One of the advantages about buying the place where we already lived is that we wouldn’t have to move. At least you’d think that, right? The only thing that would change is who got the rent money at the end of the month and we wouldn’t have to ask permission if we wanted to change something or get a cat (which we did: Hi Duke!)
Except… except when you own the place, all of a sudden, all of the things you’d been complaining about during your years of renting were now under your control. You could, for example, take down and get rid of the dirty, broken window shades. Or toss away the shelves you didn’t like.
Or you could simply get rid of the whole kitchen and replace it with a new one, since the old one was really old and didn’t work quite like you’d expect a kitchen to work. And hey, as long as you’re getting rid of the kitchen, the broken entry closet could stand a refurbishment and while we’re at it, maybe fix that crack in the ceiling and get more storage and and and.
And this is where we are now.
We did, in fact, start with the kitchen. Back in December we offered it for sale and got an offer. So I carefully took it all apart* and a guy came to get it. By himself. Which meant I had to help carry it down the stairs. So much for not moving. Of course, with the kitchen gone, we needed a place to prepare food until the new one arrived. I pulled out the old portable oven from our time at the Ukmerges apartment (there the oven didn’t work at all so anytime we wanted to cook something, we had to put this monstrosity on the too small countertops and put it away in the box when we were done) and we bought a new two-top electric hotplate. We started by just putting these things on the old kitchen table in the kitchen area for a few weeks, but then we needed to clear that area for the paint and electrical guys to come and do their magic before the kitchen builder could come and install all the new cabinets and appliances (which, by this point, were stacking up in our living room).
So all of the cooking materials and the fridge moved into the living room while the kitchen was completely made over. The dishes were washed in the bathroom sink and put in the dry rack on top of the washing machine. The coffee maker was filled via the bathtub.
“Adventure!”**
Eventually, the kitchen guy came and installed a beautiful new kitchen, putting in all our new appliances (which we still need to figure out how to use completely) and allowing us to get back in there to make food.
But then the living room needed doing. See, we’d ordered a new entry closet at the same time we ordered the new kitchen, from the same guy, so we knew we’d need to get the living room sorted out before the closet was able to be installed.
Here we go again.
This time, though, it was a bit more complex since the ceiling needed to be done as well. So, now everything needed to come out of the living room (which wasn’t as bad as it might have been since most of it had been packed up to make room for the kitchen stuff, which was now going back into the kitchen. It was now just a matter of moving those boxes of books and games into the hallway and then removing the old entry closet and the entertainment center, along with the two hanging cabinets and the futon.
Part of the entry closet, though, was the back wall of it, which was made of a huge sheet of glass. There was also a sheet of glass separating the hall from the kitchen which I had unceremoniously shattered (we placed an ad offering them both for free to anyone who wanted to come and cart them away, and we got a taker, but by that point, only the one was left). In the original design of the closet, that sheet of glass had a fluorescent light behind it, with a switch dangling on the outside. It probably would have looked lovely when illuminated, the light diffused through the frosted glass and lighting up the living room. Unfortunately, like most of the lighting in this place, it was done rather weirdly and there was actually no way to get behind the glass to change the bulbs. I know. I tried for 4 and a half years to figure it out. This was my white whale, and it was with some great satisfaction I realized that the only way to get back there was to completely remove one of the sides of the closet. Unfortunately, I discovered this as a part of dismantling the whole damn thing.
Additionally, since there were no takers for the furniture bits, I had to take them all apart, too (The futon did go to a new home and so lives on!). Of course, now we had stacks of wood piled in the living room and the only place to dispose of it was in a city sanctioned recycling center. My friend Simas graciously consented to help me and again I found myself “not moving” but racking up daily steps going up and down the stairs and loading this all into a rented van to take to the dump.
This was the second time Simas and I had been there in a short period of time since we’d also had to go there to drop off the old toilet (Oh yeah, that had needed to be replaced as well, along with all the pipes in the kitchen).
In the end, the entire room was empty and ready for Mindaugas, our drywall and paint guy, to come in and get the living room ready. We’ve already ordered a new sofa and entertainment center, three new ceiling lights (all of which take normal, screw them in yourself light bulbs – something the old lights in these areas did not) and the entry closet. Most of which will be here by the end of February (except the sofa, which is coming in March).
As I write this, the living room is three days away from being finished. We’ll be able to stop living in the office and bedroom for a while. But then, after a short break, it’ll start again. The bathroom needs a new tub and some work to make sure there are no more leaks. And Monki has already picked the colors she wants for her room, which also has a huge crack in the ceiling and so will need to be stripped down completely and redone. And I’ll be taking apart more furniture and figuring out some way to get it to the recycling center.
Adventure indeed!
*with the exception of clipping a live wire with a pair of pliers and knocking out the power to the apartment.
** “Adventure” is what we say when things are not ideal. It’s a way to reframe things so instead of getting frustrated or angry, we just say we’re on an adventure and know it will all work out in the end.
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 