Renovation… so much meaning packed into that one word!
So many sleepless nights, so many arguments, so much screaming, twitching eyelids, and nervous stammering triggered by quotes and material costs. If the backbone of Russian poetry, a.k.a. good ol’ Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin himself, ever sat down to write a piercing passage about some hapless hacienda undergoing renovations in "Eugene Onegin," he probably took one look at what he wrote, recoiled in horror, and thought, "Nah, better just mention Moscow or something less hellish."
When Nastya said, in passing, that it “might be nice” to freshen up the bathroom and toilet, I assumed she meant sometime in the distant future. The full depth of my tragic misconception crashed down upon my poor, sorrowful head a few days later — when we found ourselves applying for political asylum at my mother's house and packing up our belongings.
Once upon a time, in the vast wilderness of the Internet, I stumbled across a mischievous little quote — almost certainly someone's hard-earned wisdom: "Renovation is the ultimate litmus test." It instantly and permanently reveals whether you are a "sweet angel" or an "incompetent bastard with two left hands." Luckily, Nastya and I have long since made our peace with these kinds of revelations, so we decided to outsource the whole filthy business to properly trained professionals. The kind who can tame drywall with a whispered spell, subdue wiring with a sharp glance, and pin tiles to walls with nothing but a furrowed brow and pure alpha energy.
Agreeing on a vision for the bathroom and toilet turned out to be no small feat. Nastya, caught in the whirlwind of inspiration, was as unstoppable and contradictory as Paco Rabanne during a midlife crisis. Although, thinking about it, she was more like a mix of Kenzo Tange and Antoni Gaudí:
Some days, she wanted chandeliers and gold accents.
Other days, she demanded pure high-tech minimalism and brutalist functionality.
I was… not much help. Mainly because I had absolutely no idea what our future bathroom was supposed to reincarnate into. In a desperate attempt to pin down a concept, we agreed to splurge on a professional designer.
Enter Tatyana: she arrived, took measurements, and unleashed the full force of her creative turbine. So much so that she ended up taking measurements of the kitchen too. Sometime later, she sent over a project proposal that boldly declared it was possible to create a mini-Versailles in the three square meters that constituted our bathroom and toilet. And the kitchen? Apparently, the kitchen was grand enough to rival Schönbrunn Palace — complete with the gardens, greenhouses, zoo, and gloriette.
When we tentatively inquired about the cost of this magnificence, Tanya waved us off casually and assured us it would be perfectly affordable. We'd just need a year’s budget of Cambodia. Or, failing that, a controlling share in a gold mining corporation. If we wanted to do it "on the cheap," of course.
All signs indicated that this renovation was about to pull a stunt eerily similar to our wedding preparations: back then too, the price tag galloped ahead like a rhinoceros on ecstasy, with every new budget revision coming in a hundred thousand rubles heavier than the last.
Falling into a financial trance from the dazzling prospects before us, we made a hard executive decision: the kitchen was getting axed from the budget. All signs pointed to the fact that, if we kept things modest, our savings might just barely be enough to pull this off. One little hurdle remained: the workers.
Nastya agreed with me that while we were both versatile specialists in life, plumbing pipes and slicing tiles was a stretch even for our personal growth ambitions. Thanks to good old-fashioned word of mouth, we managed to find some people who had apparently done something, somewhere, for someone — and supposedly, it even turned out decent.
The specialists who showed up gave the place a once-over, took measurements, and, flashing gypsy-like grins full of greedy cunning, named their price for the job. Nastya and I squealed like two wounded piglets — the number was so scandalously six-figured that any other reaction would’ve been plain hypocrisy.
However, a quick market analysis showed that the builders weren’t exactly trying to rob us blind.
Plus, we were already in too deep, and the metaphorical gears of the hellish machine known as RENOVATION had already begun their slow, inexorable grind.
When we came back a few days later to check on our apartment, we found it in a state that looked eerily similar to Al-Khazneh temple in Jordan — you know, the one that popped up in one of the original Indiana Jones movies.
