Disclaimer: To my German friends and readers, this post contains what could be construed as some slightly anti-German-building-industry-sentiment but is not in ANY WAY intended to offend any of you wonderful people whom I love and adore… it is simply a much-needed venting experience to ensure that my head not pop off my shoulders during this process, and an opportunity to entertain my American readers who will all find it quite humorous.

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Next time you find yourself penning your New Year’s Resolutions, here is a handy little tip: do NOT, I repeat, do NOT put all three of the following items on your list for the same year: 1) build a house in Germany, 2) have a baby, and 3) get married 12 time zones away. It’s simply too much.

As Soenke will surely attest, building a German house is practically a full-time job – even if you THINK you have hired people to handle all the details. You can especially complicate things by even *thinking* about deviating from the Standard German Building Method: meaning if you stray from, say, white tiled bathrooms (oops, I should say bathROOM – no German would ever put more than ONE full bathroom in a house) and huge, jutting, granite windowsills, then you are in for a lengthy battle of wits and will.

To start my explanation with that favorite of German phrases: “The problem is…”… yes, the problem IS that I am trying to put a non-German house on German soil! And I am trying to get Germans to understand my wacky, illogical American desires. (“But why would you WANT to do it THAT way, we have been doing it THIS way in Germany for hundreds of years! Why would you want to CHANGE, even if your idea DOES make really good sense?!”). From our short experience in Deutsch homebuilding, I am starting to believe that German contractors / building authorities get paid by the number of problems they so proudly identify (nowhere is there any concept of providing actual solutions to the problems…) This attitude is particularly maddening and confounding, considering I come from a country where it is almost a carnal sin to tell your client “no we can’t do that”…. the right answer is ALWAYS “I’m not sure if we can do it THAT way, but maybe we can do this-and-this-and-that and get to some sort of close result in a slightly different way”, even if that’s not entirely true and you have absolutely no idea how to get it done. The service provider is supposed to just fake it and go find the solution afterwards…

So let me try to illustrate the difference between a conversation with a German contractor and an American contractor:

Jennifer expresses her wishes to German contractor through Soenke:

Soenke: “My girlfriend does not want all the windowsills to hang 10 cm into the room. They will block the hang of the curtains. She would like you to trim the granite down so that they are nearly flush with the wall.”

General Contractor: “But, German housewives like to put plants on windowsills. You can’t do that if you trim them down.”

Soenke: “ Um, ok. Well my fiancé is not German. Let’s go ahead and trim the sills.”

6 weeks later, we meet with the actual worker who will be installing the windowsills.

Soenke: “Don’t forget, we are going to trim the windowsills to be just a centimeter or two past the wall”.

Windowsill guy: “What? Really? But, one always put plants on windowsills! How can you do that if you cut the windowsills in half?! That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

Soenke: “Yes, I know. We are, uh, er, allergic to plants. Please cut the sills.”

Windowsill guy: “Wow, ok. Well, you have to promise you won’t give a bad report on me for cutting your windowsills. That’s really unusual. I’ve never heard of that before.”

(Soenke comes home and bangs his head against the wall, begging me not to make any further radical alterations to our homebuilding process.)

SO NOW, here is a theoretical but realistic discussion with an American contractor:

Jennifer: “ I want to design a custom artistic countertop for my kitchen that includes crushed Cheetos, dead ladybugs, and baby Chiclets all set in a resin base. I’d like it to be patterned to spell out my name with the blue Chiclets, and the overall background color should complement my corrugated metal cupboard doors. Then, I’d like the handles of my cupboard doors to be crafted from old automobile tail lights, and they should light up when you open the cupboard.”.

American contractor, after a small pause: “Ok, no problem. Do you want those to be red or white tail lights?”

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This, my friends, is the difference between German and American homebuilding. This is why Americans should not try to build houses in Germany, unless they have nerves of steel.

HOWEVER, in all fairness, I do have to German contractors a break. Why? BECAUSE THEY SHOW UP ON TIME (generally speaking) AND ON THE DAYS THEY SAY THEY WILL SHOW UP. That is a feature practically unheard of around the world. In most countries – including the States, Italy, Spain, and other more laid-back “mañana”-attitude places – when the contractor says “we’ll be there Monday”, that could in 1% of the cases mean the upcoming Monday, or in 99% of the cases mean an unidentified day (possibly a Monday) anywhere between 6 and 66 weeks from now. Of course, you will have already prepaid for the work he’s going to do, and if ýou’re American you just have to pray that he does it before the dollar devalues even more.

So thank you Germany for your efficient, timely, if somewhat inflexible contractors. I am sure in time that we will get our American house built without a) me killing them, b) them killing me, and c) Soenke killing all of us.

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Photos:

Soenke and Tim check out the latest handiwork (4/28/07) -

Our downstairs hall/kitchen/bathroom flooring:

Soenke measures the sink style we like for the downstairs bathroom (although for legs, I’d prefer some curvy wrought iron handiwork that affixes to the wall! We’ll see if THAT exists in Germany…)

I find my mosaic tile backsplash to go over our downstairs sink (at big bucks per square meter, it will be a SMALL backsplash)…

And perhaps a bit overkill on the downstairs bathroom tiles, but I thought this would look snazzy in the bottom of the downstairs shower:

The upstairs bathroom tile is a soothing travertine:

Soenke is absolutely sick of tile shopping:

Sophie & I think it’s pretty FUN!