It's going to look worse before it looks better

Phase 1: Asbestos removal

Marino consists of about 1,300 houses built for the most part of concrete. Some of the homes' upstairs rooms still have asbestos ceilings which need to be removed. Ours is one of those homes.

Most of the houses in the neighbourhood within out budget still had asbestos ceilings so we were able to budget the removal into the price when placing a bid. Unfortuntely, this is not something we can do ourselves. It has to be removed by a certified removal company and shipped to Germany for safe disposal. For safety reasons, this will be the first thing we tackle - we'll have it removed before we move in.

We found a great builder to work with on this. He works with a company to remove the asbestos, then once it's gone, he'll install new ceilings. When we purchased the house, we planned to install our own ceilings once the asbestos was removed, however, we've realised that living 2 hours away with a baby makes that plan very unrealistic. Working with a builder also saved us money on the removal. Since he has a relationship with the removal company, the cost of the removal and new ceilings installed, is actually coming out to what we had budgeted for the removal alone.

The removal kicked off this week. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I came in a few days later, but I was definitely a bit shocked to see all the way up to the roof line!

While the ceiling is down, Paul and his cousin will be rewiring the entire house, hiding all of the wiring in the walls and generally updating all of the electrics. Once they've done that, we will have a plumber install a new combi boiler and (hopefully, if we can afford it) hide all of the pipes in the wall. We'll also have the bathroom remodelled, adding a shower and swapping the toilet and sink positions. More on that soon!