What it's like to live in a construction pit for 3 months, part 2: Building the studio and living cost free

A tough decision

The best thing about building your own home from scratch, is that you get to decide EVERYTHING about it. And sometimes you even have to break your head about possibilities you hadn't even considered before hand!

I remember making plans for the space we had bought, even before we had removed all the junk and disaster left by the previous owner. Our house has what we call a 'Rotterdamse splitsing', a way in which apartments are separated which you can find a lot in Rotterdam, but not in so many other places, and requires some explanation.

Rotterdamse splitsing: In a multi-story house, with multiple apartments, the homes aren't separated simply by floors. But half a floor can belong to one home, the other half to a different one. In our case, we own the third floor of our building and half of the fourth. Our neighbour below owns the second floor, but also the other half of the 4th. To get to our half of the 4th floor, we use a stairway which we share with our neighbour.

This is the view on the shared staircase from our third floor, after we took down the walls that formed the hallway

Sharing the staircase did not match my idea's of privacy ;), so when planning how to arrange the home we thought about building a private stairs as well, having a living and working area downstairs and the bathroom and bedroom on the top (half) floor.

Then a friend casually brought up the idea of turning the above half floor INTO A STUDIO instead. And first I thought, no way. Because the top floor was very cute with its pitched roof, perfect for a romantic bedroom. And especially because of the balcony, the only outdoors space the home has, which catches a lot of sunlight and has a view on one of Rotterdam's most Iconic pieces of architecture, the Erasmus Bridge.

Never mind that in this pic we were still in middle of construction work and the balcony is a mess - you get an idea of the view, and it is actually really cool

It was a rather tough decision. To give up the extra living space and especially the balcony. Which I'd really love to sit on whenever the sun is out. But after pondering it for a while, we did decide to go with that friend's idea of building a separate studio on the 4th floor. And the very awesome part of it is, that now we rent it out and the income it gives easily covers the mortgage on the whole home and also some extra costs like water, electricity, internet and insurances for the house. Meaning, our living expenses are close to zero. And when we travel, we can rent out the third floor apartment also, creating enough of an income to live from if we go to countries where life is cheaper, like in Asia. We have less living space in square meters, but a lot of added freedom financially and so much increased opportunity for traveling and doing what we love most in life. I think it is really worth it.

Amazing sunset at Koh Samui, Thailand, where we spent the month of December back in 2016, while renting out both the third and fourth floor of our home

Building a 25 square meter home

I don't know if there are a lot of countries where homes can be as tiny as in ours. Probably in Europe, with the old city centers which are very popular and very crowded, people are used to living in small spaces. The studio we built has a total of 25 square meters (not including the balcony), and has its own kitchen and bathroom and all. What started out as a dark and murky attic is now actually a cute single person home. But let's start at the beginning ;).

Removing the rubble

As with the rest of the home, the 4th floor needed some tearing down and cleaning up before we could build anything. I don't think the previous owner even used this part of the home. It was in a bad shape, with some parts being moldy and rotten and taking all that stuff out was pretty gross. Was happy when we had moved it out.

Preparing for isolating the ceiling and walls

Kingspan!!

After tearing down and cleaning out, first thing to do was isolate the ceiling and walls. We built a wooden framework and covered it with Kingspan, a plasterboard and isolation material combination. Great for keeping warmth in and heat out, but rather space consuming in the tiny home.

The Kingspan got delivered in this huge truck!

At least the guys who delivered it had some materials to move the stuff

!

We had to move everything by hand!

And there were definitely times...

...that I honeslty wondered...

...why on earth we were building...

...on the fourth floor

Once we started covering the walls and ceilings, the place started to brighten up!

Design

At this point important decisions were being made of where to put what. We designated an area for the kitchen...

Kitchen was going to be below the small window, with a Kingspan element in place to give a feel for size

and for the bathroom.

See the tiny room in the room? The wall in the back still had to be closed at this point. Here we planned the bathroom

The challenge was, all the time, to plan for things when you can't really know how they will turn out. Probably, if you do these kind of processes a lot, then you'll get a feel for it. But in a 25 square meter home, how will you decide how much space to take for the kitchen, for the bathroom? You need to plan electra and faucets way before seeing the material with which you will even be building. If you'll build a tiny bathroom, than how much space will you leave for the toilet, how big or small can the showering cabinet be to feel kind of comfortable but still be the smallest possible?

I was doodling out little floor plans and walking around with my measuring stick all the time. Because while a lot of the physical hard work I could leave up to the guys, we had kind of arranged it so that I was in charge of deciding what went where. Which was really awesome, and even though it was a challenge, I thoroughly enjoyed this literally super creative part of building our home(s).

The biggest metamorphoses

When the stucco-guy came, things really started to get moving. The place started to reveal a bit more of its home-like (potential) qualities.

