It has been a while since I wrote last time about the new apartment in China. It has been too long as over half-year passed by already. Back then I had the news that MIL will move into the new apartment alone and FIL would stay behind the old place and have his peace from his wife. This actually did not change thus far and that is something special as my in-laws are changing their plans as often as other people change their clothes.
Renovating the apartment has finally started and MIL might be able to move in by May/ June. It took ages for them to decide how the apartment should look like, which materials to use and what furniture to purchase but after nearly a year of discussion and useless ideas they settled on something. Now I have no clue at all how it will look like but something has been bothering me a lot. Apparently renovating that 90m²/ ~970ft² apartment (actually more like 80m² as in China there is some stupidity going on that you purchase part of the staircase/ floor outside the apartment) takes over three whole months! How on earth can this be possible? Sure the apartment is just a shell when they purchased it without any floor, just concrete wall and windows. But how can this take that long?
Here in Germany when you build a house most companies guarantee that the entire house is complete after 3 months including everything inside according to your wishes. So how can just a small apartment take that long in China. Besides taking way too long it also costs pretty much the same as it would in Germany. For example in 2017 I renovated a 70m² apartment together with my dad in just four weeks so how can it be that professionals need three times as long? In my opinion something fishy is going on as it seems to be the norm in China that it takes so many months and worst they say the apartment needs to “air” for a couple of months so all the fumes are more or less gone by then. I am no expert but I have renovated enough apartments by now that I know that there is something very wrong and that they just want to charge more for taking that long.
I would love to show some pictures of the current progress but sadly my in-laws never took any pictures or videos. Most likely the next pictures of that apartment will be in April when we visit it ourselves. I do wonder how long it will take for MIL to ruin the apartment as three months each year in our apartment are enough to destroy or damage rather much. Probably FIL will go there very often to clean up the mess due to his OCD but I hope it won’t be that often as I wish for him to get some rest and perhaps his hairs might even grow back with less stress around the household.
What are your experiences on how long it takes to renovate an apartment?
Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore there is also my Instagram account in which from time to time some pictures and short videos might pop up.
https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily
Crazy Chinese Family 
It took 2 months to remodel 400 square feet of our house (kitchen, dining room, laundry room, small bathroom). That was removing everything, all the way down to the studs. We removed a wall, put in new drywall, floors, tiles, appliances, sink, etc. So your MIL’s apartment remodel timeline doesn’t seem too crazy to me. (Though your MIL herself usually seems crazy.)
Weren’t you doing most of the stuff yourselves (at least I remember reading how the one Bathroom was remodeled by you)? The thing in China is that there are like 10 guys working in the apartment!
Our own 90sqm apartment we did also nearly everything ourselves except new electric lines and the pipes and all the work together was 3 months with a lot of breaks (all new, every single room)
The bathroom we did ourselves and it took about 2 weeks. I haven;t gotten to the big remodel yet on the blog, but no, we did not do that one ourselves. We used the contractor who moved in across the street because we knew we could hunt him down if there was an issue. 🙂
Ha good to have a contractor nearby 😀
We have ourselves also by now few guys (electrical work, pipes and also tiles) to make live easier as we renovate every few years one of the apartments here currently/ plan to buy some other old ones
I have never myself renovated a house or apartment but from my observations of others doing it, it always takes twice as long as the contractor said it would.
I have the same feeling with the time needed. Problem in China is they say it takes 3 months and they won’t leave till the very last day