We’re over a month into our house renovation, and wow, it’s amazing and impressive to see the difference. Thought I’d do a bunch of before and current shots of the same locations in the house. Not at the ‘after’ shots yet, but the layout and floorplan changes we’ve made are very obvious.
Much of the work so far has been at the underneath level – floors and walls. Two thirds of the old, original house had their old floors taken up, which were just on dirt, as was done back then. So foundations and new sub-floors were created – they went down at least a foot and have been building the floors up in various levels. The pictures from today show a layer of styrofoam, the current ‘top’ that will be getting another layer of cement on top of it this coming week. You can also see the new electrical conduits sticking out in various places. I’ll include some progression shots of how the floor has been built in our entry-way and dining room.
And then we had several walls removed, moved, or added and all of that work has been completed. I got to join Norbi last weekend and I’m so glad for the timing of my visit – before they began covering up some of the historical innards that the renovation has exposed. The history nerd in me was seriously geeking out to see the adobe bricks from inside our house now outside crumbling in the rain, as well as the exposed hay in the old ceiling peeking through where an old wall was removed! This weekend, without me, Norbi got to see the old cobblestones they uncovered outside the old backdoor, now under our hallway and kitchen. Balazs joked about putting a glass floor over it…I got way too intrigued but such an idea! Oooohhh…. he he.
We’ve spent much of the past month making big decisions and getting so many items ordered to be here as they’re needed – most things taking at least two to three weeks to arrive. It was especially fun on Thursday to meet up with our contractor here in Budapest, him in his cousin’s work van, as we picked up our new toilets, bathtub and lots of tiles for him to take back. Last weekend, when I joined Norbi on his weekly trip, we also picked up our kitchen floor tiles that had come in at a store there in Szeged. Stuff is coming together and it’s so exciting to see.
I’m especially excited about our kitchen this week. I fell in love with handles for the drawers a couple weeks ago, searching on Amazon’s Germany website. Those handles, and matching knobs I also found, arrived this week. Along with the floor tiles coming in last weekend, and then getting the backsplash tiles on Thursday with Balazs I now have all the key details to bring in person when we head to Ikea on Wednesday to meet with one of their ‘Kitchen Designers’ and make our final kitchen decisions. I’m torn between two cabinets (one white, one more off-white/cream) and have been wanting to see them in person again, with as many of these key parts with me as possible. I’m loving having the tiles and handles in my possession – I may keep looking at them and smiling, and maybe sometimes petting the tiles, maybe. We have also reached the fun (for me at least!) point of playing with ity bity paper cut-outs of our furniture as I place them in our floorplan to figure future location. Not exactly needed house-wide yet, but we wanted to add a few wall lights and needed to figure their placement. Sort of like paper-dolls, but for a house!
We’re amazingly at about a half-way point for our house already, after having so many fears of construction horrors and everything taking forever it has really been fast and professional and we’re so impressed. I’m super excited as we move past the underneath parts slowly and get to start seeing more of the obvious changes and improvements we’re having done to our house. I’ve also been extra excited since seeing it last weekend, feels more and more real – just two months to move-in!
lakatosfamily 