In the introductory post (that is now moved to the about section) I told you this blog would be a place to share everything, real life everything - not just the pinterestable bits. Well today I'm making good on that promise. I was debating whether or not to share these pictures with you just because of the fact they're not at all pinterestable. But this is my life right now. So what's the point in trying to come up with something to write about for hours and finding nothing (lack of space to take good pictures, lack of time to do anything but renovate, ...) when there's a topic dangling right in front of you? The elephant in the room if you'd like: we're in the middle of renovating our apartment. So instead of finding something else to talk about I'm taking this elephant by its giant ears and I'm sharing the progress we've made so far, pinterestable or not.
First of all I'd like to tell you how it all started. When I finally graduated last year, Ruben and I went looking for an apartment/house. We went to our bank, checked what we could loan, made our budget. We discovered quite quickly that buying something of your own is very expensive and that a lot of places are just not worth the asking price. We were looking for something much more expensive than we could ever afford. I think we went to see almost 30 places, houses as well as apartments, before we decided this would be it. It has large windows and lots of light, underground parking spaces, 3 bedrooms (which are not all 3 going to be bedrooms of course), an overall surface of 130m² and just lots of potential to make it into a place we'd love to live in.
We signed in December 2014 and got our keys in March 2015. We thought we'd just change a few things and we'd be moving in by the end of May. But then the ideas starting pouring in. And before we knew it we'd decided to change almost everything. New flooring in the entire apartment, tear off all (really ugly!) wallpaper and paint every wall, remove an old built-in closet, tear down a fake wall, remodel the bathroom, change the toilet, paint the dark ceiling panels in the hallway white, demolish the old red brick chimney & fireplace and rebuild it... and a few other small things. It is now end of July and we still haven't moved and there's lots more work to be done. Needless to say we underestimated this renovation project massively. Since we both still live with our moms we don't need to move but it's just frustrating to own a place and not be able to live there so I'm really working towards moving at the end of August. Since I have a very long summer vacation now (perks of being a teacher) I am working in our apartment full time so maybe this time we'll make our deadline.
We started to demolish this ugly red brick monster ourselves but we were so scared to destroy the chimney pipes of our downstairs neighbors. It was hard work and it made lots of noise (poor neighbors). We even carried 30 buckets of stones down to the basement (3 storeys). But then we realized we couldn't do this. Demolishing it safely, building it up again, making it fireproof etc. was not something we could do ourselves so we hired someone do this for us. It was money well spent. We're really happy with how it turned out!
In this picture the plaster (or whatever they used to build this) is still drying. Now it is completely white and ready to be painted over.
This is what was left of the ugly bathroom ceiling after we took it down. We carried it down to the basement garage, into our cars and dumped it into a garbage container specific for old hard plastic. The room in the picture where we store our materials in (new in or old out) is going to be our office/hobby space.
The above picture shows the room where the old built-in closet and the fake wall were, right after we tore them down. You can still see the shape of the closet on the back wall and the ceiling. This is going to be our dressing room/nursery if the time comes.
When you buy a place, there's something in the contract that says you buy it "with all the hidden faults". Our bedroom walls were such a hidden fault. When we removed the wallpaper, the old paint underneath was all chipped and ugly. We didn't want to burn off all the paint with some special tools we didn't even own so we decided to slap on some finisher, sand it and then paint. It was a lot more work than I expected and when we started painting, the parts we put the finisher on were good but the old paint started cracking/chipping in new places. To keep them from chipping further I used a little paintable acrylic sealant/glue (the one you use to seal joints) and now you can't even see the cracks anymore. When I started painting the ceiling and walls white I noticed that our white paint was not that great. After 4 days and 3 layers I had enough, went to the store and bought me some better white paint. It was more expensive than the other white paint but one day and one layer later finally everything was white, so in terms of layers and working hours it was definitely worth the money. You cannot believe how happy I was but I could have saved me lots of hard work if had bought better paint sooner! So a little tip here: don't save on cheap paint, it's not worth the extra work.
This is what the bedroom looks like right now, in the progress of painting our triangle statement wall. These still need another coat of paint and then we'll be adding some more triangles we couldn't do simultaneously because the tape would overlap. Even though this isn't finished yet I'm instantly happy when I walk past this room! So you see, a lot of work has already been done but there's still more to come. Toilet and bedroom are almost ready now (except flooring, but that's the last thing to do before moving in) so that's at least 2 rooms I can erase from the to do list, and I can't tell you how good that feels!
Next month I'll be back with another renovation update post, hopefully telling you we're ready to move in!