Same sand.
Same desolation.
Same naked stone staring back at you from every direction.
It’s truly terrifying what some construction crews can accomplish: our bathroom had somehow managed to time-travel twenty centuries into the past — in just under two weeks.
In our naïve little plan, we figured the workers would have plenty of space to work their practical magic. To facilitate this, we covered the entrance to the room with construction film, wrapped the entire kitchen set like a leftover turkey, and hauled all the kitchen furniture out.
We packed a bunch of stuff into bags, crammed boxes full of things, and shoved it all onto the balcony.
And there we made our fatal mistake — the kind of mistake from which no good can come: since our apartment tends to be very warm — sometimes even downright stuffy (thanks to good insulation, not because of my endless ramblings about the flavor differences between SL-28 and SL-34 coffee varieties, I swear) — the workers opened the balcony door to let some air in.
And thus, the finest dust from concrete, tile, and cement enthusiastically settled onto all the things we had stored out there, cackling wickedly as it did.
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| Box everything, you fools! |
With great sorrow and a deep existential gloom, I stared at my once-beloved tools and sports equipment — now all uniformly coated in the same soul-crushing shade of dusty gray. Nastya echoed my misery with heavy, broken sighs at the sight of our ski outfits, which had once been so bright and colorful — and now looked like the washed-out, gray slush of late spring snow.
We solemnly swore to henceforth pack everything into airtight containers — or at the very least, sturdy boxes. And with that sacred vow made, we went off to drown our sorrows in pizza.
At some point, our valiant workers vanished — gone without a trace, presumably laying low somewhere. Maybe not in Bruges, but definitely in some place like Yelets or its equivalent.
But the fact remained: they had disappeared.
I wasn’t particularly worried, since they’d warned us from the start that they were juggling several projects at once. Nastya, however, stomped around the apartment spewing curses and happily listing all the medieval tortures and public executions she would’ve loved to apply to the delinquent builders.
My wife is extremely petite, meaning every single emotion inside her is highly concentrated and kept under constant pressure. And now — someone had really given her an external trigger. It took a monumental diplomatic effort on my part to talk her down from bloody revenge. Honestly, if I could channel even a fraction of the passion and persuasive skills I deployed in that situation into international politics, the Kuril Islands dispute would’ve been settled once and for all. Hell, Japan might've thrown in Hokkaido as a bonus.
When our apartment's turn finally came, everything kicked into overdrive like someone had lit a fire under the whole operation. Suddenly, there was a mountain of construction materials we needed to get — and fast. Bathtub, toilet, sheets of 2500x1200 mm waterproof drywall — everything blended into one frantic mess.
We had to haul all this grandeur to the apartment in record time. Nastya had no idea how quickly some dreams can come true — and I had warned her: "Careful with that visualization stuff!"
After the main work was done, the bathroom and toilet finally started to resemble themselves again. The only thing marring the view was some wiring snaking across the ceiling and a cynical patch of bare plaster grinning down at us. We decided to hide all that abstract horror under a stretch ceiling.
One of the beautiful things about spending endless hours in a coffee shop is that if you sit there long enough, you’ll eventually meet every type of professional imaginable — from a trichologist to an ichthyologist. And sure enough, my espresso neighbor happened to know a guy who specialized in exactly the work we needed.
Narratively speaking, that subcontractor experience was painfully unremarkable. There were no spectacular delays, no one fell off a ladder, not even a single loose ceiling mount. They showed up on time, blitzed through the job, and vanished like pros. And they did everything so cleanly and precisely that we literally had no grounds to complain.
The only real nerve-wracking moment happened purely because of my own ignorance.
While installing the frame for the future ceiling, the guys weren't using a regular drill — they were wielding some sort of pneumatic gun, apparently called a nailer. It fires mounting nails into the wall with considerable force. The sound it makes is exactly like someone flying into a rage at a tiled wall and beating the hell out of it with a hammer.
