented, squeezed in between ancient timber-frame buildings each side. As mine grew I was able to watch from the attic of my son's house next door and held my breath at the sight of the men perching on the outer edge of the top storey as the floor sections were laid.

Translation: (rough) carpenter, who does the timber frame and roof construction

The carpenter was to be the one responsible for, among other things, the all-important half-timbered front, designed to fit in with the historic surroundings. The firm of Frank Jonuscheit, sub-contracted to Vogler, took a bit of persuading to use old timber. Hidden nails in old beams can ruin expensive tools and take longer to work on. This is where the influence of a firm and diplomatic construction manager such as Engineer Dietmar Frohn can work miracles. He knew Frank Jonuscheit, as he knew nearly all the firms involved from having worked with them before, and just as it seemed we had a bit of a clash developing a phone call from Frohn settled the problem. Thanks to Roland Lange, who made my lead-glazed windows, some fine old oak beams were found (he collects all sorts of useful and historic bits and pieces). They were enough to create half the façade and for the rest, in the upper storeys, we used pine. Now that it has all been stained dark brown the difference hardly shows.

Frank Jonuscheit, sensing my interest in traditional methods of carpentry, invited me to watch the men putting the frame together in his workshop. His master carpenters did an impressive job, with mortise and tenon and pegs, one frame for each floor. The old oak beams on ground floor level, where one can get close enough to see the details, show good traditional joints and even some of the original carpenters' marks, used for indicating the position of each piece.

It was the end of a dark November day before the last frame was hoisted into place.

A good deal of thought was given to the method of attaching the timber framed façade to the concrete floors which would avoid leaving a cold bridge. The solution, which seems to work well, was to have about half a metre of beam extending from the outer frame to join onto the concrete slabs with metal brackets.

The roof construction was difficult, see 3 Plans on Paper even with the clever CAD software used here in Germany. Whenever I wasn't going to be in someone's way I clambered about with my small camera taking inexpert shots of what seemed to be the interesting bits. All that pinewood at different angles looked very similar to the roof construction of my son's house next door which dates from the mid-seventeenth century.

Not only did the roof need lots of timber, but also the balcony on the south side, with its nicely curved beam heads, all from Jonuscheit.

Translation: Roofer

The roofers were sub-contracted to the general builder, so that I had not met them until we reached their stage of the work. Meanwhile my son and a friend were busy removing all the hand-made tiles from an old barn which was due to be demolished, transporting them in my son's Wartburg and stacking them in the garden at the back of his house next door to mine. (The Wartburg - see photo, for those unfamiliar, was the upmarket saloon car produced in the German Democratic Republic.)

The purpose of this exercise was to make sure that the street side of my house fitted nicely and above all historically into the landscape of old roofs, which sadly are gradually being redecked with rather uniform modern red tiles. The south side away from the street and not easily seen had to have modern tiles because it took more of a battering from south-westerly storms.

Steinbrecher, the roofer, had some reservations about using the old tiles. They are not uniform and have to be laid carefully so that they fit together in the way their one-time makers intended, but so far they have survived several equinoctial storms without shifting. By the time the roof timbers were in place and we had had the topping-out party it was Christmas week and turning into a hard winter. The tiles were laid just in time before some really bad weather set in causing hold-ups throughout the building trade.

If one wants to get a good view of the roof one has to climb the stairs to the top of the Rabenturm (Ravens' Tower) opposite. The nice guardians of that ancient building got quite used to me popping in with the camera every time the house grew a bit. The view up there is breathtaking - all those mediaeval towers and steep-pitched roofs, steep because they provided valuable storage space and presumably also because the snow slides down them faster. Most have little railings along the edge to stop heavy junks of snow and ice falling lethally onto passers-by.

Translation: Plasterer

Eckhart Vogler, the builder, has excellent plasterers. The two who came to do the interior and exterior plasterwork, Hartmut Hochheim and Bernhard Schmidt, have been with Vogler for years and are known for their supersmooth surfaces, so smooth, in fact, that I very soon decided there would be no need for wallpaper. The universal use of woodchip, or ingrain, paper - it is everybody's cheap and easy solution here, too - was not going to be my choice anyway. I wanted a cleanable plain creamy white background on which to hang the eccentric collection of prints and watercolours left to me by sundry members of the family. It was the right decision, as it proved, because any marks can simply be wiped off or painted over, when grandchildren slide down the stairs, for instance, or the vacuum-cleaner scrapes a corner.

