What are the Burger's up to?: Renovating 59 Brook Road

Xmas tree going up.

Ronell is using the kitchen to it's fullest - in one of her baking moments every item in the cupboards must be used and there must be lot's of flour on every surface, including the floor

The more completed lounge with a few more added pieces of furniture. I still need to complete the glass shelves next to the fireplace

Bathroom - July'09

The more completed lounge - July '09

Master bedroom.

Kitchen - July '09

So the story about our flat goes something like this... Thinus allowed me to waltz into some estate agencies and see what's available in Borehamwood. Not very serious, but we came across a 2 bedroom flat on the other side of town which was in good condition but was stuck in some other era. i.e. the most perfect property to buy and renovate!!! After completion, we got the keys and got stuck in straight away. But first, some photos of the BEFORE:

This is the kitchen, it still had the free-standing oven, and a multitude of charming wallpaper strips across the wall.

This is the main bedroom, which had built in cupboards and oh so fabulous dusty pink velvet curtains.

And the lounge, which came with fireplace, carpets and numerous bizarre tiles underneath.

The bathroom, with its charming decor, carpets on the floor (yuk!!).

And finally the second bedroom, again more wallpaper. So this flat basically had carpet on every floor (except kitchen), wallpaper on every wall and ceiling. And just for added fun, multiple layers of wallpaper in certain areas...

And to start, the very first thing that had to be done was to start getting rid of the wallpaper. I was excited about this for about the first 15 minutes. Then the novelty wore off and I realised it was going to be quite the mission.

The tiles on the wall, floor etc., had to come off and so did the cupboards. Same for the bathroom, where we ripped off absolutely everything!

So the plan was simple - remove everything from every surface to be left with only 4 walls. This worked quite well and relatively quickly too, which meant that Thinus soon found himself building the new cupboards for the kitchen.

Thinus went grey overnight with the stress... Okay, not really, just the covering of dust.

Fun painting the ceiling.

Kitchen now ready for the cupboards etc.

Werner came to help Thinus with the flooring; and of course it means that they quickly get up to some antics.

Kitchen cupboards in and the bathroom slowly starting to resemble a bathroom.

And this brings us to - moving in day! As you can see, the bedroom's wallpaper is starting to come off. Sadly we lived in this state for almost 4 months - by the end I was quite fond of the look!