It is done! The apartment is now ready for us. It took us just roughly six months to get a facelift for the whole mess in there. With some small amount proud I show these results as it was real hard to manage it this far.
In April we started the renovation process and in the beginning I still thought it would be just a few weeks of work for us. How naive I have been. It took us already a week to get all the furniture of the previous owner out and another week to literally scrub the dirt from the roof and walls. To add to the horrors of renovating an apartment came the wallpapers, floor, bathroom, kitchen, windows, pipes and in between cleaning, cleaning and cleaning some more. But now we managed it, the DIY Project (okay, 85% done by us the rest by professionals) is finished. Our new home is done and we can move in.
Our new home offers us 90m² (968.75 sqf) of living space, which is more than double what we had before in Finland. Finally we have a separated kitchen, an own bedroom and even a room for little Nathan. Luxuries we dreamt of for the past years are now becoming reality.
Right now I don’t even want to enter any hardware store ever again and with luck I don’t have to do so for some time now. Some furniture is still missing such as the dining table and the TV stand as it was broken when delivered yesterday…
I won’t show Nathan’s room yet, as it resembles more a storage room rather than a baby room and we still have some great ideas for it which I will post once it is done (It will be great, really great, at least for small children!). Here are some before and after pictures, I am myself still amazed just how much this apartment changed.
Crazy Chinese Family 
waaaaaaaaa! adopt me ❤ I love the European apartments rather than American T_T you did a great job!
Thank you 🙂
I actually have no clue at all about American apartments. This one now we just tried to have everything as simple as possible and what would suit both my weird finnish/ German taste and her Chinese style
Great job! You should feel well pleased with yourself. What is the fixture on the wall in the 3rd picture of the top 3 rows? (Brain no longer functioning as I am frozen after 2hours pruning in the garden with my little robin keeping his beady eye on me)
Thanks 🙂
Do you mean this fixture on the left side on the wall? It actually belongs to a whole living room furniture set and still misses a long tv stand below it. The thing on the wall is one decor panel with led lights and next to it a weird looking cabinet with glass doors to put in whatever we want to show..
Wow! What a transformation!! You did an amazing job! I know how hard it can be because my husband and I, even though our house was brand new, did the work to make it our own. I still remember how you describe the ceiling had years of smoke stains on it and now it looks so fresh and clean. I hope you make many happy memories in your home – it is just lovely!
I am so glad that the work is done and also that we managed so well. Today we start moving upstairs and still have tons of moving boxes to unpack!
What a great job, well done. It looks like a brand new home – bright, spacious and airy. And very warm ambience with the earthly colours. Flowery patterns on the walls, wow, was that your idea? It looks fabulous. I hope you weren’t too much of a hassle to your neighbours during the renovations…
Hopefully you’ll get some toys in the apartment soon to make it more home-ly for Nathan. I’m sure that’s part of your plans for his room. I’m sure you’ll enter a hardware store again if Nathan wants some wood and tools to built his own toys and cubby house 😉
I am myself surprised how airy and warm the apartment got. The flower patterns on the one wall of the living room was my wife’s idea 🙂 for Nathan’s room we have some big plans, the only issue will be to find all the equipment
Your wife has a good sense of design and decoration, tell her that 🙂 Ah, sounds like Nathan will have a lot of fun at home. Just don’t spoil him 😉
Wow! That’s surely a job well done! I won’t lie, for 90m2, it looks pretty big! :O All the 90m2 or so apartments here have tiny bedrooms! Like the main bedroom can fit a single bed and that’s it! 😛 I’m jealous! haha. It looks super awesome! 😀
Thank you:)
I think in Germany and also in Finland they make the bedrooms a bit bigger, at least this is what I am used to. Now we can fit into our bedroom the huge wardrobe, a big bed, baby be also also my working desk.
I like about our apartment that through the glass wall between living room and dining room it looks much brighter and in the end also more spacious.
Right now I amwondering when we will get the feeling that this apartment is too small :p
Looks great – so much more light! We still rent in China and when you don’t own it is a big difference with what you are willing to put up with! Congrats!
I remember when I rented an apartment, I had no interest in doing anything really nice in there.. Our previous tiny apartment was already ours so we tried our best back then to renovate it properly and decorate it according to the wishes of my wife.
It is just such a huge difference in the mind when something really belongs to you rather than you just pay to use it
I love the curtains. Seriously. It looks so cozy! I hope when we move we can do something nice like that too. Here, I won’t even bother. You see what MIL does to our place. Anyway, congratulations! Enjoy your new lovely home! =)
In my old rental apartment I didn’t bother either to do anything special even though I had no weird in-laws there 🙂
In our last apartment we did already a lot of work, renovating and decorating everything.
The curtains are from Marimekko, a Finnish brand it is sinfully expensive to use as curtains, thankfully my mother gave it to us as a present 🙂
So much natural light! It looks lovely, you did a great job.
The infamous Ikea wardrobe is so huge, haha.
Is Marimekko very expensive in Finland? Yesterday we found they have a shop in a new mall in Shanghai and had a look, it was very expensive, 70 euros for a cloth bag, the simple ones without zip or anything. Seriouly??
Thank you 🙂
Marimekko is really expensive. We needed 8m of cloth for the curtains and it cost about 50 euros per meter…(my mothers present for us moving in!! Would have never bought it myself at the moment)
The brand has few stores in Asia and it seems you found one of the few in China 🙂
Congratulations! It looks beautiful. You must be very proud of all your good work. Your beautiful apartment will be a happy home for the three of you.
My dad was a carpenter, so he built our first house. My husband and I helped him as best we could. I was pregnant at the time, but I still did some of the painting and varnishing. It feels good to live in a house you helped to build.
Thank you, it feels indeed very fulfilling to move into a place which you basically created yourself. since my childhood I helped my father renovating apartments so I got some basic skills over the years
Wow, impressive! Although I’m sure the wallpaper was tough, it looks great! Especially the one in the living room. 😀
I miss being able to decorate and make my space more “my own”. It’s a lot of work, but it’s satisfying when done. 🙂
Round of applause for doing so much of it yourself! ^^ (And not giving up or killing anyone in the process!)
I don’t even want to think about wallpapers anymore that was a huge struggle on its own here :p
It is very great feeling to make your own living space homely for yourself and that is also something I never thought doing when still renting apartments.
Looks amazing! I really like the new kitchen and would love to do something similar with ours, just worried about the super humid weather down here which might force us to choose something else. The transformation in all the rooms is huge, great job 🙂
Hei thank you. It took us some time to get the design and layout for the kitchen done as there is just such a big selection in the furniture stores in Germany.
The humidity in many parts of China can be a big problem for furniture. Too easy it causes mold and possibly also movement of the wooden parts (moisture getting into the material and destroying it)
It’ so beautiful now. I love the clean, sleek look of it, and the edge, the Marimekko curtains add. As a matter of fact I’m considering buying Marimekko fabrics for the curtains in our new place now:)
Marimekko has some nice designs. In Finland you can find a store in every major shopping mall. We had the luck that my mom still has some skills left and made us these Curtiss and actually also paid for the material. They have so many different designs these days and each one in different sizes. I think this one was the large design but not too sure anymore. We tried to keep at least the main areas as simple as possible, just like Scandinavian design tends to be 🙂