The women had already put the table and 2 chairs together, and also the daybed (our couch so all of our visitors have a place to stay, nudge-nudge), the kids' little table, a spinning play chair, and the butcher block thing (???). Our place was an absolute sty. I did get the kids to help me put some stuff together though:
The two most rewarding things were having a couch to sit on and plugging in the fridge so we could actually keep meat for longer than an hour and have some cold milk for cereal (warm, funky-smelling milk goes great with chocolate chunk cereal though). We completely underestimated the work we needed to do for the kitchen. Too bad we didn't have the cash outright to have it installed. I got the base cabinets built, and tried to figure out what we needed for the plumbing and wiring. So, around 9 pm we just needed to put the cabinet doors on and call it a night. Oh my. Fast forward 2 hours later, and we just needed to put the cabinet doors on and call it a night. To make a long story short, handy Manny (a.k.a. Jeff) had put the mounting brackets on backwards, so we were never able to make the 'Click' sound - as instructed from the ikea handout - to attach the doors. No amount of brute force or cussing could make the doors attach and make the 'click' sound (as shown by a small tap of the thumb in the instructions). So I changed the brackets around, and 'click', the job was done in 5 minutes. Thus ended the day, and I had a big list for Praktiker for the next day. In the morning, the wash machine got delivered, and this was a beautiful moment. Probably the highlight of Freiburg so far, as shown below:
Then I went downtown to get my 'tax card' so that I could be gainfully employed, got some stuff at Praktiker, and headed back home. By the way, buying drill bits and special sized pipes with my knowledge and salespeople who speak mostly German do not make for a comfortable shopping experience. Also, a round trip to the store is about an hour on the train and walking. In the afternoon, we put Erika's bed together, and the ladies had already put a wardrobe, two dressers, the wintergarten bench and one more dreaded kitchen chair together earlier. So, in the kitchen, we needed a way to make a hole in the stainless steel top for the faucet, and we bought a handy little tool (manual metal punch) from ikea to do the job. Seemed easy enough, it even came with instructions. No matter how hard I tried to reef on that thing, I couldn't get it to cut through the steel. So we moved on to something else: the plumbing. Good grief. Talk about out of my league. I can barely plunge a toilet. One of the pieces in the drainage system was bought from ikea, and it came with some handy instructions, including a little hole covered by a thin piece of plastic that you needed to just 'tap' out with a screwdriver. The thin piece of plastic was unrecognizable after I was through with it. It took an hour and a half, but me and my knowledgeable plumbing assistant (with years of experience, or at least, years of 'coaching' experience) had managed to pry a large enough hole for a small amount of water to pass through. The time we were 'on the clock' included dripping sweat, blue smoke from all the nice words, and Mom's gentle prayers in the background. Good enough. Yeah right, a 'tap'. So basically, we got nothing accomplished that night and I had an even longer list for Praktiker for the next day. Well, I suppose we got a cute picture of Reese:
On Wednesday, exhaustion was setting in from trips to Praktiker and endless building projects. You might imagine our lot: meat and cheese and buns for almost two weeks does not a happy troupe make. We decided that I wasn't a trained electrician, and we wanted to get a professional to hook up the cooktop and oven. So, how do you find an electrician without knowing German? Well, you head to the place you bought the garbage and try to get some numbers. And we did. 2 numbers, I think. The public phone in our quarter of town wasn't working, so Jodi and Mom took the tram downtown (15 min) to make some calls. The first guy never answered. The second one hung up on Jodi twice. The first time she thought it was a mistake. The second time she got the hint and realized this fellow was maybe not the best choice. So they headed to another electronics store nearby and a nice salesman did the calling for us, and after an hour and a half of waiting for them to call back, we had an electrician appointment for Friday. What a nice salesman, we didn't even buy anything from him. That night, I fiddled around with some more of the plumbing, figured out we were missing more pieces, and wrote it on my Praktiker list. So, in conclusion for the day, here's what I accomplilshed (couldn't have done it without a 1 year-old):
Actually, I think we did the desk and bookshelf, a wardrobe, last dresser, and Reese's crib. Oh, and somewhere in the last couple of days (Tuesday??) we made another fun trip to ikea with two strollers so we could bring back another mattress and some other random items. It was a good time, and free from rain.
Jodi and Jeff
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