Renovation diaries: Here we go...

We're about a third of the way through our six-week renovation journey and while I have a fairly concrete picture of how we want our apartment to look like at the end of that journey, all I can see right now is dirt and debris. How our vision is going to materialize is something that's still hard for me to fathom, what with gaping holes, dangling wires, and unfinished walls. But I'm looking on the bright side-- we still have a little over a month to go and there has been much progress since the first wall was hacked two weeks ago. The workers are also working over weekends to get things like tiling and plastering done (they're not allowed to do any work that involves excessive noise during non-work hours) so things are thankfully moving along fairly quickly.

I wouldn't say we're doing extensive work on the flat, but the changes aren't modest either, I suppose. It's not a big apartment and there were some oddly shaped corners. Which meant that our designer had to come up with some nifty ways to maximize storage and open the layout our a little. Here's the original floor plan:



As you can see, the master bedroom has that ridiculously angled back wall and the kitchen is kind of small. There also wasn't a designated dining area. And here, is the redesigned layout:

We're going to carve our a store room from that odd angle of the master bedroom and also sacrificing part of Sophie's room for a more open kitchen/dining area. A part of the wall to the study room has been hacked to let more light through the apartment in order to create the illusion of space. Most of the hacking has already been done-- especially in the kitchen and bathrooms which we're overhauling completely. The next week will be dedicated to tiling and reconstructing walls. So yes, progress...

Now that we're moving full steam ahead, all we can do is keep one eye on the work to make sure they don't cut corners, and the other on costs to make sure we stay within budget. We've heard horror stories of people renovation costs escalating exponentially through the renovation process and we're going to make sure that doesn't happen to us. We just have to make sure we're very disciplined and steadfast in our decisions. Crossing our fingers (and toes)...

See our progress here.