Unsuccessful apartment renovation:
personal story

I’ll tell you about my experience of unsuccessful repairs. It’s unfortunate not in the sense that it’s completely impossible to live in an apartment — it’s possible, of course. But every day now the thought comes to me - I should have done it differently. Moreover, on every square meter. It would be even better to immediately find a company that does turnkey apartment renovation and order all the work. But experience does not lie on the road.

How teapots were repaired

Here is how it was. We purchased an apartment on the secondary market. The house is brick, built in the mid-60s, a typical Khrushchev-era building, two rooms, a kitchen, a combined bathroom, practically no hallway, a hallway, a balcony, but very small. Area - 43 square. Everyone has probably seen such apartments: from the front door you find yourself almost immediately in the toilet, on the left there is a large room - this is the hall, from it there is an entrance to the bedroom and a door to the built-in closet, in the bedroom there is a door to the pantry, in the kitchen there is gas. But we can say we were lucky, because the apartment is corner and we have 2 windows in the bedroom. This is a big plus in terms of more light.

We bought an apartment with dreams that we would turn it into a super-stylish home for two, we saw enough pictures on the Internet and were full of enthusiasm. Here I will tell you about our main mistakes and why everything went wrong.

We didn’t have the opportunity to live somewhere and do renovations here. We had about a week and a half left before the move, and during this time we only managed to remove the wooden slopes from the doors, break down the wall between the built-in closet and the storage room to make just a large storage room, replace the toilet and bathtub, remove the old wallpaper and sand the walls a little, basically. All. We moved into a dilapidated apartment.

Bedroom

The first thing we decided was that we would tackle the bedroom. Here our first failure awaited us. I say hello to those who show on the Internet how cool rotgypsum bricks look. We were smart enough to make them on one wall in the bedroom. Firstly, we sculpted them all night, and secondly, we painted them for two days. As a result, not only do they not look beautiful at all, but they also create dust. We then thanked ourselves very much when we knocked this mouth plaster off the wall two days later a year and a half later. The second mistake in the bedroom is bad wallpaper.

The store advised us to take dark ones, because the room itself is light. But we didn’t take into account that the room was small, and the dark color made it seem even smaller. Even buying dark curtains was a mistake. Then the wallpaper in the bedroom also had to be changed to light and it looked much better.

Hall

Then we moved into the hall. He is big. The walls are crooked. The plaster itself is crooked, with some crumbs, uneven, crooked corners. In general, we underestimated the quality of Soviet construction. In the entire apartment we found only one more or less even corner. But since we are dummies, we had the wonderful idea of hanging photo wallpaper in the living room. Their paper was so thin.

As a result, in the morning we saw how the seams between the canvases had come apart, all the irregularities on the glossy surface began to sparkle with new colors… In the living room, we re-pasted the wallpaper on one wall three times, until we realized that we needed very dense, voluminous ones, with a pattern that hid the curvature. But it’s on one wall. On the rest, we, as sophisticated aesthetes, decided to place white wallpaper. Not only are the blue stains that once painted the walls visible from under them, but they also do not hide the crooked plaster.

Kitchen

With the accumulated experience, we moved into the kitchen. Here we had tiles on the walls, still Soviet. We removed it (imagine how much dust there was at home), but in general, we turned out to be smarter here: we decided to re-plaster the walls, chose white wallpaper with a slight shine, and the kitchen, in principle, turned out to be almost normal. We fitted the old set to it, installed a new sink, shoved in a table, stove and refrigerator, made a tabletop from the window sill, hung cabinets and shelves and it turned out almost tolerable. This is perhaps the most successful part of the apartment.

Bathroom

We had to change everything in the bathroom. We also removed the old tiles there. The first thing we did was lay the tiles on the floor. It is quite pleasant, like dark brown marble, but then, when we counted the consumables, we were again struck by a brilliant idea - to use plastic panels for the walls.

In combination with expensive tiles on the floor, plastic panels look more than disgusting. Now I understand that it would be better to plaster the walls and even just paint them. It just creates a disgusting dissonance.

Hallway

At the end of this whole story, we worked on the hallway. And this is replacing the front door (count again - dust and dirt) and wallpapering - but our hallway is meter by meter, here, taking into account our wealth of experience, it was not at all difficult. They glued them using the Soviet method - on newspapers.

conclusions

What is the conclusion: the renovation lasted for a year and a half, during which time we had a child and even the housing plans themselves became completely different - that is, we previously thought that it was for two, just to spend the night and sit in the evenings, but with a child we need everything completely different, more functional, more storage space, more different zones, more security and so on. In 2 years we have changed the wallpaper in the bedroom, and we plan to change it in the living room. Now I already understand why everything went wrong and what I needed to pay attention to.

First, there was no need to rush and waste time and effort on preparing the surfaces. All of the same walls had to be plastered. The second point - we had to clearly define what exactly we want to get, then we would know, let’s say - we want photo wallpaper here, which means the wall needs to be prepared for it in this way, we want a built-in wardrobe here, so we move the door on this wall, and so on.

And in general, now it seems that it is right to start renovations with a full-fledged design project.

Our problem was that all this time we did not have an understanding of what exactly we wanted to get in the end. We just went shopping and chose materials, furniture, textiles - simply because we liked it. As a result, we now have red brick wallpaper on one wall, gray linoleum and a green rug on the floor, a huge shelving unit - stylish, but completely impractical, and so on. Things don’t fit together, some furniture simply takes up space unnecessarily. We did not think through the zoning and functionality of the premises.

There is still a feeling of incompleteness, the apartment seems to not have its own face, its own atmosphere. The conclusion is that it is quite possible to make good repairs yourself, but you need to know exactly what you want. Next time we will work out the interior design down to the smallest detail, sketch it literally and recreate it in reality. This will save you from unnecessary waste of money, time and nerves.

This is our experience. Sad, but useful. Interesting transformations to everyone!

Text author: Olga S.