The actual preparation for plastering inside and later outside took about half as long as applying the plaster itself. All corners, window and door openings were strengthened by adding galvanised mesh beads, and guide rails fixed at intervals vertically along the interior walls down which the plasterer ran his smoothing tool (can't find an English equivalent). The interior plaster is a mixture of gypsum and lime and sprayed on in a single layer. The exterior plaster consists of a thermal insulating render containing expanded polystyrene plus a final coat of mineral-based render.

Translation: Plumber

The whole area of the plot being only 67 sq.m. there wasn't going to be a lot of room for radiators. All the wall space in the small rooms would be needed for furniture. So, despite a lot of warnings about getting varicose veins, hot feet and dust everywhere, I chose underfloor heating. None of the dreaded disadvantages has occurred and the house was nice and warm all winter. It runs on a very economical gas-fired boiler and the bills have been less than average, no thanks to the monopolistic suppliers in Germany, however. We were all set up to drill for geothermal energy, which is becoming very much the thing, but either the city authorities, or maybe the local energy firms, fearing to lose custom, put a stop to this. I never did get a satisfactory explanation.

The heating engineers, Jens Götze and his technician Holm Günther, dealt with all the heating and sanitary arrangements without a single hitch, or none that I noticed. This being a very hard water area I got them to install a water softening system. It works with salt and switches itself on and off at intervals during the day, leaving the water soft enough not to cause chalk deposits on taps and sinks but still hard enough not to spoil one's cup of tea, and, of course, saving noticeably on washing powder, soap and shampoo.

Translation: screed layer

The screed layer Egbert Fuchs was in and out of the building so quickly that I only got to know him at the house-warming party. The screed had to harden for two weeks before further interior work could proceed and I missed the opportunity to get any photos, plus the fact that by then one was taking the screed rather for granted and beginning to plan the floorings. So aplogies to Egbert Fuchs, Fox by name and somehow rather like a humorous fox in type. His work is absolutely crucial and if it is properly done, as it was, it never gets noticed. All my different floorings owe their smoothness to him, and the underfloor heating might have shown faults if he hadn't so skillfully poured the screed over all those pipes and tubes.

Translation: Carpenter/joiner

The individuality of something handmade is immensely reassuring. It is akin to the feeling one gets from old family treasures such as grandfather's old pipe or a great aunt's sampler - a feeling of belonging and of security. A house is all too often a mass-produced box made up of ready-made bits from a builder's supplier. Muehlhausen has a great many old houses full of artefacts of wood and metal that have been preserved, less by intent, more through neglect or simple lack of available replacements. Thank goodness, as it happens.

A door, for instance, could be a DIY-store item or a piece of a carpenter's handiwork from two hundred years ago, maybe a bit knocked about, probably hiding its timber under several coats of paint, but planed and jointed at a workbench, given the soft edges and slight inequalities that no machine would achieve, and maybe with beautiful curved iron hinges. Compare these two bedroom doors:

Or these two glazed doors, one from 1910 and one from a present-day catalogue:

And this one is roughly three hundred years old:

All the various old doors needed restoration by Detlef Tomczyk of the firm Holz & Dekor and his assistants. Restoring items in wood is something they do splendidly and their workshop is full of a variety of old doors, windows, cupboards and tables etc. waiting for new homes. Tomczyk has a way of treating them which does not attempt to make them look perfect but leaves evidence of previous craftsmen's workings. This makes things come alive. One never gets tired of looking at them and wondering about all the craftsmen who must have worked on them. It is especially good to know that all the restored items are local, and it looks as if people are beginning to save rather than throw away.

The front door of my house actually came from a house further down the same street some years back, again saved from the skip. It is not in the least like any door you might see in England. Mühlhausen's doors have a long history and attract lots of photographers. More later on them.

Detlef Tomczyk and his friend Roland Lange were together responsible for all the windows. The final result is to my mind quite magnificent. From the start Roland Lange wanted to recreate the old sliding windows that used to be common in Mühlhausen. He had rescued a huge store of old window glass from buildings being demolished and learnt how to create the lead cames for holding small panes in place. The plan was to have double windows for warmth, using eighteenth-century glass on the outside so as to achieve that wonderful reflection you get when light shines onto the slightly wavy surface. Tomczyk built oak frames for the outer sliding windows in the front of the house, and pine frames for casement windows inside.

