How to Demo an Apartment in Tbilisi (during Coronavirus)

In my last post, I shared how we decided to buy our new apartment - now I want to talk about how we tore it apart!

This is what is looked like when we bought it: https://dkhome.ge/show/7003

Immediately, there were some things we knew we wanted to change...

1. Open Kitchen!

The first thing we did was rip down the wall separating the kitchen and living room - an open, flowy floor plan was a must for us. Many Georgians, especially the older generation, lived a very different lifestyle and for them an open kitchen is a nightmare. They warn us - what happens if friends drop by for a visit and your kitchen is messy or your husband's friends come over and you want a private space to feed the baby or chat with your girlfriends? What about the smells????

Our response is that we just live differently. Neither my husband nor I invite people over without discussing it first. Big groups of men don't randomly show up at the door at all hours expecting me to feed and wait on them as was so common in the Soviet times. Our friends don't care if there is a pot in the sink or the coffee maker is bubbling away in the corner - we're not putting on a show for them. We like cooking, but due to our busy schedules we don't do it much, which means that entertaining in a big, open space where guests can help arrange a cheese plate or garnish the cocktails is much more important than a hide-away kitchen where I can secretly toil over a big pot of ghomi and kharcho...plus, we have a great vent hood to help keep any stove top smells from wafting around too much.

This type of wall construction is called "bagdatka" and it a bitch to tear down, apparently

Looks like there was a small fire in here at some point - uh oh

One little wall turned into so much scraps

 

2. Laundry Room

In the US, it's rare not to have a dedicated space for laundry (which usually includes both a washing machine and a dryer). Even in small apartments there is usually a little closet if there is laundry in-unit. In much of Europe, dryers are rare and it's common to just stick a washing machine in the kitchen or bathroom. While I could handle a washing machine in the bathroom if it's big enough, my husband is totally against it and loves the idea of a dryer. So, we decided to build a laundry closet. Although there is space in the apartment to add an additional half-bath, we decided that level of renovation was a bit more involved than we wanted to go, and we love the huge living room space. So, we built a small washer/dryer closet in a corner of the living room that shares a wall with the bathroom to easily bring the plumbing in.
This is our vision:

 

 This is the corner before the laundry closet:

This is the gypso-carton (no clue what it is in English, some kind of cardboard-y panels) frame we built:

 In progress - we're painting the inside "Flamenco" pink!

3. Entry hallway

To spice things up and bring a bit of charm into the space, we decided to put in marble in the entry hallway. Funny thing is, we were shopping for something else and randomly saw some beautiful grey marble slabs on clearance sale - just 50 GEL per m2! So we got excited and bought 9 m2 - just enough for the entryway floor and a baseboard trim. When we bought it, it was a light grey color - exactly what we wanted. Knowing very little about natural stone, we assumed it was being sold in a form that it could actually be used. In fact, our contractor informed us that it's basically raw and should have been polished/finished on site before installation. After we had already bought the marble and paid to have the very heavy stone carried up all our stairs, it was pretty much too late to process it in a factory. Our installer, though, despite admitting to never having installed such stone before and knowing next to nothing about marble, confidently assured us that he could polish them. No one had any idea about the different types of finishes that are common for marble (at least according to the English language Internet)...

Here's what it looked like when we bought it:

Nice, right? Grey, white, a hint of blue

 Here's how it looked once we had it installed:

Here is it washed off...hopefully it's darker than it will really look because it's still wet: 

We didn't realize that it was coated in such a thick layer of factory dust that it was altering the color of the stone. Once we cleaned it off, it completely changed into something that is neither what I wanted nor something I like. In fact, if  it doesn't lighten up once our installer finishes whatever he plans to do, my plan is to just throw a rug over it and hide my tears...

4. Bathroom overhaul

The bathroom was nasty. An old whirpool tub had its jets clogged with black gunk and didn't even have a shower head attachment - not sure how the previous owners lived like that for so long. That was the first thing we ripped out. The only thing staying in that bathroom is the toilet. We're having a double vanity custom made with a black granite counter top - room for it now with the washing machine gone. The new shower/bath combo will be functional and spacious - if not the most trendy look. Floors and walls will be a cool ceramic-granite (that's what it's called in Georgian, still not sure of the exact English translation...) tile in an attempt to give it a spa feeling.

There was also a water pressure issue, so we had to install a pump, which will be ugly and loud but it's better than limpid showers.

This monstrosity (and that tile, wow) was first to go

Bathroom inspo - this is the tile we bought in the showroom

Taking it all down!

New tub going in!

 

Our creative workers set up a sink to keep germs away despite the condition of the bathroom!

5. Kitchen overhaul

Along with opening up the kitchen, we removed (and sold!) the existing kitchen unit, and are having custom cabinets made. We are also putting an island in to make the kitchen and living room feel more connected and have casual seating and more storage. Unfortunately we weren't able to put a sink in the island like we wanted due to some confusing problem with the building's central water line, but it will be great storage and have a built in pull-out trash can and a microwave. In terms of design, we're doing black lower cabinets, white uppers, white herringbone subway tile backsplash, and gold hardware. We'll probably do a black composite granite sink (couldn't talk the husband into an apron front farmhouse style sink...porcelain feels too 'grandma in the village' for him).

Tiler had never heard of herringbone - we had to teach him...but it turned out great!

6. Paint

We removed the wallpaper in the entire apartment and painted it all a light grey, except the laundry room (pink as shown above - don't worry, you'll only be able to see it when you're actually doing laundry!), the master bedroom is a dark blue-grey, the library/guest room is forest green, and we will have a peacock blue feature wall in the kitchen, which I fear is a crazy mistake, but we'll see! 

Our painter is an acrobat

 There are a few other small things we also did: new engineered wood floors throughout the apartment to replace the current laminate, new insulation on one of the external walls which had some water damage, repainting the front door, replacing some of the windows, etc.

We bought the apartment on February 15, 2020.
It was vacated by the previous owner on March 15, 2020 (that's standard in Georgia - contrary to popular belief, it's not the law, just a custom and I would NOT agree to this again...it was an excruciating month of giving the previous owner free rent, feeling bad about bothering her all the time to go measure and check things, and being very antsy about not being able to start demo).
We took a hammer to the first wall on March 16, 2020.

The bulk of the demo was completed in about a week. We hired a couple of guys from the village where my husband's family has a summer house who got it done quickly and cheaply. 

Next post I'll break down our budget for anyone who's interested! 

We got off to a strong start - a rotating team of workers has been there constantly since March 16. Limitations on the number of people that can gather (3) slowed the pace a bit, and it has been a major struggle to find certain materials that turned out we needed. Also, a few big items we weren't able to get before non-essential businesses were shut at the end of March (baseboards, flooring, and light fixtures, mainly).
Now, we have finally been brought to a complete halt by the April 15 city lockdowns - most of our workers are from Rustavi, so couldn't travel to/from the site anymore. At least for 10 days, the work is on hold. It's not too bad, because it won't effect the overall timeline. We can't move in without the bathroom vanity, kitchen, and washing machine, and while stores are closed we won't be able to get those (our cabinet maker's wood supplier isn't working either). 

So, we're just trying to enjoy the Easter holiday and not stress about it too much!