Creating a home chapter 1

For a long time I’ve wondered what it meant to create a home. At first it felt like a dream that never was going to be accomplished. But then I met my husband. He showed me that feeling at home meant finding peace where you feel most comfortable. For me that meant being together with him and my son. I know I will always feel at home wherever they are.

That doesn’t mean the process of creating a home is easy. For many it’s a journey of finding the perfect place and making it your own to share with your family. But along the way you’ll find many obstacles.

At the Summer of 2018 me and my husband decided to find ourselves a home. When our first son passed away in April that year, we found it hard to call the apartment that we lived in, a home anymore. Not that it was bad living there, we just couldn’t bear our lost memories there, the memories that could never be, the ones taken away from us.

We were ready to create a new home. We started looking for apartments in the neighborhood where our son was buried, so we would still be close to him. It was a difficult search. We had to find something for a low budget (€110.000 or below) with an amount of work we could handle.

A very difficult task since everything of that budget needed a lot of work, but a really BIG AMOUNT of work. We found something we thought was doable and we could get it for a €110.000. Maybe a paint job here and there, new flooring and a new kitchen. There was a small leak, but the seller promised it would soon be fixed and it would only need a paint job. Oh boy we were so naive…

After we signed the deed of sale, the man said: ‘Oh by the way, you have one year to fix the electricity…’First obstacle started. Ok, all right, the electricity, we can do that. It’s not like we could go back in time. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t upset that they held that information from us.

Ok, next step. We had to go and sign the papers for the loan at the notary. At this point, we couldn’t back out in any way. The lady who sold the apartment and came: ‘Oh the leak isn’t fixed and it got a lot worse…’ To make a long story short, in the beginning it was a fixer-upper and then it suddenly changed and we could compare our experience with the journey of the couple in the old movie The MoneyPit with Tom Hanks. 😂

But we were determined to make it our home. After more than two years it still isn’t perfect, but we’re getting there. We’re aiming for another year to fix the front balcony/windows, some small chores and then organizing everything neatly.

So the passed two years we’ve been very busy and that with our second son joining us in April 2020. I’m surprised my hair isn’t grey yet. 😅 It has been very hard so far.

One of the first steps was to fix the leak that already expanded from the master bedroom into the small bedroom. There was lots of black mold and condensation on the windows in the back. We had to sleep in the living room because of it. It was a long quest of around 8 months of constantly calling and mailing insurance and the upstairs neighbors to get some financial compensation.

There was loads of work and there wasn’t a day that went passed without the usual stress of getting things done and making it livable. We had lots of bad luck with contractors whose work we had to do again ourselves. The only contractor who did an amazing job was the one who did the plumbing. But luckily along the way we had lots of help from friends and family. My brother who came to move lots of heavy items. My brothers-in-law who helped to place our ceiling, my other brother-in law who helped to move our stuff to our new apartment and my father-in-law who came to help with the electricity. We wouldn’t have gotten as far without them.

But even with all the bad luck, I wouldn’t want to go back anymore, as I feel this place is turning into our home. It’s not perfect, but it’s ours.

Our journey in pictures: 

Master bedroom: good morning condensation.

And the mold that came along

The ceiling in the small bedroom: The leak that expanded into this room.

Living room: the junk that comes along with renovating. The boxes at the back were to keep curious people from seeing how bad everything was.😅

The old kitchen

The balcony in the front. It’s even worse at the moment, so we can't come here. All the red bricks were loose, so we had to remove them to keep the people below on the street safe.

Working in the master bedroom: Making the walls and ceiling white and trying to conceal that horrible stone carpet with beautiful wooden floors. (Not sponsored). Our cat Fristi got a bit curious.😊

When we got rid of the kitchen: We soon realized that it still needed a lot of work...

The old bathroom: You can see that the doors got removed. 

Working in the small bedroom

Working outside: balcony at the back, finishing up the outer wall.

And somehow I didn’t notice my administration was piling up.

In the week to come, I’ll post an update of a-room-a-week and how it is at the moment. Our goal is to create something we could sell and create our home in France. For now it’s still lots of work, but we’ve already accomplished a lot in the past two years.

What was the worst thing you came across while renovating? I would love to know your experiences.