The previous owner had a pathway right through the middle of the garden. Which gave the garden a really kind of square feeling and it wasnt really super practical to use. So I had this vision of having it at least at the top more curved and one Sunday – after both of us had spent the day sleeping from exhaustion – we tackled it without giving it too much thought lol
VIEW POST
When life uninvited is interrupted its so easy to hope for an event to change that. I´ve been so guilty of that. And you make up your mind that when X happens things will be back to normal. “When I am married I will be safe and secure” ” When I move I will have this wonderful life and when I get a job I will be worry free” And to some extent that can be true, sometimes its the best thing to shake things up, to move, to move on, to follow the yearning of your soul but I feel like we often forget that when we do that we also take our story with us. But that can not be shown in an Instagram post or a picture. To the outside it looks like this wonderful and colourful and full life but what it can not show is the twist and turnes, the highs and lows and the in betweens it took and still takes to get there. What it does not show is the trauma, guilt, grieve, helplessness, a feeling of loss that can still be there.
VIEW POST
Hello, my name is Ilse and I dont like walking three flights of stairs in this heat.
Life lately has been warm and full of “this is really happening”. Right before we started to move out stuff from the flat to the house I stepped on an old nail.
Pretty deep. Albrecht worked on the roof all week and we had been very careful on where to walk and take steps but one evening as I was making dinner on the bbq I took a step back and full force into a nail. My birkenstock took of the rust but it still went into my foot.
I don´t think I have ever had something that hurt this bad. It happened on a Saturday evening and by Sunday morning I could not walk. Which was really unconvinied….not being able to walk on a construction side or walking with crutches is not fun.
I spent the next 3 days basically like this and icying my foot and it healed fine in the end and I enjoy my freedom that I took for granted before lol
We started packing up our flat and one evening it really hit me that this is really happening. This flat felt like home and turning it back into “any” and not “our” flat is abittersweet moment.
The nice thing about this move is that its happening very slowly and organically. Its not this “lets move everything in 2 days and say goodbye to our house”. We have been slowly taking one room after the next, gipsy style on our trailer lol, to the house.
Having something familiar at the house felt so good!
Albrecht always makes fun of my need to have containers and boxes for stuff haha but like, its so conviniend!! It took me 3 minutes and I had pretty much the whole bathroom packed and its still all neat and organized. So handy!
By now the air mattress is back in storage and our bed is also moved to the house.
The only thing I start to miss is a clean-ish kitchen. We have a stove at the house and bought a small fridge but its all downstairs in this mess of old house/used to house lots of mice/still smells weird/construnction side and I really quickly loose my appetit plus we are so occupied with everything else that often times neither of us want to cook. So we are eating a lot take out or at a restaurant. There is a time for everything and if this is what fits this time I will make the most of it. Also, things could really be worse when that is your problem lol
We will be moved out of our flat by the 15th of July, we will have internet at the house at the end of the week and a summer full of stuff to do. It will be interesting and lots of change.
We had a fairly long break between the dry wall framing going up and this! Jan came up for a weekend two weeks ago to help with everything regarding electrical wiring. And by helping I mean basically doing it himself. I mean we would have managed to install plug sockets and get power in the garden house but in no way shape our form could we have planned the whole things as professional as he did. Thank God for friends with a practical education lol
VIEW POST
A few weeks ago Alex came for a visit and helped us (Albrecht :-D) built the framing for a dry wall that will seperate the bedroom from the rest of the house.
VIEW POSTThings are moving along. Last month was still full of plans we made before we even considered buying a house. One of it was that I went to a conference in Berlin and during a free evening I met Janis for dinner.
The first wall came down. Well, if we are exact the first wall and two ceilings came down.
VIEW POSTAfter our two day cleaning ordeal with everybody, Albrecht spent a couple of days afterwards driving it all away and got started on cleaning out the garage. Now we are pretty much done – or have been done for a week or two by now. We walked through both houses, argued a little about what to do next 😀 and have settled on a plan. We will renovate the “garden house” first, move in and then will take out time renovating the main house. We are in no hurry as of now to renovate the main house because we currently am in no need of 3 kid rooms lol. We do need to remove a wall and get the roof done on both houses because there is rain damage to be found in the main house but everything else can wait and be done whenever we have the time, money and vision.
First house post – many to follow! We negotiated to clean out the house ourselve and oh my God! How one can live with so much garbage and stuff EVERYWHERE is beyond me. I felt so overwhelmed and a few times literally sick to my stomach. The house had mice – dead and alive – though the whole downstairs area in the main house and smelled reeaaally bad. We were lucky though to have really good friends show up on their easter weekend and help us clean it all out. We made it a fun couple of days!!
I mean, there are more rooms but you get the idea… 😉
Its a two story plus attic main house, a one story house (we call it the “garden house” plus a huuuuge garage (like 200 qm huge) and a garden. We somehow managed to clean out both houses and the garden in two days. TWO DAYS!! I dont know how but we did it. In the end we had almost 4.000 kg of “Sperrmüll”, 3 small trailers full of paper, at least the same amount of plastic garbage, 1 trailer full of old electronic stuff and I dont know how much metall (“Schrott”) etc.. We could not have done it with out the help of all those wonderful people!!! Its been really special to share this new adventure with all of them!
The “after” pictures will come in a second post 🙂
