Chapter 92 - Remodeling, Austrian Style

We've all seen remodeling projects, but this is the first time that I had a direct view. The building across the street from our flat was recently remodeled, and it was definitely different from anything I ever saw in the States.

This is the building; the right two-thirds is the Raiffeisenbank, and the left one-third is Petra's hair salon. Here, behind the wedding procession, you can see that it was an old whitish plaster building with nice trees in the front.


The first thing they did was cut down the lovely trees to make it easier to put up their scaffolding, much like the clear cutting we all hate.


They removed the large bank windows, then boarded them up to make new, narrower ones.


This Austrotherm is used on buildings all over this area. It's kind of like a styrofoam.


They used some kind of mortar to attach the Austrotherm blocks to the walls.


Here's the whole building covered with the foam blocks. I don't know why the pink blocks are used along the bottom - maybe they're more moisture resistant or something. I do know they were doing something with the basements and just assumed it had something to do with drainage. The Hotwell building (the blue one to the left of this one) has had severe problems with basement flooding after heavy rains.


They drilled into the wall with a drill bit that was several inches long, then screwed in these red spikes.


Close-up of the spikes


They plastered the left side first, using large trowels.


Here is most of the building plastered.


Here's the building after the plaster dried. It's whitish just like the previous color so I assumed that was the final deal.


Someone - a crazy person in my opinion - decided that the building needed "more color" - in this case three colors! Petra's hair salon is the umber, and the bank is the yellow and gray. The plaster was tinted and applied with the same long trowels. They don't paint like we do at home with brushes and rollers.


Another view of the building


Then a truck with hot tar came to replace the sidewalk that had been taken up to do whatever they did to the basement.


The new sidewalk. Apparently, Petra hadn't been informed beforehand because I saw a couple of her customers having to leap in and out of the doorway to avoid stepping in the soft tar.


Then they added the bank sign. The logo sign on the right is lighted at night. All the Raiffeisenbanks in Burgenland have identical signs.


The last thing they did was to pick up some of the excess dirt.


I presume they'll wait till Spring to plant trees and flowers. There's still no sign at Petra's hair salon. She was told one would be installed, but it's obviously on Austrian time. I noticed during this several-week-long remodeling project that the workers - except for two days - worked what we in America would call bankers hours.