Ikea¶

Tags: house

I’ve been real busy for three days and I didn’t have time for blogging yet.

Ok, tuesday: a bit of rain in the morning, so that was a reasonable test for my roof window. It passed. Later in the evening, a moderate storm with heavy showers hit the Netherlands: not a drop of water to be seen inside the attic. Whew! I did some more work on the window by starting to frame up the sides. I only got one of the four sides partially done. In the evening I stripped some more wallpaper.

On wednesday, a youthful member of our church helped us for half a day stripping wallpaper. Much appreciated! I renewed the water tap in the toilet. And I did my first bit of water pipe mangling. My son’s room used to have a wash basin years ago, but that was removed. But at the bottom, two water pipes still protruded:

To get rid of those, I had to saw through the water pipes at the other end of the wall: in the bathroom. And re-connect them again. Not having any experience, I looked at the water pipe aisle of the local DIY shop and got some parts. It worked in the end. No leakage. It sure isn’t pretty, but the bath room is on the nomination for re-building after we’ve moved in anyway:

On thursday it was ikea day. We hired the largest van our regular rental company has. Good thing we did. We went to the ikea and got ourselves a kitchen! The van was full (note: more full than in the picture, some items were already carted out):

Our kids helped in getting the van unloaded. I was surprised by the strenght of our daughter! Almost nine years old, she even helped me carry the dishwasher inside. She really had half of the weight in her hand. I couldn’t believe it! Granted, she collapsed into bed this evening and was totally exhausted, but she did carry a lot of heavy packages. She was happy and proud. You can’t have it any better as dad :-) In the end the house was full of ikea carton packages (more was on its way compared to the photo):

In the evening, I broke my back with a visit to the DIY store and the ikea, again. For some large items. Including a heavier-than-expected bed for our son. The bed was a reasonable-sized package, but barely manageable for myself to carry inside on my own. Ouch.

Anyway, tomorrow morning I’ll paint the ceiling downstairs so that everything is ready for working on the kitchen. My brother will help me, so that’s going to be fun.