Remember how to find your place? Well, to find it is just the beginning and I’m not kidding…
After we saw (our-to-be) apartment and we have agreed that this is the place we were looking for, we went through dozens of administrative-law-bank troubles.
So, in brief, at the beginning of May last year, we bought our first (hope not least) brand new apartment. Right after that, we went on a vacation to Amsterdam. Really good timing, yeah! But our trip was planned a long time ago before we even knew we’re going to find our place, so no matter what, we enjoyed a really good time there. Amsterdam is great place, honestly, I would love to go there again. But I will tell you that story later.
Getting back in Sofia reality hit us hard. We were supposed to organize everything without knowing anything. Together with that, it was also necessary to figure it out what exactly we wanted. And you know what? It is actually harder to define that than to find the right people to do it. Or maybe this was the hardest thing for us, cause rest of the people knows exactly what they want. We didn’t 🙂 (do I mention that I’m trying to be adult, but I’m not really good at it? Well, true story…)
So, here is the beginners’ list for all brand-new-apartment-owners that are going to redo their places:
- Take your time and decide precisely what exactly you would like to achieve. I’m serious. Spend at least couple of days (or more) on that, and do not even think about doing something before you actually know what do you want, how and where do you want it.
If you have the chance to hire your own designer you’ll have to explain your wishes to him/her. But if you intend to furnish your place by yourselves, you will definitely need time to think about all the details and little things that actually all of us forgot in the first place. Here is a couple of ideas:
- have a look at the scheme of your place, and it would be good if there is an architectural scheme with furnish. That is how you’ll get the initial designer’s idea and most probably you’ll see where there are water pipes, ducts, electricity, you will also see which wall you can actually remove and which one you can’t. Then you’ll know if you could make some of the rooms bigger/smaller and so on, and together with that, you’ll know if you’ll need a plumber to change your water or electricity installations or you’ll use the one that is already there.
- go to your place with tape line and measure everything. Then compare your results with the scheme above and add changes where needed.
- try to make (2D/3D) visualization of your plans with some of the programs that are available free online (just to get the perspective and to feel the space).
- last, but not least – define your style prior to going on step 2. Do you like the Scandinavian style, or rustic, or minimalism? Well, if you’re not quite sure – buy couple of magazines for furnishing & home ideas, go to a couple of furniture stores, imagine your home, or friends’ places and define what you like or dislike there, what you think best suits you, or you don’t want to have at all.
2. Set your budget (and prepare at least 30% above in addition, believe me – you’ll need that money for sure).
Basically – no matter how much money you’ll plan, and how many buffers you’ll add in addition for ‘non-expected’ costs, money will never be enough. Together with the budget you’ll have to define what kind of materials you’re going to use (expensive ones, cheap ones, so on…) and you’ll have to decide where you’ll spend more (for the walls for example) and where you’ll spend less (for lighting for example). Of course, if your budget is limitless – you won’t have these problems, but for the rest, 90% of the population on Earth – just a note from me: do not save money from materials, especially for the water and electrical installation and supplies and for the bathroom stuff. Next to the roll in this list are (at least for me): nice, quality flooring, lightening, appliances, paint, and then – the furniture. And you can always leave some of the things for a later stage and move on to the most necessary things at first.
3. Find the right guys to redo your place.
I know that this is a tuff thing to do. You better ask your friends and relatives for any recommendations for construction workers, look over the internet and compare at least a couple of offers. Do not go just for the cheapest or the most expensive ones. Look for any clients’ reviews, check their completed projects, ask for photos and so on. Depends on the budget, of course, try to avoid these ones that are selling you something really cheap – most probably the quality would be low.
If you hire a company that will take care for everything – make a contract with exact dates, prices and put non-performance clauses (just to be sure that everything will go as expected).
If you’re going to use different guys for different things (plumber, electrician, dyer, so on) – try to do the above (I’m not sure that would happen) or at least put your rules and dates strictly and observe constantly and regularly if everything is alright.
One more thing to think about – are you going to buy everything by yourselves, or these guys will buy all needed by themselves for you and you will pay them the bill? If you’re sure that they will buy everything in your list and they are giving you the bills afterwards – save your time and leave them do it.
4. Observe the process all the time.
No matter how many times you will visit your place, there will be always something that it is not quite ok or is not going according to the plan. Sorry. So, try to be there at least once per 2 or 3 days. Otherwise, you’ll be surprised by the result in the end and you won’t get exactly what you asked for. (let me just mention that during the redo, we went on 2 vacations and we paid the price for that…). And I’m not saying that you should be there constantly, but at least try to be there often.
5. Make sure your timing sticks to the reality. Put a couple of weeks (or a month) as extra to your plan. If your workers are ready earlier – good, if not – you’ll have a backup plan.
6. Hire/pay someone to clean-up after all workers leave your place. Do not even think about investing numerous hours (and days) of washing, wiping, drying, scrubbing…
7. (as a plus) Plan your moving using someone’s help or use company to do it.
8. (as an additional plus) Brace yourselves for a couple of weeks ‘living on the edge’ 🙂 You’ll look for your clothes in numerous of boxes, you won’t know where are your shoes or bags or whatever, but eventually everything will be fine.
You may ask what have we done? Well, we fucked up everything, of course! We didn’t know what to do then we didn’t know what exactly we want and we left the workers to took a couple of really important decisions by themselves. Yes, they took the wrong decisions. Also, we didn’t have good timing and we didn’t strictly observe our workers. Therefore we were above and beyond the deadlines and we took a couple of other (wrong) decisions too late. Then we paid to a company to clean-up at the wrong time, so we were supposed to clean again afterward. A couple of times. We moved by ourselves, which costs us a lot of nerves and brain damages and in the end – yep, we were living on the edge. 2 months! (honestly, I really don’t know how we managed to survived)