The renovation of our new apartment started as soon as we came back from Europe in the middle of June.
At this time it’s hard to imagine that the place could be lived in but according to the contractor’s schedule it should happen at the end of August.
The apartment is on the 43rd floor of a sixty-story building. It has full sea view from every room as one of my dear husband’s most important requirement.

{partial master bedroom view from the hallway}

By this time we have already had a few hurdles. The first one we had in the first days of renovation was with the kitchen wall. We wanted to enlarge the small kitchen by knocking down the wall between the tiny maid’s room that is adjacent to it. According to the building’s master plan we knew that the wall was not a supporting one, so there should have been no problem. But apparently some dividing walls are constructed from bricks and some are concrete with thick steel rods inside. And the latter is what this wall was built of. After receiving a formal letter from the building’s engineer that the wall could be removed, our contractors told us that the thick steel rods inside the wall may make removal impossible. We kept our fingers crossed hoping the rods were not that thick and could be cut. To our luck they were!

{enlarged kitchen: the wall is gone!}

So far so good! By now the electricity has been rerouted as were the gas pipes to make room for my long awaited normal-sized oven. At this moment we’re awaiting for all the materials to arrive, so the masonry work can start.