Waking up Sleeping Beauty: An epic DIY project

I created The Balcony Gardener primarily to focus on my little balcony veggies project, to discuss and describe urban gardening and related issues, and to talk about using my (hopefully bountiful) balcony harvest.
However, life, as they say, is what happens when you are busy making other plans. I think it might even have been Mr John Lennon who said that. And he was not wrong...As it turns out, while I was busy making plans for the balcony and all the plant life contained within, life presented me with a truly unique challenge. Or opportunity, whichever way you want to see it. Basically, my flat's being sold. This of course left me with a number of options: find a new flat here in Düsseldorf, move to Essen (where I work most of the time), or option three: move in with my boyfriend and renovate his grandparents' old home. Needless to say, we chose option three, everything else wouldn't have been interesting enough to write about on here! :) The idea was to put the following part into a kind of sub-blog on The Balcony Gardener. However, this seems to be impossible and therefore I shall just have to keep two separate blogs, one for the garden, one for the DIY project I'm going to explain now.
Soooo, after a deep breath and a long discussion we have now embarked on a new adventure, namely, Waking Up Sleeping Beauty. A house that's been empty for about 14 years. Built over a hundred years ago as a farm, the place is now home to my boyfriend and his family, the back part though, where his grandmother lived until she died, is presently disused. Well, it was home to various plants in the winter and is currently being emptied of an assortment of things you'd normally find in a spacious attic or basement. Christmas decorations, old clothes, old furniture...and once it's empty, we can start renovating.

 This is it. The back part, with the roof sticking out a bit on the right, that's where my boyfriend and I are going to live. The front part is where the family currently lives. Everything surrounding the house is the garden. Plenty of room for my veggies! *rubs hands together*





Of course, renovating a house that has not been lived in (and renovating it on a shoestring!) requires a lot of planning and creativity and even more hard work.

The front door and part of the hallway/ kitchen. Lovely door, but not exactly well-insulated. We are keeping the old floor tiles because it would break my heart to see them go. All the walls need to have the wallpaper removed and the plaster stripped off down to the brick wall. The outside wall needs thermal insulation, all the wiring needs to be redone, as does the plumbing. Then we need to re-plaster the walls before wallpapering and painting them.



Below is another view of the kitchen. This is where the dining table is going to be, right next to the window.

We have since removed this "gorgeous" wallpaper. A deeply satisfying task. ;)

Why I couldn't let go of the tiles. Aren't they fantastic? Just need a bit of tlc and a scrubbing brush.

 It's hard to imagine right now, but this room will one day be our bathroom.

Right now it's more of a storage room.

 And this room, next to the kitchen, is going to be the bedroom.

 So yes, a lot of really, really hard work awaits us!

The epic To Do List:

• re-do all the walls
• thermal insulation
• new wiring
• plumbing needs work
• bathroom and bedroom need new floors
• two of the windows need to be replaced
• the front door
• a bathroom needs to be installed
• new kitchen
• a new door to my boyfriend's bedroom, our future living room
• painting and decorating

and probably lots of other things I've forgotten now. Oof!

And hopefully, it will end up looking more like this, one day. (Digital image courtesy of my brilliant boyfriend)

Over the next weeks and months I would like to use this blog as a kind of diary, chronicling the renovation work as it is happening. It's going to be extremely busy, but I'm looking forward to it! Let's wake up Sleeping Beauty ;)

Another busy weekend

 Last Friday I found myself on the train to Winnekendonk once more, for a weekend of birthday BBQ and building work. So after a quick trip to Essen to teach the last course of that week, and my own driving lesson, here I am, ready to get started.
From the outside, the house looks great already: cosy, inviting, sunset-lit.

 Round the corner, down the path.

 Towards the gate my boyfriend built last week. Now we don't have to go aaaall the way round the house to visit his parents!

And there it is! The front door, looking lovely. But what awaits us inside?
Well...

 This!
The kitchen.

 My boyfriend's been busy over the last two weeks, getting rid of all the old plaster and the dividing walls.

 Here he is, the man himself! :)

 Taking away that wall and getting rid of this godawful old wallpaper has already made such a difference. The whole room feels bigger, airier and somewhat brighter.
Now that the plaster has been removed, we can start thinking about the electrics and plumbing, where we want sockets and light switches and where the water pipes have to go. Being the slightly geeky people that we are we have of course already drawn up a plan of all the sockets and switches we want, especially in the kitchen! No more extension cords EVER, if I have any say in the matter!

 Work! So much work! Aaargh...

 Our future bathroom is now mostly empty.

 Time for a well-earned rest!

 Granny's bed's gone now as well, which just leaves the old wardrobe. After taking that out, we discovered, tucked away in the corner, behind a paper-thin MDF wall...

 ...a secret doorway! Sadly, no family treasure and/or walled-in, dead bodies to be found. :(

 But still, I am more and more convinced that we are moving into The Burrow! It's definitely held up by magic, rooms have been added and taken away, and the layout is extremely interesting.

 What looked like an ordinary wall revealed a long-forgotten passage to the kitchen. Way back, when building regulations were still unheard of, people just added doors and entire rooms to buildings as and when needed. The ceiling height changes from room to room, too.

 Ta-daa, a door!

 Removing old wallpaper, a task everybody just loves!

 Once that was done, all that was left to be done in that room for that day was removing the old carpet. We found slightly damp floorboards, resting on a layer of ashes, stamped down dirt and gravel/broken bits of plaster. No stone floor! :)

And that was it! Another busy weekend gone. The next steps include completely emptying the future bedroom and starting on the wiring and plumbing in the kitchen.Then the kitchen window and the front door, thermal insulation, the ceiling and finally, plastering the walls so that we can paint them and assemble the kitchen. Then we could, technically move in! :D Ok, we would have to knock down the wall between kitchen and living room first, but still. As soon as we have a working kitchen, we could move in.