And I — I had no idea.
When the sound of shattering tile reached my ears, a grim slideshow of all our invoices and payments flashed before my eyes. In a single wild leap, I was already at the entrance to the hallway, ready to witness the devastation firsthand and, if necessary, dramatically reduce the population of stretch-ceiling specialists.
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| I feel you, captn |
While I was hastily composing my opening statement for the prosecution, several more identical crashes rang out. Slowly, it began to dawn on me: it was highly unlikely that we had accidentally let a gang of ceramo-hating vandals loose in our apartment.
The worker holding the nailer looked at me — hovering awkwardly in the doorway like a crashed drone — gave me a questioning glance, shrugged without waiting for any questions or orders, and casually resumed firing away.
The next challenge was hurled at our faces with wild defiance — by the linoleum. We decided to lay it ourselves, since our hallway is pretty modest in size and not particularly rich in fancy twists and turns. I agreed — on the condition that we buy a special knife designed for artistic cutting of carpets, linoleum, and cardboard.
You see, when I was removing the previous floor covering (which had apparently been installed sometime during the Devonian period), I used an ordinary box cutter — and in the process, I managed to shred not only the floor and wiring, but also my own soul: the worn-out carpet and the top layer of linoleum cut away easily enough, but the felt underlay clung to itself like a rabid badger and refused to let go, holding out with the desperate valor of the Rus' at the defense of Dorostolon.
With the specialized knife, things went much more cheerfully: we mapped everything out like Auguste Rodin sculpting his masterpieces, sliced off the excess, and set about laying the material.
Even as we were hauling it into place, we had a creeping sense that something was wrong: the linoleum was absolutely not fitting. It looked like we had miscalculated. But where?
Later, we found out: in terms of length, we had cut everything correctly. But when it came to the width, we had somehow forgotten to trim it. Recalling the words of my geometry teacher — who once declared that a passing grade in her class would be the pinnacle of my academic dreams — I, all these years later, had to finally admit: she was absolutely right.
Next up were the wallpapers. Not the harmless rolls themselves, of course — but the ordeal of actually sticking them to the walls. We postponed the execution as long as we could: agonizing endlessly over colors and textures, with Nastya studying the pros and cons of different wallpaper types, and both of us wandering through seemingly endless store aisles, visualizing and analyzing... something. Something important. Surely.
But finally, the moment arrived. The glue was mixed, the corridor walls were measured, and a razor-sharp blade was inserted into the utility knife.
My wife and I hugged each other one last time. Because who knew what would happen next? Would we survive? Or would the fleece-backed demon claim yet another marriage as a blood sacrifice?
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| Well, neither did we |
And yet, against all odds, we actually did pretty well. Even though it became abundantly clear that neither of us really understood what we were doing. Turns out that assisting with wallpapering and actually lining up the seams and chasing out the air bubbles are two completely different beasts.
And then — there was the glue. At first, I applied it carefully with a small brush, afraid to overdo it. But when our two-and-a-half-meter-wide sheet of wallpaper began to slither mockingly down the wall with a sinister rustle, it became painfully obvious that moderation was not just inappropriate here — it was downright dangerous. Thus, moderation had to be ruthlessly uprooted. From that point on, Nastya and I attacked the job with manic intensity, wielding the roller like berserkers, periodically wiping clumps of glue off each other — tangible proof of our uncontrollable fervor.
There's a popular joke floating around online: "We started our renovation in the style of “hi-tech”. Then it shifted to “well, meh”. And we finished in the style of “f*ck ya”.
But honestly, nothing teaches humility like doing your own home renovation. People go off to Nepal or Goa, drink strange brews, consult spiritual guides and gurus. But really — just try wallpapering around a doorframe where the top is not aligned with the bottom,
and where the sidewalls seem to harbor a deep, ancestral hatred for right angles.
Or perhaps the builders were simply so inspired by the work of Hundertwasser that they decided to honor the Viennese architect's memory in this particular Soviet-era concrete block in Lipetsk.
