Remont

There's this great word in Russian that describes repairs and renovations much better than any English world. It's "remont". We always use this word, even in the middle of an English sentence. It can be used to describe something big or little. Right now we are doing "remont" on the apartment we'll be moving into soon. I'm SO THANKFUL we don't have to live there during all of the dust and noise right now. What a blessing! So, one of the things about Russian apartments is that most of them are all cement and the walls are covered in wallpaper. These walls get dirty and torn after years of use. So you just strip it all down and put up new. Since we've moved here, there are all sorts of new options for wallpaper, including paintable wallpaper. You can put seven or eight coats of paint on top of it. This seems like the best solution for our family- it's a lot easier to put on a fresh coat of paint (or patch small areas with paint) in a few years than to go through all of the stripping again!



Heidi left us all sorts of wonderful pictures and witty words on her walls. Most of what she wrote were inside jokes from years of fun memories together. We love it. Here's a picture she drew of our family.



And we let Anneka draw pictures, too. It's not very often a little girl is encouraged to draw on the wall! As you can see here, her hair is wet from a bath. Our hot water was out for a few weeks, so occasionally we got clean at the new apartment.



This will be our living room. I thought Ella looked so little standing next to this cement wall!



Ella and I ran up to use the bathroom and I let Anneka stay in the courtyard. I could see her out the window, and she was happily teeter tottering with a little girl (the picture turned out blurry). So many people in our new neighborhood are so friendly and there are lots and lots of kids. Even on our same floor is a family with two boys- one Ella's age and one a couple of years older than Anneka.


And this is our kitchen! I cringe a little when I see this picture, as the kitchen was the one room in the apartment where the wallpaper looked nice! But it's my dream to knock down the wall between the kitchen and living room. In this picture, the kitchen looks big, but Russian kitchens are in truth very small. You can sit at the table at your meal and reach anything you need from the cupboards or get a glass of water from the sink without getting up. I think it'll be really beneficial to be able to have moms and kids over and not all be crammed in the kitchen. We'll have more room for guests and I can more easily keep an eye on the kids while they play in the living room. All that said, pretty soon this wall will be knocked down! I'm so excited! Leif and his friend took out the cupboards and stove to protect them. Six tiles from the backsplash were broken (out of 20 total) when the new window was put in- so we decided to get new. So that left just a strip of wallpaper at the top of where the cupboards go. So we just decided to take it down, too. It's amazing how things can kind of pile up!! We're hoping to be moved in fully in less than a month!