This Site is Under Construction

Or more specifically, the apartment.

First was the wall removal. There was a dividing wall in one of the rooms, making one large room into two small areas that weren't really useful to anyone for anything. You could just fit a double bed on one side (provided you both wanted to climb into bed via the foot) and on the other side a wonky outer wall meant that you could fit the bed and several other items... but then you had this weird space on the other side of the wall to figure out what all to do with. I suppose you could use it as a changing area... but still, it was a badly placed wall.

So out it went.

This is when we discovered the very odd construction of the apartment. Seems when they did the renovation back in the 70's, they built the walls first and then laid the new floors on top of the old floors but only laid the new floors up to the wall. So when you remove a wall you are left with a GAPPING hole in the floor. Underneath which you could see the original floors dating back to the 1800's when the building had been redone after the fire.

We had the floor repaired, which was a bit tricky since none of the boards line up, but the carpenter is fine fellow of a man and with a bit of hand crafting managed to do it. The floor-sanding man will be coming at some point soon to check on the floors and discuss how exactly do we want to go about sanding all the floors in the apartment, apart from the two rooms that have already been done and which we are currently living in. Yes, that sentence ends in a preposition, but does it look like I care? Nope, I have other things to do than think grammar.

Today was the first day of our massive project. The dear husband has actually already been plastering holes for a few days now - there were two rather large holes left in the ceiling where the electrician had originally drilled through to put wiring into the no-longer-extant wall and these took some time to fix. Denmark does not apparently have the sort of DIY know-how to fix drywall, but the internet helps out mightily.

But anyway, back to today and step one of said project. In all the rooms that need to be painted (everywhere except the kitchen and the hallway that got a fresh coat this summer) the furniture had to be moved and everything came down off the walls. Christmas and New Years are now officially over as everything had to be put away. All the screws and nails had to come out, any shelves or shoe storage devices had to be removed and anything too large to be put in the hallway (the freezer) is now in the center of the room.

How many rooms does this apartment have? Uh, a lot.

Entry - needs paint and floor work
Living room/dining room - paint and floor
Bedroom 1/Office - perfect, thank you very much
Bedroom 2 - paint and floor
Hallway/kitchenette - floor
Kitchen - floor and we need to paint the cupboards
Bathroom - paint (it needs floor work, but it's been linoleumed and we aren't even going to attempt to redo it what with the drains and shower and other stuff, it'll be fine in it's spring green colored splendor)
Bedroom 3 - paint and floor
Bedroom 4 - perfect
Bedroom 5 - paint and floor
Bedroom 6 - paint and floor

So having moved everything away from the walls and having removed everything FROM the walls, the Danish Boy has been running around with plaster and a putty knife and is happily (okay, not so happily) trying to make things look pretty.

Trying. We have chipboard wall-paper. Ask the Brits about how much this stuff sucks.

Not to mention that the morons in 1970 didn't bother to seal their drywall or use joint filler in the joints and so there is much cracking, tearing, and overall distress to our walls. It would help if the walls weren't at such crazy angles. I am convinced that part of the building is slowly and surely moving away from another part of the building. Like tectonic drift, the wall in the entry way is heading west while the rest of us go east. The front door, which ought to be part of that westward traveling wall, is determined to come east with us. The whole thing is coming OUT of the wall!! We beat it, to try to cow it into submission, but to no avail.

Once the holes are filled... and dry... we need to wash the walls. You would not believe how disgusting the walls are. Maybe you would. I'm not the cleanest person on the planet (comes with the digging in the dirt) but I am not sure how people have been able to spill food on the wall and then not notice. Whatever, they have to be washed before we can paint. Then there will be the taping and the papering of things that need to be taped and painted, since the trim which is all over the place, not merely around the doors, floors and windows like you would expect, but wherever those mad 70's renovators felt the need (note, our ceilings not only slope because we are in the attic, sometimes the whole ceiling level drops down to meet the exposed beams and some times it rises up so we have over a foot of space above the beams! Logic knows this place not.).

I don't think we'll wash the walls tonight. Probably first thing in the morning tomorrow. We also need to put up some more chipboard in the space left by the removed wall. Yeah, that'll look real purdy.