In December, I wrote about looking for a new house and financing a house. Since then, Riccardo and I have been busy renovating our future home. It’s been a messy process, and we’ve had our share of surprises, but the house is starting to look more like a house and less like a construction site.
The first part of the verbouwing was to tear down or to afbreken: tegels, behangpapier, badmeubels, keuken, tapijt, baksteen and what seemed like meters and meters of kabels. In order to properly do this, we relied on the use of many power tools such as a behangafstomer, a boor, a hamer, and lots of manpower. In this process, I realized that we had access to many businesses that rent all sorts of power tools. I am not sure if I had never noticed this in the U.S. or in Mexico because I had never needed this there or if there is truly a “cultural difference.” Perhaps the do-it-yourself stores do rent these things, and I had just never noticed!
During the verbouwing, we were faced with many surprises…many! We found hidden tile underneath tile, mystery pijpen behind the bathroom wall (turned out to be the neighbor’s washing machine pipe), stopcontacten without elektriciteit, and crooked doors. Fortunately, Riccardo and I count on an amazing group of friends and family that have dedicated their weekends, Christmas break and their evenings to help us tear down everything we didn’t like to make space for what we want.
Working on the verbouwing!
(personal photo)
In order to make a plan for what we wanted to do with the house, Riccardo and I talked about what we needed in the house and asked each other many many questions!
Willen wij tegels of laminaat of pvc vloer voor de woonkamer, eetkamer en keuken?
Welke kleur voor de muren, vloeren en tegels is goed voor onze stijl?
Wat hebben wij in de keuken nodig? (oven, koelkast, ruimte, een bar, etc.)
Hoe kunnen wij meer ruimte hebben?
Wat willen wij in de badkamer? (in-loop douche, een bad, een wastafel of twee, etc.)
Wat willen wij op de zolder?
Is vloerverwarming beter voor ons?
Willen wij de haard?
These were just some of the questions we had to answer together in order to make choices for the house. We are almost done and I think the house will look absolutely great once it is done!
Have you ever remodeled a house? What were your experiences?
