Since buying the house is only the first step in making a house a home, the most work was still ahead of us. The layout of our house was still 60’s. The house was originally built in 1968. It had a small kitchen, which wasn’t what we wanted.  There was a living room and a dining room. A once modern feature, called the saloon, basically a second smaller living room had been used as a small office by the previous owner.

Once we got the first layout drawing with the exposé of the house, we already began thinking about how to change the layout of the ground floor to make it modern and open.

But before we could begin our journey from a house to a home, we had to get all the furniture, decoration, books and stuff out of the rooms. We had purchased the house with full equipped rooms. From two functional kitchens to a living room with sofa, tea table and TV set. Even the kitchen cabinets were filled with useful things. And in the basement we had a complete workshop with tools, screws, plumbing material and other things. Some of these things would turn out very useful during the renovation.

So as a first step we had to move out all the furniture, especially in those rooms that were meant for a big makeover.

Marcus had to contact a civil engineer to get calculations for steel beams to replace structural walls. Waiting for the calculations to finish, we prepared the rooms by removing the tiles, setting up supports for the heavy works tearing down the walls. There was a lot of dust, plaster and bricks piling up outside the house.

A two month leave was not enough to finish everything as per our plan, but the most important things were done with the help of friends, but mostly with our own hard work 10 to 12 hours every single day. Even Sundays weren’t for leisure during this time.