Renovations - midway (7-/-0/2008)
We're now half-way through the third week of renovations, and things are starting to come together. The appropriate walls have been knocked down and the old kitchen, bathroom and floorings are gone. We've got a new boiler, new electrical mains. The new bathroom is half-installed, and should be done by the end of the week, with the walls all finished by the middle of next week, and carpets installed by the end of next weekend. At that point, the flat will be done, apart from the kitchen which isn't due to be installed until the end of August. Because Ikea are dumb. They can afford to be dumb, however, because they are also cheap.
The renovation process has been a really interesting one. We've been lucky to have found a really good, helpful builder (we met quite a few who are not good, and not honest). We've also been lucky in that the place we bought has been, for the most part, flexible enough to meet our needs. At this point, the only things I'd do differently is spend more time working out what decisions we'd need to be making up front (it's about 80% of all the renovation decisions), so that we could plan them a little better. It hasn't turned out badly, actually, considering we had to decide on a lot of things on the fly. The bathroom fittings, for example, were chosen at 6:30am as I was rushing around getting ready for work.
It really helps to have had a strong idea of how we wanted the new place to be, and we've pretty much stuck to our original vision. It has also been important to keep in mind that while we want the place to work for us, we're probably not going to live in it for too long - maybe only a couple of years - and as such it needs to be generic enough to allow us to market it to others. I'll take some pics (and upload the ones already on the camera) this weekend.
