Other people do maternity yoga...

... I wonder whether there's any money to be made by promoting Maternity Clay Plastering?

So! Our new stairwell was installed today! And it is a thing of BEAUTY. Jörg and our carpenter spent a week sawing, drilling, assembling, oiling and polishing oak planks into stair-shape over at our carpenter's workshop, and today they brought the almost-finished construction over to our house, where, in only four or so hours and only two attempts... the construction was finished. Now we just have to polish and oil the banister and it'll be perfect.

Against all probability, we had also gotten fairly far with the preparations in the hallway. After we'd feared that we'd have to keep the construction poles that replaced the old rotted wall beams in place yet longer, and thus install the stairwell with a stopgap solution! After all, in the preliminary week that had been planned in for preparations, our carpenter had neither found replacement beams (his collection sported only too short or too hole-y beams), and also lacked the time (and motivation) to come up with other ideas. But when Jörg first showed up at the workshop, our carpenter suddenly remembered that H. (another carpenter whom we also know) didn't currently have a job, so perhaps he'd be happy to help...?
He was, of course. He accepted our ideas at once, spent a whole day finding "new old" beams, and three more days measuring and preparing things. Yesterday he finished putting the puzzle together, and now we have the most beautiful passageway-and-pillar construction between hallway and kitchen and bathroom. If the house falls down, this passageway will remain standing amidst the ruins all shiny and firm - the passageway, and now the stairwell.

What we also got done during the preparational time
- new floor tiles
- remove all the old plasterboard crap from the hallway walls
- prepare said walls with raw clay plaster
- plaster the wall right next to the stairwell with fine clay plaster

What's left to do:
- get new clay plaster so the rest of the walls can be finished
- replace the old cables (the things our predecessors did with electricity, you do not want to know)
- put up a plank construction to protect and hide the fugly cables
- plaster the ceiling

But even in its unfinished state, the hallway looks awesome. AND we no longer have to climb a ladder. (The cats are very excited about that. Although they also appear annoyed about the many changes that happened in the past two weeks. How dare we make everything different?)

Pictorial proof will follow sometime next week or whenever. Hah hah, you thought you'd get away without a picspam? THINK AGAIN.