I thought I'd start off by giving you an insight into the practical aspects of this whole renovation mess ... to give a background on what has been going on and maybe that will be at least part of an explanation to why I haven't been feeling very well lately.
Basically it was a bathroom renovation, so they were going to tear down the whole bathroom including the walls and floors. You could make a choice to also have your entire kitchen renovated as well, as they were changing all the water pipes at the same time - this would, however, be too expensive for my taste. They did recommend that we'd do the hallway as well, as in all likelihood there would be damage made to the hallway in the renovation process - also they were going to widen the bathroom door, which meant tearing down part of the concrete hallway wall.
It was also decided that since this whole mess was going to go on, they would also change all the electrical stuff in every apartment ... the fuse box as well as all the wall and roof electrical outlets - this was going to be done the week before the renovation project started, and this was scheduled to take three weeks.
Before the renovation itself begun, they changed all the locks ... I'm sure they had some secure way of doing this, even though I never understood the finer details, but basically they removed our door locks and replaced them with temporary "construction locks", allowing all the construction workers to pretty much come and go as they liked.
After that it was time for the electrical work. Which included moving A LOT of furniture!! As I mentioned here before, I managed to miss one outlet, but cleared away a couple of bookshelves and was told they would fix it during the bathroom renovations (there are at least two, maybe more, companies involved - the electricians and the carpenters, and I assume there are plumbers as well, though I don't think I've come across any of them).
On Friday 21st (January), the covered the hallway floor, and on Monday 24th, I moved out.
Luckily I had a friend in Lund, Christian, who was willing to give up his apartment for me, and temporarily move in with his girlfriend Maria - who I had as a mentor when I was taking Greek! :) I very much appreciate that, as I basically had nowhere to go! We were allowed to live at home, as we were supposed to have electricity most of the time - but with no running water, a toilet in the basement, and shower in barrack in the yard, I really did NOT want to live here.
I stayed in Christians apartment Monday through Saturday morning that week - and I did discover during that time how much I really like my Home! Christians apartment was really nice, and it was a lot closer to Uni than mine *lol*, but I still felt a bit homesick!
Saturday morning, I went up north to visit my families, and I stayed for about 10 days. There were a lot of reasons why I didn't feel great, but I'll see if I can tell you something about that in another entry.
Anyway, I stayed with my Dad and his family between Jan. 28 and Feb. 7, and I also visited my Mum. It was nice seeing them again, but it felt strange to be there for such a long time during mid-semester.
On Feb. 7 I went back south, again to Christian's apartment - where I stayed until Friday. It was said I could move back home on Friday and I spent quite some time that week to make sure that was okay.
I went home on three occasions that week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning, and tried to find people to talk to - but I kept getting quite vague answers, to be honest.
I was quite nervous when I went home "for good" on Friday afternoon, but when I got here I quickly realized that I did have electricity and I did have running water, which at the time was good enough for me.
That weekend flew by, I was completely exhausted and basically didn't do much of anything.
Unfortunately I had discovered there were A LOT of things left to do, and maybe the most annoying one: the electrical outlet in the living room. As I had decided to rearrange the furniture while I still had to move them things were an extreme mess!!
I spent a lot of time during the beginning of the week trying to find people and get things done, but it took until Wednesday before the electrician showed up. Only to tell me that since the outlet went straight through one of my inner walls, I had to clear the outlet that was on the other side of the wall as well (in the bedroom).
I basically had a complete melt down, as I had already cleared away at least two bookshelves there before, they had changed the outlet and I had moved everything back again (along with all the stuff from the bathroom and some other things!)...
So I moved it all over again, but then it seemed impossible to find the electricians anywhere. I had a carpenter in on Friday morning to do some stuff, and by then I was really upset, there were a lot of things that I had to have electricians to fix (for instance, they removed my internet/telephone outlet when they wallpapered the hallway, which was done at the beginning of the week, and hadn't put it back!) ....
The electricians were nowhere to be found, and I really wanted to take a trip to Lund that afternoon - so I left here at noon and put a huge note on my door with biiiig red letters, stated I needed help from the electricians!
Around 5.15 p.m. when I was at Uni, the Head of the entire renovation project called me!! He is Danish and for the life of me, I cannot understand that language ... so I hardly understood what he said! Very embarrassing! I figured out that either they had fixed most of the stuff and were going to do a check on it on Monday (as in, today), or they were going to fix it ... on Monday.
I kind of dreaded going home, but when I got here I at least had telephone/internet and the outlet in the living room was fixed! Yay!
I spent the weekend trying to get everything back together - and this morning the carpenters came and did a few minor things- but there are still stuff left ...
The "bosses" came around 11 a.m. today to do a survey of the work being done, I had hoped everything would be done but naturally there were a number of things they are going to get adjust during this week.
But at least I can get my place back together now, I still don't want to put furniture in the hallway, as they are not quite done there yet, but I have gotten most of the stuff back where it's supposed to be, so I'm hoping to be able to have this apartment in tip-top shape come this weekend!
This has been quite a difficult time for me, for a number of reasons - I am truly glad that almost everything is finished, but I'm quite down and I think it will take a while for me to make a come-back from this.
I hope to make another entry fairly soon on how I've been feeling (even though I won't go into that much detail!) this past month ....
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