More colors - and mosaic parquet!

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! :-)

Ceiling Molding

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.

No. 128 sold!

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! ;-)

Choosing colors

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.

More telly talk - Series 9

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.

Samsung Series 8

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!

Delayed!

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.

Delayed?

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.