The View From our Window

The back 2nd floor window, to be precise. Soon to be the view from Ms New House's office. My view will be onto the street. There will be plenty of sun, provided there is plenty of sun - this is Brussels, after all.

Some bad news from our window suppliers. The 11 new windows and frames won't be ready until Nov. 21, not next week as planned. I don't know the reason for the delay, but our contractor is not very happy.  His unhappiness is contagious, I'm afraid. Taking out the old will cause a lot of damage to the walls surrounding them, so he will have to wait on refinishing these walls.

The current plan is to finish all the work mid-January. Ms NH is less optimistic than me, and is keeping the lease on the current apartment until Feb. 15.

De-Mo-Lition!

Lots of things getting smashed up now, or at least being detached and carted away.

Say goodbye to the old kitchen. Dîtes au revoir to the many layers of wallpaper everywhere. No one will mourn all the departed toilet fixtures.

The work crew, in their generosity, thought it a waste to toss the still-functioning refrigerator. They put it on the sidewalk with "cadeau" marked on the front. This was noticed quickly by a local administrator, who pointed out all the laws this broke. The fridge now sits as a lonely sentinel inside the living room.

It Begins

So the work has started. The departing tenants left the place so clean it was a shame to trash the place. But that's where we are now, stripping the walls and removing all the plumbing fixtures. It looks a bit Pompeian now.

The Old Windows Let In More Than Just the Sunlight

                                                      

Built in 1905, our house is typical of the neighborhood. It's called a Bel-Etage, having a slightly elevated main floor, and a half-subterranean cellar. The bricks are enameled and there are details in Belgian bluestone.

 The windows are very detailed and interesting, but also very old, drafty and rotten in parts. They will have to be replaced. Since we are in a historic district, changes to the facade have to be approved by the commune's (borough's) building department.  The process is pretty informal.  We sent in some pictures of the house, and plans of the new windows, and they told us to go ahead. The new windows should generally match the look of the old, but unfortunately, the beautiful piano moldings are beyond our budget to duplicate. The other disappointment is that the beautiful existing brass interior hardware will not be compatible with the new mechanisms. We investigated the possibility of just putting new double-glazed glass into the old frames. There is a company here in Brussels that specializes in just that. It's much cheaper, and keeps all the old details, but the poor state of some of the frames precluded it.

I'm waiting to hear from the window company as to when they will be installed, but it should be in the next couple of weeks.

Hello World

Brussels is bathed in sunshine today (not a sentence you often read), as our tenants are moving out. The came as an extra bonus with house when we purchased it in June, but now their lease is up and we can set about to make the house our house.

This blog will document the process of renovating this house. I am not a great handyman, and will leave most of the physical work to our hired guns. I'm not an expert by any means, and by sharing the process, this should be a learning experience for everyone.