So after another week of renovating in the evenings (though I am usually too knackered from work to do much so Jeanette is doing most of the stuff) we have put an extra effort into the last couple of weekends in order to get ready.

We have (or at least I have) learned a lot, this is my first time at doing a full scale renovation, ceilings, floors, walls, everything in one go. I have done a fair bit of painting before but not to this extent. We have also learned a lot along the way, had several fights over this and that but are still together (must count for something) and are doing pretty well.

Food wise the renovation is a disaster, take-aways all the time and even worse – no proper exercise, not enough time or too knackered. Now we are going to get all the gear out of the way and the furniture back in (with some new additions and replacements) and that will be great to get a nice living room again.

And i want to get back to the running, badly. I miss it so much and my body misses it so much as well. I wanna start slow and then go to my 4 km at steady pace and then beyond again. But face it, even if running is one of the most time efficient things you can do,  the dressing, warming up, ruinning, cool down, showering and redressing takes more time than you might think… so unfortunately not much of the good stuff the last few weeks.

We’ve lived in a single bedroom and a kitchen together with everything from the living room in cardboard boxes. Not to meantion the place is too difficult to clean properly but now when the stuff that belongs in the living room can go back in things are looking brighter!

• New floor on top of the old worn parquette floor. We did leave the old floor sandbed intact however, there are limits to what you do on your own…
• New battens (is that the right word?) around the base of the wall
• Walls dressed with easy-cover and then painted in a caffe latte colour, 2 times
• Ceiling painted… 2 times
• Ceiling rose added, that was a scary thing… will it stick or will it fall down in the middle of the night scaring the bejeebus out of the cats and us?
• New light with three spots and full cabling done. Changed the switch and rewired it for being able to operate two independent lights
• Wallpaper on one wall, loved that zebra wallpaper, so Serengeti…
• Stuccos around the ceiling
• Painted door and window frames and all other little bits and peaces needed painting

The lession learned the most is that everything takes, not only three times the estimate, but sometimtes four to five times if you are also having a day time job. And you gotta take breaks from the sanding dust now and then.

And, even with the best of budgets you can double it right off from the beginning. Factoring in all the extra trips to get more boards, stucco, paint… then it just goes off the chart.

In hindsight it would probably not have been that much more expensive hiring decorators to do the job and they would have done it in a couple of days timer rather than a month. But then they do work full time not just weekends and a couple of hours each night and they are pros so they probably know what they are doing rather than experimenting which is what we did a lot.

Here is a before and after picture!