The chaos involved in buying and moving into a newly (but not completely) renovated home...

Ever since we purchased our new apartment on 21 December, Arno, his Dad, and I have worked every weekend and several weeknights every week on the place (this includes working almost 2 weeks straight over the Christmas and New Year holiday when we had off from work).

We removed old wallpaper, sanded, stuccoed some of the walls that needed repair, primed, and painted. We then laid the wooden floor and stained it with "Rhode Island Brown" oil ourselves. The outcome is beautiful and I will post some photos as soon as I can get them off my camera!

With the floor in and the walls freshly painted, we moved in. Unfortunately the work doesn't end, as there is a lovely Italian styled kitchen to install, curtains to hang, boxes to unpack, and paint touching up to do, as well as general interior decorating tasks.

Where we are now as of today, 07 February: The kitchen is being installed as I write this, the curtains have all been hung, the door trims and painting mistakes have been touched up, and several boxes have been unpacked or moved to the attic. We have no dining table nor a couch (we used much of the landlord's furniture in the previous rented apartment)!! Not to mention, no internet!!

The unfortunate thing is that I am unsure of whether we are able to cook tonight! We have a portable oventop that we've been using to cook on, but now we may not even be able to use that with the majority of the kitchen installed! Yikes!

On top of that, I have a friend coming tomorrow to stay for a week so that adds a bit of pressure to everything. I want to make her feel welcome but I am limited by uncontrollable circumstances! The up-side is, she's coming to visit from Cameroon where she's lived for the past 2 years so I think she will be somewhat accustomed to not having proper, or the most updated amenities :o)

Big Sigh.

I am sure I forgot to mention something...there is so much happening in addition to the typical daily grind! I'm sure many of you can empathize.

Anyhow, had to vent a bit...it's much more stressful than I described! :)

Cheers from Amsterdam!