Picked up some goodies from the post office today:
For now it's stored in our temporary apartment, awaiting installation...
Meanwhile, back in ap. 123, inspection is blocked due to new tiles in the entrance - so we will remain curious until Monday evening.
Another status meeting this morning, but not much to report. Unfortunately the final varnish on the floor was put on as late as Sunday morning, which meant that Monday and Tuesday nothing was happening except the varnish drying properly. And it doesn't seem to be any time to spare until we have to start moving back, in just a little over a week, so losing those days makes us a bit worried.
Yesterday they covered up the floor to protect it from paint and dirt, and all the stuff stored in the kitchen has been removed.
Talking of kitchen - some new stuff has arrived and is currently occupying the middle of the living room:
But for now, the workers are about to lay tiles on the floor in the entrance and the ktichen - and to start painting the walls!
We still haven't decided on which color (of blue) for our bedroom, but we'll be checking out another test color asap and hopefully it'll be the right one!
... these last two weeks.
It took well over a week to install the mosaic parquet, and when done this Tuesday it looked pretty much like this: 
The rest of this week a guy was polishing it, and yesterday he was done laying lacquer on it. On today's inspection we were very pleased to see that the result is a beautiful and elegant floor!!
For the following week the plan is to paint (all?) the walls, - and to make the kitchen look slightly better than it does now...
Another week has gone by, and we've seen quite some progress these days.
As far as I can tell, the workers are finished painting the roof white. (Or maybe it's just the primer??)
Anyway, there seem to be a lot more left to paint...
They have also painted some more test colors, as we've decided we want something different than white in the second bedroom. Technically it's not exactly a color - we're going for a shade of gray. Probably the one to the right in this picture - the darkest one, called "Poppy Seed", to contrast white furniture. We hope it won't be too dark...!
A new detail we noticed two days ago was that they had heightened the niche floor for The Wife's Buddhist altar.
Something else we noticed on Thursday was that they were getting ready to install the mosaic parquet...
... and after yesterday they we're well on their way with the first room! :-)
Looks like this is "ceiling molding week". Last night we saw they had began mounting ceiling moldings in the new bedroom, and already today they've done several more stretches. 
Here's a half-finished corner in the living room. By the way - the cable sticking out of the cable gate there is for one of the satellite speakers.
This other picture hopefully shows the details of the ceiling molding a little better. 
(From another corner in the living room, - again with a speaker cable sticking out.)
We're quite content with how they look. It's been so long since we chose them, but it's fun to finally see it done. Such details really do improve the overall look a lot.
Earlier this week the real estate agent for the apartment we're renting called to inform us that it's finally sold! In this tough market it took a couple of months, but finally we no longer have to shine it up every other Sunday for a showing. (Wife still enforce her strict rule of cleanliness though!)
The current owner came by today to discuss extending our lease, regarding the delay of the remodeling. Luckily the new owners won't move in until December1st, so we were allowed to stay until a week after the new completion date! :-)
So all is well, and tomorrow we can enjoy another Saturday of checking out furniture. Though sometimes it's more frustrating than enjoyable! Currently we're struggling to choose the right size and type of bed. The new bedroom will be smaller, so we cannot continue with the spacious width of 180 cm. Will 160 be too big as well, or do we have to settle for 140? Unless we find a 150 we like... Life is full of difficult choices! ;-)
What I had thought would be terribly difficult turned out to be blissfully easy: Choosing the colors for the walls.
Thanks to heavy filtering by Llegna, the color selection was narrowed down from 16.7 billion - to 5.
Our new bedroom will use both the alternatives suggested for that room: For the most part "Ice water" (very light blue), but a stronger blue color for the mid wall separating the bed from the wardrobe.
For the rest of the apartment we'll go for "Antique white" (although a green alternative was a bit tempting!)
I realize I've completely forgotten to mention that a week or two ago we decided the color of the floor - or rather, was forced to change our minds about it:
The kitchen and entrance will still have black marble tiles, as we have originally planned. For the rest of the apartment (except the bathroom) we chose what I believe is called mosaic parquet - "parquet flooring made up of small solid pieces of wood (slats) assembled in units" - and we had thought it was a good idea that this too would be black. However, Llegna informed us that others had reported fading of the color on the parts most stepped on, after a year or so of use. We were therefore recommended a color closer to the material's own.
This was not an easy choice to make, but we quickly aimed to the opposite direction of the scale and ended up with one coating of white (which won't look very white actually). We think this will match both black and white furniture - for living room and bedrooms, respectively.
And naturally, the above-mentioned colors for the walls was chosen with this new floor color in mind.
I read an interesting - and long awaited - review about Samsung's Series 9 today. TrustedReviews.com are thorough (and indeed trusted) and had testet the LE55-A956 model - the one I'm most interested in. (Yes, it's in fact a 55", but please don't tell Wife!! ;-) 
The really interesting feature here is of course the LED technology, in Samsung's implementation called Smart LED. With conventional LCD displays you can never turn the backlighting completely off, but with LED you can. An no light means absolutely black, and therefore they can claim contrast values with outrageous values like 2,000,000:1 . In addition to extreme levels of black, an added benefit of the LED backlight system is a wider colourscape, bringing more depth to the picture. The refresh rate is also supposed to be better.
