Renovation Of My Studio Apartment - The Story Behind Interior Design

We started the renovation of this studio apartment with a tiny portion of the money or better to say with almost nothing, and it took us a whole year to finish it with lots of improvisational acrobatics when it comes to interior design. Besides that, there are some other things why I consider completion of this project as one of our (my) big accomplishments in 2017.

It was the first apartment in which my husband and I started to live together as a married couple. As with the children the family grew up, we bought a bigger apartment and moved into it.

As my mom was living alone and had a very small pension, I moved her into this studio apartment so she wouldn't have to pay the rent not just elsewhere but not at all anymore. To make her feel even more secure in that sense, we put the entire ownership solely on my name.

She lived there for almost full 20 years until 2010 when at the age of 90 she decided to go to a nearby home for the elderly. Then things become ugly and messy in which scenario several family members (each of them in its own way) played the key roles.

To make the long story short! The lock of the apartment was changed (not by me), and I wasn't able to enter my property for six years while during whole that time utility bills were regularly arriving.

A friend of mine who is also my lawyer wanted to end that drama for me hundreds of times during those six years, but I didn't allow him as I wanted to avoid dragging my over 90 years old mom to the court what would be inescapable in that case.

Although those six years cost me a lot of nerves and money, I firmly believed it would all settle down at its place one day. The only thing I didn't know was when and how. But you know how they say: "God works in mysterious ways!" And, when you expect the less in the most unpredictable way things happen.

For me, it was somewhere at the end of May 2016 when I was finally able to enter my property. We didn't know what we are going to find, although I tried to prepare myself, as I thought, almost to any possible outcome. Still, the findings shocked me.

The place was devasted, dirty and cluttered while on the other hand, some more valuable antique furniture pieces were missing. The entire balcony was taken by pigeons who nested there and full of their feces. We didn't know where to start, and I was a bit desperate, especially when we soon after discovered all the tubes in the bathroom were clogged the way they couldn't be repaired but replaced while the kitchen sink has been leaking.

It happens to be that about a month and a half earlier (somewhere at the beginning of April 2016) we started a complete renovation of another apartment in the closer city center which we wanted to rent for tourists, and we were just finishing some main reconstruction work there.

It also happens to be that our daughter was getting married in two months and beside the wedding itself, we also wanted to support her to settle down in her new home. And last but not least, our youngest son was planning to move abroad in following five months, so we wanted to help him as well.

In other words, not only that whole our savings have been already allocated but we even had to take some loans to be able to cover the expenses that all occurred (some of them somewhat unplanned) as it seemed at the same time. There was not a single penny left for that studio apartment that showed up as the "cream on the top of the cake" above all those expenses.

The utility bills and other expenses connected to this studio apartment were killing us slowly for the past six years, and we wanted to get rid of that burden as soon as it would be possible by putting it in function so we can rent it. To be able to do that we were aware we would have to do a lot of things by ourselves.

Besides that, we had to renew the whole bathroom completely, built in entirely new airconditioning system, so I had to kiss goodbye my wish for new kitchen cabinets and appliances, as well as the idea for some new room furniture. We had to figure out how to use and put into function all the existing ones.

When all the clutter around the first apartment renovation, our daughter's wedding, and our youngest son's moving abroad settled down, every spare minute we had we spent in this small studio apartment by cleaning, repairing, renovating, arranging and rearranging.

It didn't take long and year 2016 became 2017, winter became spring, and spring became summer. To be precise, it was already August 2017 when we finally finished it, and here is the result.

Now I'm glad I didn't give up!

Posted on Saturday, January 13, 2018

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