Covering the yellow sea.....

I'll stop joking about our yellow floor now. As I said, we're over it and i'm sure yellow floors will be HOT for 2008. On sunday we had to cover the complete floor so that it's all protected for the tiles to be delivered on tuesday and all the works that will follow.

We're over the floor already!

Last week we had a professional company sand, clean and treat our floor to make it look like new. We envisioned a cool whitewashed floor but after some rounds of advice (mainly advising against whitewashing) ended up with something completely different. So when we went to see the result on saturday we were kinda unhappily surprised. Not that they did a bad job. Not at all. The floor looks as new. Just very much a natural looking (yellowish) oak floor instead of the more white/smokey/bleached whitewash we had in mind. All a case of bad management of expectations. We decided after a bad night's sleep that we'll grow to like it.... eventually. So we're over it.... kinda ;-)

Cleaning out the place for the floor guys...

On sunday, Nik and I cleaned out the place and tried to stag as much of the tools and materials in the bathroom. On monday the floor guys will start to refresh and treat the oak wood floor that was pretty dirty. It will take them about a week to do all the treatments, so this week will be pretty easy for us.... we can't go into the house anyway!

The bathroom continued...

Last friday I had the day off to help my brother with the bathroom. Not much visible work. I was in charge of insulating the walls with this green glassfibery stuff that gets in your lungs and hands :-) Loads of fun. Better even, it disappears behind the walls and tiles in the end so it's one of the most invisible jobs you can think off. After insulating the walls, we made a start with putting Aqua Panels on the wall. These are basically waterproof plates of cement that will need to support the heavy tiles.

Mega suction!

We have a bit of a suction/ventilation problem. The apartment and the rest of the building have enough pipes to make the ladies of pleasure around the corner grin, but none of them really suck well (the pipes, i mean). If we don't fix that problem, we'll have big moist problems in our million dollar bathroom so my brother had to come up with a solution for that. Result is a big industrial suction motor that connects a few pretty prominent - and also very industrial looking - metal hollow beams. We think they look very tough :-)

Early morning pick-ups

The view over the "Ij", the water behind Central Station that seperates Amsterdam from Amsterdam-Noord (North)... an area I thought (hoped) I would never visit. But our tile store has their depot on an industry terrain over there so I had to pay the place a visit.... twice, before work.... getting stuck in heavy traffic on the way back to work... But what a beautiful sunrise in the morning :-) Not beautiful enough though to make me come back, lol.

Meet the neighbours!

I guess we are moving into a really cozy and friendly street because before even really moving in, we met most of the neighbours already. Both our downstairs neighbours, Aafke and Leendert and our next door neighbours, Bas-Jan and his wife, who are currently renovating too, are encredibly friendly and hospitable. On top of that, Nik and I ran into a colleague of mine, Stan, who is actually our neighbour accross the street. I promise to buy heavy curtains Stan! lol. The whole street has got a very villagelike feel to it. Quite surprising. Add to that half a dozen of ladies of pleasure around the corner and the holiest of neighbours looking right into our living room and you have the perfect safe haven ;-)

The state of the apartment after 1 week of works

man, was i surprised when i entered the apartment on saturday. I hadn't seen the progress in 3 days, so it was quite a shock to see that the whole outside of the bathroom had been built from scrath. The plumber and electrician had miraculously found their way around all the mysterious threads and pipes that seemed to come from anywhere and have made everything ready for the new bathroom. Nik and I spent the whole week chasing after the suppliers for the taps and easydrain, searching the internet for technical specifications on just about every little article we're gonna use and making final decisions on utterly important questions as to where do we want light switches to go and stuff. But now seeing how the place is progressing, the pieces are slowly falling in the right place. I'm starting to enjoy the whole thing now ;-)

The first 3 days - Demolition time

The first 3 days were spent on the demolition of the big wooden box where the bathroom and children's room were situated. That "wooden box" is the only thing breaking the otherwise big open lofty space of 120 m2. We decided to tear the whole thing down as it will prove to be easier to rebuild the bathroom completely. The bathroom is going to be twice the size it was (with a bath tub, a big double sink and a luxurious sized walk in shower) but the improvised extra room has to go and will make way for an extra inbuild closet. The total size of that wooden box will be approximately the same as it was before.