Much as I would have liked to preserve some of the oddities of the little old house, for example its low ceilings (I am about 1.65 m or 5 foot four inches) regulations for new buildings require a minimum height of 2.40 metres. And for that reason the house grew amazingly. Three main flights of stairs from ground floor to second floor also fell to Holz and Dekor who sub-contracted another local firm well known for its excellent stairs, Eberhard Bäthe. They built me strong staircases entirely of local beechwood and incorporated into the bottom flight the original stairpost from the little old house (one of the few items we were able to re-use) as well as some fine Baroque balusters which my son saved from being thrown into a skip.

It is not usual to cover one's stairs with carpeting here, which is why it is worth building them in really beautiful wood. After much discussion we decided to have the bottom flight and all the other woodwork on the ground floor stained dark to match the fine curved Baroque step which leads up to my study above the mediaeval cellar. The other two flights retained their golden beech colour and give the upper floors a warm sunshiny look. I find I frequently have an urge to stroke the long, smooth banister rail and pat each of the posts in passing. One gets used to climbing stairs in this house, 45 steps in all, and to the enjoyment of running all the way down them from top to bottom. And not one of the steps creaks or squeaks.

Translation: Electrician

The two brothers who installed the electrical system were recommended by a friend who had worked with them on various building sites. They had three stages of work, first laying empty cables through each conrete floor as it was laid, then coming back to set the socket holes and cable channels in the walls of each room, and finally, once the power supply was connected at street level, to install the various fitments the meter and the circuit breaker panel.

The last turned out to be a large metal cupboard regulation size 90x50x20 cm intended to provide for future high-tec expansion. When first installed in the entrance hall, it really didn't blend with the surrounding historic bits and pieces and blocked the view of the fine travertine cellar arch. We evidently had a communication problem. The Mönners were used to working on sites where the owner of the individual house was not consulted, whereas I had very little knowledge of electrical things either British or German. The result was that they had to be called back to make several adjustments as well as moving the great big circuit breaker cupboard to a less visible position. Disconnecting all the wiring was not fun, apparently, and they charged me for it.

Apart from these electrical hitches all my wishes were carried out and the house has an ample supply of sockets just where one needs them, plus tv and telephone sockets in all the main rooms. Ironically I haven't actually got a television set. Anything I want to see comes over the internet and building houses turns out to be much more exciting. What caused some surprise was my insistence on emergency lighting over the staircases. "Never have power failures here!" they assured me. "Bet you will," I replied, thinking of England and the combined effect of storms and privatisation. Sure enough along came just that sort of storm and out went all the lights except over the stairs, even without privatisation (yet).

Translation: Tiler

As the house had six different rooms to be tiled as well as an entrance hall due to have valuable travertine flagstones a very good tiler had to be found. Frank Born was highly recommended as having trained with a well-known local master. He now has his own business and is much in demand. His work is immaculate and he is extremely pleasant to deal with, one of the majority of firms who have worked on my two sites who see solutions, not problems.

As a general comment on relations with workmen I have to say that only one of the twenty-odd firms who have worked for me showed that infuriating and very counter-productive habit of grumbling on site. In the UK one got to expect it unless dealing with small local firms. Here most of the firms are small and keen to develop good relations with clients. But one, strangely enough a small firm trying to restart its business, became known for beginning every work session with grumbles about supposed faults in the work of others and endless excuses and prevarications regarding its own work. It was an instructive example of how to destroy that positive-thinking teamwork on a building site that is otherwise typical here.

Translation: Flooring fitter

All the different floorings apart from tiles were laid by the same firm from Erfurt, the Gerd Rahnfeld GmbH, the only non-local firm, but with strong local connections. Unemployment in the area round Mühlhausen was about 18% at the time we started building and I was keen to employ local firms. It is now as I write in October 2007 down to around 12%, but the building industry is still struggling because there are few people who can afford to build and the majority still rent their accommodation.

Underfloor heating needs to be covered by flooring that conducts heat well. I looked at all sorts of possibilities and talked to lots of people who had the same kind of heating system. Wall to wall carpet won't do and was not something I wanted. I had several Afghan rugs and thought they ought to be on attractive wooden floors, so I chose oak parquet for sitting-room, study and all landings, not the thick herring-bone sort you see in older houses but 2.5 cm thick and backed so that it can be laid in strips. It gleams rather than shines with an attractive warm colour and is pleasant to walk on. Stiletto heels won't be allowed into the house and heavy furniture needs those little plastic cups under the feet to avoid denting. No strenuous polishing is required, just a wipe over with a liquid containing natural wax.

