Day 15

The remodel continues. The hall is starting to look like a hall again. Alfie went to Kiev last Friday for a meeting, the girls spent the night at a friends and Joseph spent the weekend with other friends. Alfie returned on Saturday. Half the team took a trip to Frunzevka on Saturday. We all went to church in Odessa on Sunday. On Sunday night our team-mates returned. Leah joined us and we went to a small church just outside Odessa for the evening service.

Meanwhile, the remodel continues. We are living in the apartment again. We actually have most of the time. Most of the electrical work is done and the worst of the dust is done now. When we are home, we spend most of the time in the kitchen. The living room is really not usable and the bedrooms are cold. We hope the heat will be one soon. Anyway, the hall looks good. Soon we will paint, and then it’s clean, clean, and clean.

Day 8

We have moved back home. We try not to be home during the day because it is too noisy, however the evenings are not bad. The beds, furniture and kitchen are covered with plastic. The electrical work is almost done. The new breaker-box was installed today and most of the apartment is wired. Below is our builder – Vitalik.

Day 4

It is just amazing what can be accomplished in four days. They not only finished our hallway they raised the ceiling about five feet and added at least eight rooms. OK, I’m only kidding. We are staying in the seminary dorm for the weekend. I don’t have any pictures but much has been accomplished. We even had a small fire. The fire didn’t cause any damage but it did identify another problem that needs to be addressed.

Day 1

Alfie gave two lectures at the seminary and had one Russian language lesson while our electrician, Andrei, tore apart our hallway. He told us there would be a lot of dust and he was right. He said that this first day he was trying to do all the major dust work. He had to search for the existing wires that have been plastered inside the existing walls. That means starting at a junction box and breaking the plaster with a hammer until you can tell where the wires go to. He made a whole for our new breaker box and installed six new plugs, seven new switches and many other things. Here is what the hall looked like at the end of the day. There is also a picture of Andrei our electrician. I will not post picture for Day 2 because I’m just getting day 1 photos up. However, day 2 Andrei’s drill broke but he still got much work done. He ran most of the necessary cables and the hall is now ready for the building to come destroy and rebuild. The looks about the same but a little cleaner with wires hanging everywhere.

Day 0

We have to upgrade our electrical system in our apartment. We can’t do the entire apartment so we are just going to rewire the corridor. And since we are going to have to tear up the hallway we might as well put it back together in better shape than we found it. What that means is that we are about to live through a significant remodel. We will be adding a new breaker box, copper wiring, light switches, plugs, three arches, removing several doors, rebuilding a closet, installing recessed lights, new paint and so one. We hope to be done in about two weeks. We will see…. Here is the current state of our corridor.