For the past year we have been living in a converted warehouse building (sort of) in the city center. It's impressive and made us (at first) and our guests go wow, the exposed brick, high ceilings, gym and pool all give it an air of luxury.
After living here for a year though, it's definitely time to move on. We owned and renovated our house back in the UK, starting with a pretty run down 1930's semi that we thought needed a bit of work, then realised it needed A LOT of work.
We stripped out walls, a bathroom and floors, re-plumbed pipes, built a kitchen, tiled and plastered. We lived in one room with a camping stove and enough brick dust to make curious about our chances of emphysema in later life and a sense of adventure/foreboding with every day we lived with a sheet of plywood screwed to the wall instead of a front door.
It was both terrible and terribly exciting at the same time, it used up all our money and then some more and made us wonder what was so great about being on the property ladder. But then, one day, it was finished. We had a home that was not only ours, it was us.
Due to a limited budget and an over confidence brought on by DIY SOS (HGTV for the Americans) we did everything except the dangerous stuff ourselves. It took up all our time and our patience but in the end we had a house that we had played a part in every single corner of. Every time I climbed the stairs I remembered with dread and pride that fact that I plastered the wall. I plastered it 4 times because plastering is REALLY hard, but I got there in the end.
Each evening meal or party that congregated in the kitchen was fed and watered by a kitchen we choose, transported from Ikea in my little hatchback, built using Swedish comic book-like instructions and fitted into the wee hours of the night.
I'm so happy here that I don't miss the house so much as I miss that feeling of home. Knowing we will likely never own a home here I didn't think we would ever get that feeling here. Then we found Ivy and everything fell into place.
An awesome landlord, some skills acquired through trial and error and the surrender of my shoe budget for a couple of months and we are embarking on turning a faded beauty of an apartment into our American home.
This is project Ivy:
After living here for a year though, it's definitely time to move on. We owned and renovated our house back in the UK, starting with a pretty run down 1930's semi that we thought needed a bit of work, then realised it needed A LOT of work.
We stripped out walls, a bathroom and floors, re-plumbed pipes, built a kitchen, tiled and plastered. We lived in one room with a camping stove and enough brick dust to make curious about our chances of emphysema in later life and a sense of adventure/foreboding with every day we lived with a sheet of plywood screwed to the wall instead of a front door.
It was both terrible and terribly exciting at the same time, it used up all our money and then some more and made us wonder what was so great about being on the property ladder. But then, one day, it was finished. We had a home that was not only ours, it was us.
Due to a limited budget and an over confidence brought on by DIY SOS (HGTV for the Americans) we did everything except the dangerous stuff ourselves. It took up all our time and our patience but in the end we had a house that we had played a part in every single corner of. Every time I climbed the stairs I remembered with dread and pride that fact that I plastered the wall. I plastered it 4 times because plastering is REALLY hard, but I got there in the end.
Each evening meal or party that congregated in the kitchen was fed and watered by a kitchen we choose, transported from Ikea in my little hatchback, built using Swedish comic book-like instructions and fitted into the wee hours of the night.
I'm so happy here that I don't miss the house so much as I miss that feeling of home. Knowing we will likely never own a home here I didn't think we would ever get that feeling here. Then we found Ivy and everything fell into place.
An awesome landlord, some skills acquired through trial and error and the surrender of my shoe budget for a couple of months and we are embarking on turning a faded beauty of an apartment into our American home.
This is project Ivy:
First night's dinner. The essential part of moving home, sitting in your empty space eating a take away straight out of the box.
The simple stunning (not so original) flooring in the beautiful (so original it's like a time machine) bathroom. Not quite complimenting the roll top, claw foot bath and cast iron sink- it's got to go.
Some people should have a license before they are allow to paint walls. Unless they are painting them white.
This is going to take a couple of coats. Of my blood, sweat and tears of relief once the midnight blue is gone.
Partially tiled floor, wanted to remove the bath to make it easier to tile but it couldn't be taken our without shitting off water to the entire building. We'd been in a sum total of 5 days, I wasn't going to piss off the neighbours this early. Fortunately the tradition hexagonal tiles make for easy maneuvering round toilets, claw foots and pipes.
At this point, having use my thighs as my hand wiping rag, I was struggling to move as I was caked in adhesive. Looking bloody awesome though. The bath will not be staying red.
With pale grey grout. If I could marry a floor I would marry this one.
Charlie in his white period. Walls are white, windows and trim are antique white and the contrast wall is pebble grey, which means light grey to people that don't work for Dulux.
0 comments:
Post a Comment