Since we’re refurbishing our flat, I thought it would be interesting to chart its progress here.
All the pictures in this post were taken by the previous owners before we bought the place. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post more pictures as all the refurbishment work starts to happen.
We decided to make our refurb as eco-friendly as possible - but we realised pretty quickly how difficult it was to make choices that reflected that ideal. There simply isn’t a ‘best’ way to do things - everything is a compromise of sorts, so you just have to do the best you can.
The Kitchen
In the kitchen, we’re taking up the floors (some of which were damaged), replacing the appliances (the old owners already took the washing machine and dishwasher), boiler and the counters, but keeping the cupboards. By deciding to save the cupboards, we made things incredibly difficult on ourselves - anything new had to be sized to fit the existing layout and we’re going to have to be really careful doing work around them.
Bedroom
The old hot water and heating system was a bit strangely set up - with both a combi boiler and an electric immersion heater. So we’re changing the system along with replacing the boiler with something much more efficient. The bedrooms were set up in a strange way as well, so we’re re-arranging the floorplan to make it a bit more sensible. However, this meant a lot of time with structural engineers and architects to get landlord’s consent and the party wall sorted out. We’re still not there on all of that, but we’re hoping that the ridiculous amount of steel our engineer wants us to put in will keep everyone happy.