In fact all my floors are easy-care. The kitchen and workroom have light beige linoleum. After living in a flat with a tiled kitchen I was determined not to make that mistake in my own house. Tiled floors may be nice to wash, but they get very slippery, are hard and tiring under foot and fatal if anything gets accidentally dropped on them. The three bedrooms have light brown cork tiles with a natural pattern. Cork is warm under foot even without heating and therefore also good for the grandchildren who like to do most things sitting on the floor in the room with a balcony which is actually more of a playroom than a bedroom. The heating cupboard, a tiny room under the roof, has laminate flooring, because it contains awkward corners and needs bits cut out round the various pipes, something nice Herr Beutling managed with impressive neatness.

Translation: Painter and Decorator

Ingolf Haase chose his logo because the German word for rabbit is Hase and Bugs Bunny is as well known here as in the English-speaking world. Herr Haase became quite a friend while working on my house. His advice on colours was sound and he took enormous trouble painting samples onto the render and the woodwork. I was very lucky to have him back the following year to do all the painting on my second house.

The local conservation man felt it was his duty to prevent me doing anything unsuited to what he considered the appropriate traditional inner-city colour-scheme, though the city, he said, was unfortunately unable to provide any funding. (Not that I wanted any, sensing that it probably went with a lot more interference.) We actually ended up agreeing on all the exterior paintwork except the beam heads under the sills for which, after endless fruitless discussions about how they really ought to have all manner of contrast colours I certainly didn't want, I chose Englisch Rot, English red, and Herr Haase applied it before we wasted any more time (and money) on the matter. The reaction was disapproving but by then it was too late.

Not that I'm normally bolshie, especially not when it comes to conservation matters. However, since my second building project within the old city centre, where I was ordered to avoid any attempt to suit my new house to the surrounding buildings, ie. in exact contradiction of all the instructions given me for my first house, I have learnt that there is no consistency in conservation policy here. Others have had similar experiences. Probably that accounts for some of the really unsuitable houses that have appeared right next to historic monuments. What a shame in this beautiful place!

Translation: Stonemason

Two stonemasons were involved in my house in two totally different ways:

Thomas Jakobi, one of the youngest master stonemasons in Germany when he qualified, is the son of a local funeral director, suitably enough. I got to know him because he has been busy restoring a beautiful old house next to the Marienkirche just down the street from my house, and I had been watching his progress with much interest and feeling envious at not being able to carry out restoration work with my own hands. Thomas Jakobi has worked on both the big churches in Mühlhausen, the Marienkirche and the Divi Blasii Kirche, where restoration has been going on for several years and is still not finished. There isn't much he couldn't tell you about carving travertine or shell limestone, both of which are quarried locally.

The problem of creating a suitable entrance to my mediaeval vaulted cellar was discussed. The stone steps were still intact but I needed an arched doorway so as to be able to incorporate a pair of arch-shaped old pine wood doors which my son had rescued from somewhere. Thomas Jakobi suggested a stone arch and built me a fine one in travertine, adding, at my request, his own mason's mark.

He also kindly reset the stone wall beside the cellar steps, and Detlef Tomczyk, the carpenter responsible for my doors and windows, constructed a beautiful pair of thick trap doors out of ash wood to close off the top of the cellar steps.

Jens Ackermann and his father Achim have their workshop in Langula, just outside Mühlhausen, in one of those attractive old farm complexes directly on the main street. Jens Ackermann trained in Mühlhausen along with several others of his generation in the city stonemasons' yard before going to work for his father. In 2002 he took over the firm which now goes by the name Steinmetz Jens Ackermann .

When I proposed adding some form of acknowledgment for the craftmanship that went into building my house, Dietmar Frohn, who knew of Ackermann's work on a commemorative plaque for one of the main churches in Mühlhau sen, suggested we drive over to Langula and discuss the idea. Before long we had agreed on the wording, 122 letters in Antiqua script, to be cut into a slab of shell limestone and set into the travertine stone base of the building, the limestone being chosen to form a contrast.

In the back of my mind must have been the mediaeval masons' marks to be seen in the walls of churches here. It seemed a pity that nowadays the hard work of so many men should remain anonymous. Of course it was also a kind of advertising, but in good taste, I think. It attracts a great deal of interest and I enjoy watching people stop outside my house and comment.