The downside of LED, so far, is "extremely limited viewing angle". Apparently you should keep within 40 degrees viewing angle. I'm not sure if I would ever put guests outside such a range, but it does make me a bit skeptical. Another problem mentioned in the review which might concern me more is the lag between "lag between a source picture entering the TV and it appearing onscreen". What that means is timing problems when gaming, for example that you might not hit the turn at the right moment during racing. I do look very much forward to connecting my Xbox 360 to a new TV, so this might the decisive factor for settling with Series 8. After all, conventional LCD has come a long way by now, while LED obviously seem to suffer from some problems I can't overlook - even in it's 2nd generation.
I choose not to be an early adopter this time.
So far in this blog I haven't mentioned anything about the new TV we're planning to buy when the remodeling is complete. Believe me, that is not at all representative for the thinking and research I've done on that topic, so here's finally some words on our future TV!
Hi-Fi Klubben held a seminar today entitled "What to look for in a new TV", and in the newsletter invitation I received a few days ago they also mentioned upcoming new TV's from Samsung. This was the first local information about series 7 and 8 I had seen, and they had even set the price for the various models, so I went there hoping to find out about release dates and other interesting information.
The prime candidate for new TV up until now has been Samsung's LE52-A656 (52" Series 6). It seems perfect, perhaps apart from not having LED backlighting, - and being a bit "thick". A review I read about the LED based version of Series 7 mentioned it's bad refresh rate, resulting in jagged pictures. Along with contrast levels, I consider good motion flow to be the most important features to look for in a new TV, so this was very disappointing to read. Unfortunately I seem to have lost the link to that review again now, and curiously this one doesn't mention this problem at all. Guess I'll just wait until a couple of other reviews shows up before I make my mind up about Series 7.
Anyway, Samsung is also about to launch the 2008 flagship Series 9, which of course will be LED-backlit - and based on the rumors I've heard so far it's supposed to be absolutely stunning. But there's always a drawback, and with Series 9 it seems to be the price.... At Siba someone mentioned the 52" (or will it actually come in 55"??) will get a price tag around NOK 45.000(!)
Fortunately, in between Series 7 and 9, we find.... yes, Series 8. According to Hi-Fi Klubben it will be for sale in about a month (which seem to time nicely with the revised schedule for when we can move back to our own apartment). Based on the specs it seems to be an improved Series 6, with one big exception - much slimmer! :-)
While Series 6 is 10.5 cm thick, the Series 8 is only 4.4 cm thick!! And the price seems to be affordable - so for now, Samsung LE52-A866S1W is the one we'll get! 
Due to the before-mentioned extra work and absence du to sickness, Llegna suggests November 15th as new completion date. A noticeable delay indeed, but the extra time will surely allow for getting all the last details correct. (Talking of details, our window posts are now back on! :-)
Our only concern with the new completion date is that we have to extend the lease term where we're currently living. Luckily (for us) that apartment has not been sold yet, so we are optimistic about our chances to stay longer.
October is already here, and according to the original time schedule we're only two weeks away from being done. We are seriously sceptic about how realistic that is. Due to unforeseen work with the floor, and a week with the workers mostly home sick after catching a cold - we'll probably have to wait until November before we can move back home. The project manager (ie our architect) will check into it more closely...
So what has happened with the apartment since the last report? Not many strikingly visible changes. All edges are now reinforced, there's been several rounds of filling and polishing, and they have put primer on the walls.
A little sidestep from the usual remodeling reports - here's a little software tip instead:
I've had the idea of getting started with a mind map for quite a while now, to help med remember "everything" - and how people, projects, places and so on is connected. After a quick Google search I ended up at TheBrain.com, and their tutorials quickly convinced me that I had found exactly what I had been looking for! 
There's a free version, but I'm pretty sure I'll end up upgrading to the Pro version.
The bookshelves embedded in the library are now up! :-)
They are essentially made of plaster, but with paint and downlights they will look pretty good!
(The above picture was taken two days ago.)
The home entertainment wall is also taking shape. This morning it looked like this:
All the edges of the plaster panels get reinforced. The following picture was taken this evening, and shows such a detail of the work done since this morning:
Finally, I picture taken from the kitchen, showing the guest room /office, to which we will have a sliding door (currently leaning against the far wall):
With proper walls, our apartment finally starts to look like a home again! :-)
Two weeks ago I wrote about of holes in the wall, but I didn't mention the most interesting one: The access hole for the audio/video equipment! Anyone who's ever (re)connected cables for the TV, receiver, DVD player and so on knows what a hassle that can be. The worst must be bookshelves with built-in space for the TV - once you've filled it up with books and electronics you simply can't move it out from the wall to reconfigure the connections!