Our stucco-guy is awesome at his job, very very strong and muscular and actually also an underwear model!! Lol. He would be subject of so. many. jokes. And as he's too sweet and polite to ever have any comebacks, this power tank just shyly laughs along ;)

Look at that! Getting better, right?
And did you spot the guy in that tiny area in the rooftop, working on electra and wiring!?

After the stucco-guy was done, and after the stucco had dried (that was a long wait), we got to a phase in the constructing process which was a bit more satisfying. The first part took so much time and energy, but the results didn't really show yet. Now, whenever we worked hard, there was actually some real visual improvement being made. Like the kitchen being placed:

Deadlines

I almost forgot though, even in this phase there were some parts that took a lot of time but weren't as fun for actually seeing result. Like putting in the central heating system and especially the piping and wiring and required air exit through the roof and all... By this time we had a deadline to finish the studio and a person ready to rent it from that day on (March 01-2016). So that's probably also why I enjoyed those parts that gave a lot of visual improvement a little extra!

We had to wait for a sunny day, then the boys went up on the roof to make a big hole and do the piping things. You might be catching from the way I'm describing it that this isn't really part of my expertise, I'm just really happy they were able to fix it ;)

And the boilers were up! One for the third floor and one for the fourth floor apartment

A new place to live

Next we put in the floor. First the green stuff, for isolation and flattening out the surface.

Then we put in the floor, but immediately covered it for protection, as we were still building and creating a mess all the time. When we finished putting in the floor, we also moved our bed to the studio for a while. It was by then a much better place to sleep, nice and warm, no draught and below zero temperatures ;). The heating system wasn't working yet, but the isolated walls and ceiling helped so much!!

Also, the stucco-guy was working hard on the third floor apartment by that time, so we really didn't have any other choice but to move out ;).

We had almost gotten comfortable in our third floor apartment bedroom ;). The sheets were to keep most of the dust and debris out while we were building in the opposite area. It helped. A bit.

Tiling

Then of course, the bathroom! Tiling was an interesting job. It was so cold out, my hands would hurt a lot while cutting the tiles. But my husband and I were the perfect pair for the job, and we got it done real quickly!

Husband cutting tiles

Me cutting tiles

Exhausted and satisfied

Finishing up

Then came the time when things were wrapping up, and we were working ever so hard to meet our deadline. I guess that is why we don't really have any pictures except the ones from after we were done ;). The bathroom equipment was installed, we painted the place. Grinding and painting all the woodwork was a whole project in itself. But working on the final details was a lot of fun.

Entrance to the home, the kitchen and the central heating boilers put away as neatly as we could

You spotted anything unusual about the picture above? On the final day before our first tenant would arrive, we wanted to put up a nice shelve closet on the wall below the boilers. So my husband was drilling holes at high speed, still a few more last minute things to do. And he drilled right into... one of the central heating pipes, full of water under pressure. So oh my. Did we panic. So much water everywhere. And to fix the pipe, we had to break out a whole segment of that freshly plastered wall. It was a very sad, but I guess something that happens to everyone building homes at least once in their life.

My husband filled the whole, had to let it dry, then had to go back when the tenant was actually already living there to polish the area, had to paint it again, and only after that was dry proceeded to put up the shelves system :/.

Bathroom details

Living area

The balcony, where I never get to go, but which looks amazing in the picture, right? Like a place you'd want to spend some time and have a coffee? If you're looking for a place to live in Rotterdam, you can always check if this one is free! Lol, just kidding, our tenant is great and will probably be staying a few more years...

Tenants

Our first tenant moved in on the 1st of March, 2016. And stayed for one and a half years. We had coffees and dinners together, she was more friend than tenant. You know what? She actually used to live in the other half of the fourth floor, the studio which belongs to our second floor apartment neighbour (remember the whole 'Rotterdamse splitsing' thing). While we were building our studio, she thought it would be a great improvement for her to switch places! Haha, lol, so we kind of robbed our neighbour of his tenant. But since he's out and traveling Australia for years now, I don't think he ever noticed. And our first tenant went back home to Moldavia after finishing her studies.

We have a new tenant now, a very kind girl too. We do try to purposely keep the relationship a little more professional now though. Just makes it a little more easy when it comes to landlord and tenant responsibilities. Of course, finding the right kind of tenants and how to set up the contracts and how to do it in a tax savvy way... All that required some figuring out of its own. But to be honest, having a tenant is really not that hard, once the home is in place. At least, here in Rotterdam the situation is such that there are always a zillion people looking for a place to stay, and we really got to pick our tenant from hundreds of people, giving us the privilege to find the most responsible person we could find :). Of course, a tenant who doesn't pay their rent or who neglects or even destroys the place can really be a nightmare...

Up next

Oh my I promised in my first post of this sequence (Part 1) that I'd also tell about how, in the middle of this whole process, I applied for a job and went to my job interview while we weren't having running water for exactly those few days... But this post is already so long! Maybe I'll fit it in with the next post, about building the third floor apartment and showing you where we actually live these days :).

Thank you all so much for your supporting the first part of this series!! Hope you enjoyed this second part too, and that you will be there for the third!