My big project reaches the next phase on Wednesday. Now the real work (and intense stress level) begins. If you know me you may understand what exactly that means. At the beginning of the year I made the goal of moving into my own apartment by 2008. I searched for several months for a place to buy and made the offer 2 months ago. On this coming Wednesday, I sign the final documents, and get the keys. Its very weird to be so excited and terrified at the same time. Its exciting to know that I will have a place that I can make all the decisions on. Its scary to know that I won’t be able to blame the landlord anymore when the dishwasher breaks or when the heating refuses to come on. Its even scarier to know that I will have a team of builders in my apartment for 2 to 3 months knocking everything down and starting over with new walls, floors, kitchen, bathroom and more. Since some of my family and friends are interested in the choices I make, I will post them here as much as I can.

Above I said that I expect the stress levels to go up. That’s not to say that I haven’t had to deal with a number of highly stressful situations. There was the incident with the employers statement…the first 2 versions were not accepted by the bank due to them being faxed copies rather than original documents. Then there was the offer that was not accepted, then the other buyer fell through, then my offer negotiated, then accepted.  This past Friday I thought I would have to come up with an additional 8K then 15K Euros cash within 3 days, but that turned out to be a typo by the lawyers (but I still lost a few nights sleep).

So on Wednesday I take ownership. Wednesday night I get to sleep in my new apartment for the first time. I will take plenty of photos on Wednesday and post them here so you can see the ‘before’ shots. I am planning to take a few from the same positions every few days so that I can create some sort of cool morph movie at the end as well.

I have a lot of decisions I have to make over the next few weeks now. I have to decide on what kinds of floors I should put in. At the moment there are some awful laminates that are curling. I will probably put in some nice wood floors on both levels plus the roof house/shed but not sure about colors or finishes. I have to decide what kind of fixtures and bathroom things go in (toilet, bath, shower, etc). I have to decide on paint colors. I have to figure out the whole kitchen (Ikea versus something else). At the moment the kitchen is upstairs but we are destroying it and putting a new one downstairs. Then of course there is furniture. I have lived in a furnished apartment for the last 2 years so I have almost nothing. I think its going to be a seemingly endless money pit for the first few months…I am so looking forward to February when this is all over….