To solve this problem I came up with what I hope will prove to be a great solution - simply a hole in the wall, for easy access from the other room! (Providing that room doesn't belong to the neighbour...) In our case, that room is our new bedroom, and the hole will eventually be hidden behind a panel door.
The cables include Cat 5 network cabling, surround speaker cables and lots of power cables - all of them hidden inside the walls and the floor. :-)
On Monday this week the aforementioned new wall got up. Well, closed at least. So I hereby present our new library! 
The Wife's buddhist altar will be in the niche in the center, and on each side there will be bookshelves, embedded in the walls. Surely it will be a very nice and cosy part of the living room when it's done, and I look forward to spending many hours of reading there - once I figure out how to make time for it...
By the way, we've already bought the armchair for the library, and The Princess is working hard testing it!
The floor is still an issue. Monday evening we found an interesting pile of I-don't-even-want-to-know-what, scraped up from some part of the floor. Apparently it's the result of many hours of hard work, and I'm really very happy I'm not doing any of this myself!
The Thursday morning inspection showed considerable progress, and our library has now real walls...
By the end of the week, most of the floor had gotten a complete make over. A thin form of cement is covering almost every part of the floor. Notice the lower level of the entrance. Part of the remaining bags of cement (also shown in the picture) will be used here, but the level will be kept different so that the height of the tiles we will have here will match that of the rest of the floor. (More about this later!)
Checking in this Sunday morning immediately gave a much better impression of the floor than last time! :-)
Furthermore, a new wall is on it's way up, dividing the living room and our previous bedroom:
The kitchen and entrance floor turned out to be full of cardboard and newspapers, used as filling material, and didn't look very good this morning:
But, a truck from Maxbo had arrived with a more modern filling material...
... so by this evening the situation looked a lot more promising:
So much was happening with the apartment every day last week! Already after the second day the workers were done removing all the necessary parts of the walls.
Our main objective is a bigger living room, while keeping two bedrooms - and moving a wall means first tearing one down. We're also widening the entrance to the living room, and moving the entrance to what used to be "the master bedroom". This means temporarily making the apartment considerably more "spaceous".
This is nicely illustrated by the following photo, taken from the living room facing the entrance to the kitchen, which is blocked by a supporting wall.
The hole to the right is the widened entrance to the living room. The hole to the left, furthest away, will be the new entrance from the kitchen to the old bedroom. It's a big hole, as that entrance will have a sliding door. The hole in the middle used to be the entrance to the bedroom, with a sliding door. A wall will be put up there instead.
Time for some gadget talk!
Something I look forward to a lot when the remodelling of the apartment is finished, is to buy new audio & video equipment to replace the stuff I've sold! Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out what to get...
An essential part of any home is of course the surround sound system, and for once the WAF was actually helpful, in that it severely limited the alternative models of speakers to choose from. Though I do want quality sound, I'm not at all interested in seeing the sound, so going for a speaker system from Bose seemed in the end like the obvious choice.
Initially I thought Bose was all about integrated solutions where you had to buy the speakers with the receiver and a (superfluous) DVD player included. Which is dumb of course when you have already found (or bought) the receiver you really want, and in my case will buy a Blu-ray player instead of a DVD player.
Fortunately they do indeed sell pure speaker systems - like the Acoustimass 10 Home Entertainment Speaker System. These neat little satellite speakers were easily accepted by Wife, and a listening test was very convincing. (Now, if only I manage to place the hideous subwoofer where it won't be too visible... Why does it have to look like a big old computer tower??)
One thing about Bose was worrying me though: I had heard about their AdaptIQ room correction system - would the speakers really play along fine with any "normal" surround receiver using the automatic room correction of the receiver??
Fortunately a very helpful salesman at Soundgarden could verify that there was no need for concern. AdaptIQ was only used in their Lifestyle system, and the Acoustimass would work exactly as I had hoped - he promised! Furthermore it would be an excellent match to the receiver model I want, he said.
So what receiver am I secretely not mentioning here??
This too was a difficult choice, but I've eventually settled for Onkyo TX-SR606. With honorable mention to Yamaha RX-V663 and Harman Kardon AVR 255.
All of them get great reviews, but in the end it was the 4 HDMI inputs of the Onkyo that won me over. Quite a beauty from behind, isn't it?? ;-) 
Monday the 11th of August the workmen got started. Arriving home from work that day we were pretty curious to see if much had changed. It had.
In May our cosy dinner table corner looked like this:
(Notice the exclusive fur-on-fur table decoration!)
This was now transformed to a more simplistic style: 
Our own apartment was now basically empty. With ''The Invasion of the Workmen'' only a few days away, we had just enough time to empty out the few leftovers.
Luckily we also found time to exert some destructive energy. Well, this time "we" does not include Wife as she went away for the weekend, and left it to myself and a friend to "help" with the renovation by tearing down some wall paneling. In the process we produced way more noise than I had expected, so it wasn't exactly the considerate thing to do on a Sunday. But it was quite fun! :-)
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