Kitchen excavations

March 17, 2018 Adventures in homeownership

It’s been a while since I last posted but I have been fully absorbed in the renovation process. I moved into the house just around new years, which is when the work really got started. As you might know, my house doesn’t currently have a kitchen, because a previous owner had tore it out but then never finished their renovations. What they left me with wasn’t exactly a blank slate to get started on, so there has been a lot for me to tackle, and the building being as old as it is has thrown me a couple of curve balls too. So far I have: Removed a thick layer...

The curse of indecision

December 28, 2017 Adventures in homeownership

A certain theme that I have noticed in my decisionmaking regarding the house is, well, a constant case of indecision. Being the single owner of the house, unlike my old apartment where my parents owned 1/3 each, means I get to have the final say in all things. For better and for worse. Constantly second-guessing myself is a behaviour I recognise from back when I had just gone the self-employed route within the design business instead of being a hired junior designer at a firm. How can I make the right decision if I do not have a boss to ask? When it came to design, I would often ask...

Planning a bathroom

December 15, 2017 Adventures in homeownership

One of the first things that needs to be finished in the house so that I can actually move in and stop squatting at my mother’s is a functioning bathroom. When i bought the house, there was a small downstairs loo with a working sink, but that was it. The previous owner had prepared work on a bathroom, but never actually finished it, so it’s been up to me to make sure I get it to a place where it’s actually usable. The previous owner had bought (but not installed) a toilet and a sink, and I purchased a shower cubicle, washing machine, and a towel drying rack. I ideally wanted...

Choosing the right style

October 6, 2017 Adventures in homeownership

A thing that is important to me when renovating is that I show respect for the old building. I am not too fussed about using exactly the “right” materials or techniques, because it can easily get out of hand and I would end up spending too much time on research – but at the same time making sure that the style of your doors and windows matches with the period of the building sure brings a huge element of cohesion. I have been struggling to find any comprehensive guides on the building styles of the 1850s, and one write-up about it that I found mostly just described it as “eclecticism”....

Today’s hyperfixation: dehumidifiers

August 24, 2017 Adventures in homeownership

The biggest issue that is also in the most urgent need of solving, is the water damage in the crawl space. The space is generally super humid, and water is somehow leaking in from the outside. Not even the surveyperson I hired could entirely figure out how the water made its way in. There are two main parts to fixing the crawl space Repairing and replacing the beams and boards that have started to rot Insulating and then installing a humidifier and proper ventilation These two will together eat up a generous chunk of my overall budget, so it’s also important from an economic point of view to get them...

Budgeting…

August 22, 2017 Adventures in homeownership

Right now there isn’t a lot of exciting things to share because all I do is trawling the home improvement stores online catalogues, trying to budget the start of this project. I’ve realized that it’s a bit beyond my scope to try to figure out how much it would cost to renovate the entire house, and it’s also not entirely relevant since that once the more pressing things are finished, I intend to complete it bit by bit over an extended period of time. The rooms that I am focusing right now are the kitchen and the bathroom, because those are the rooms that need to be done for the...

Planning a kitchen

August 12, 2017 Adventures in homeownership

(source for photo in header) While it’s still about two weeks until I get the keys to the house, and another two weeks after that at least until I can actually live there, I’m trying to do the most of my time by planning the interior. One of the big things that need doing is the entire kitchen. I’ve lusted after a kitchen with subway tiles, open shelving, and a belfast sink for years and now I can finally probably get it? Settling on a style though is just so hard! One second I’m certain that a white subway tile will be the best thing, and the other second I’m...

So I bought a house…

August 11, 2017 Adventures in homeownership

fter months of looking for a small house that I could afford, somewhere in the south east of Sweden, I stumbled upon this gorgeous cottage. It’s a cross timber frame, so the walls are thick making the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and it has a stone “garage” that will be perfect to use as a workshop and studio. I was looking for properties under 800k SEK (about 100k USD or 83k EUR) because that’s what kind of mortgage I would be able to afford. And along came this gem at 340k, and a seller who wasn’t interested in a bidding war so she would...