Remodeling our house!

Remodeling

The Belgians love remodeling their houses.....so in order to fully integrate into life here, we had to too!

In May 2004, we decided to finally add a toilet and shower to our rather small upstairs bathroom. Since this would involve giving up the bathtub, we also decided to convert the junk room (a dark room in its previoius life) next to the guest room into a full bathroom.

Oh my oh my have we learned an awful lot about remodeling in Belgium! Things like the fact that new bathroom furniture can take 8 weeks to be delivered (they're not just available at the store!!), having a tiler come to your house to measure can be done in 2-3 days, but it can take 4 months to get on the schedule to actually have the work done, and, then, to top it all off, for three weeks in the summer the entire Belgian building industry simultaneously goes on vacation (de bouwverlof), putting a rather sudden halt in any remodeling activities which had been progressing...
And then, of couse, there is the large quantity of red and gray dust that is generated by drilling through 3 floors of concrete & brick. What a contrast to wood!! I think we are STILL finding dust, even after multiple cleanings. Overall, we started in May and finished in late December, with a lot of "dead" time as we waited for deliveries of sinks, cabinets, tubs, tiles, etc. However, we were very lucky to have a plumber who was very tolerant of our less-than-good Dutch and now that the work is done, we are very pleased with the results.

Since we had turned the house into a building site, we also redid the kids bedrooms (they now sleep separately), rearranged the guest room and painted the entryway. Our next project? The kitchen, as soon as we've recovered from this project - so probably 2010 or so...

See upstairs - downstairs - entryway - John's bedroom - Lydia's bedroom - guest bedroom

We started with this upstairs - a bathtub with a slanted ceiling on top, a sink, bidet (!) and very stylish (for 1971!) orange tiles.


And now...
A new shower on the left, and a toilet! The slanted ceiling is hidden behind the toilet (that's a new wall behind the toilet)	On the right, a sink with cabinets above and below. In the far right corner, you can see our heated towel rack!

Our downstairs room on the right ---> and below --v This had been used as a dark room by the former occupants, so it had a sink in it already. We had it all ripped out, Karen spackled, sanded, painted, and got everything ready, while a friend of a friend we'd hired (who only spoke Dutch, of course!) did all the heavy lifting, drilling, etc, turning it into what you see below. It was quite an adventure, but worth it in the end.
The junk room became...
Our heated towel rack. Do you get the feeling that Karen likes warm towels??	The new tub and shower in the background, and the new sink and furniture (with the toilet just visible) - a great guest bathroom!

The entryway - a nice, plain color, matches most other colors - but was that good enough for Karen? Nooooo!!!!


The kids helping out, painting the entryway ----> Well, Karen decided to opt for a nice shade of red, and, doubtful as I was, I must admit that it really does look quite nice.

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