Humpty dumpty in wonderland (part 1)

So our “undertaker” has started the job of putting our house back together again (with odd interventions from us). However it has occurred to us you might be lost in this place. We are sometimes and we're there almost daily!  So we thought we’d do a series of posts presenting a brief floor-by-floor run through the house, showing how it was to start and where it is now. Starting with the 1^st floor, because doing things in order would be boring (or because it's the one which looks by far the nicest at the moment).

Typical Brussels houses tend to be long and thin. Our 1^st floor is exactly that. There are three rooms “enfilade”* and a box room. To get there we have a choice of staircases. What do you reckon, right or left? Ok, right it is.

Right. Right?

As we get to the top of the stairs we have two doors to choose from. The one on the right leads to the biggest of the three enfilade rooms at the front of the house. It was previously nigh impossible to enter this room due to the stench of dog poo/pee**.

Right. We went right. So shall we go right again? Right?

This is how this room started off. A shame computers are not able to replicate smells so you get the whole picture. Or maybe its not a shame as you'd throw your computer out of the window if it could. Still, even without "digital scent technology" you can see the crusted dog poo on the floor!

And this is where we are now. Amazing what a coat of plaster does.

It’s already looking a different room. Not only are the walls looking better but it also no longer stinks.

Go back and we enter the middle enfilade room which obviously has no windows.

It started off like this. Funky fake arch.

That hasn’t changed so far, and neither is it going to (or bad news if it does!) It did previously have a second door however which we blocked up ourselves - more on that to follow in another post (and there is glimpse of the blocked door in one of the pictures of the stairs above).

And is now like this. As you may remember from a previous post we removed the funky arch

And continuing through the middle enflilade we get to the back room. On the face of it, this was the room in the best condition in the whole house when we first visited. 

Started like this. It looks alright, doesn't it? I mean, hell red isn't a relaxing colour, but apart from that it all looks ok.

And now has an acoustic stud wall and no chimney. You remember those rolls of acoustic insulation we lugged over from the UK? It went in here between 2 layers of plasterboard.

However, as we’ve just rediscovered, appearances can be deceiving. You almost certainly didn't notice in the first picture above that the ceiling is sagging in the middle. Neither did we, or any of the 7 undertakers who visited the place, or indeed anyone till the engaged undertaker went to plaster it and said "oh". Well, we had to expect a nasty surprise somewhere I guess.

Anyhow, lets move on.  Finally going through the door we enter the box room. This used to be a kitchen, as this floor used to be a kind of flat.

Yes, we are trying to keep those tiles before you ask!

Which is why they are being protected! You can also get an idea of the future bathroom layout from the pipes pokign through the wall.

We’re doing our best to turn it into a bathroom, even if it has it’s positional limitations (2 doors and a thoroughfare to the back room). Go back down the stairs and you come back to you starting point (the left or right photo).

So that is floor 1 so far. Next time we probably continue with “floor 0”. Though you never know...

* There’s not really a word for this in English. Basically it’s in a row from front to back.

** To put that in context, one of us... not the one writing the article... spent a morning scraping dog poo off floorboards with vinegar to make it enterable. Heroic! (and glamorous)