Whatever the case may be — after six brutal hours, Nastya and I had reached such profound understanding of the Universal Design that the mysteries of this world became absolutely clear to us. We decided to postpone our full merging with the Infinite Eternal until the next day, and, proud of the fact that we were still married, we collapsed into bed.
One thing that brought us extraordinary joy and relief was the fact that from here on out, not much effort would be required from us: all that remained was the installation of doors and various pieces of furniture. The furniture was still in the works, so the doors were the first to arrive — after nearly two months of waiting.
You’d think that with the absurd number of door stores out there, competition would be fiercer than in a power-hungry royal family. But no — the factories weren’t in any particular rush, doling out doors to desperate customers with a certain leisurely disdain.
And fine — if only they were just slow about it. But no, they also somehow struggled to deliver the correct items.
When our order finally arrived, I wasn’t home, so Nastya had to receive the delivery on her own. They brought her the trim pieces, some assorted hardware, and, of course, the doors themselves.
The factory workers had diligently packed everything up in cardboard and stretch wrap, adding plastic corner protectors to prevent any damage to the finish. The center part of each door was left uncovered, allowing you to check the model without having to completely unpack it.
When I got home from work, we unwrapped one door, admired its texture and color for a while, then carefully set it back — ready for the installer, who was scheduled to come the next day.
In general, over the course of this renovation, I had lost a considerable amount of faith in humanity, and had provided my paranoia with an extremely fertile patch of soil to grow in.
I had learned that everything needs to be double-checked. Doesn’t matter how prestigious the specialist standing before you is, or how grandly they puff out their feathers and scoff at terms like "standard contract" and "acceptance of completed work." People somehow manage to screw things up in the most unexpected and hard-to-reach places.
And so it went with the doors. Because of work, I wasn’t home again when the installer arrived. After a while, I got a voice message from my wife, who, with a mix of indignant amusement and bone-deep exhaustion with the world’s imperfections, informed me that they had delivered two completely different doors.
One of them was correct: that gentle beige color, perfectly flat, minimalist — exactly what we had ordered. But the second one (the one we hadn't bothered to check) was emerald-white, with some kind of alien-looking pattern carved into it, covering the entire surface. You know those fake crop circles allegedly left by UFOs? Only in our case, some TV special would have been titled "Rectangles on Doors."
I’m not trying to shift the blame here. We absolutely should have checked everything that was delivered. But think about it: the entire chain on the company’s side must have been operating in a state of magnificent laziness and zen-like detachment.
The factory workers packed two mismatched doors into a single order without checking the labels. The warehouse guys assembled the order without glancing at the paperwork. The movers and delivery drivers did the same. And well — we followed suit.
In our defense, though, I genuinely didn’t expect that an order of a grand total of two doors would need such thorough inspection.
Ten doors? Sure.
Five? Maybe.
But two?
Apparently, yes. Definitely yes. Lesson learned.
In the end, the missing door was found at the warehouse, but because of the lost time, the installation stretched out over two days. All the freshly cleaned surfaces were once again covered in a fine layer of dust. This time, wood dust. Munching on sugar corn sticks seasoned with sawdust and sipping lemon tea flavored with even more sawdust, I reached a near-total acceptance of fate and felt a deep spiritual kinship with beavers.
The installer, to his credit, did a fantastic job: the brand-new doors opened and closed with a dignified smoothness, and they were so perfectly aligned that they would stay frozen at any angle, like a startled fawn caught in a truck’s headlights.
Nastya was so impressed by the results that she made her sister — who had the misfortune of visiting us — play a new game: locking herself alternately in the bathroom and the toilet. The rules were strict: no complaints allowed — only enthusiastic tongue-clicking and pretending that quality doors had been a long-absent miracle in her life. Ideally, she would have fainted from sheer delight, but Nastya decided not to push it too far. Anya played along dutifully,
and after just a couple of hours, was finally released and allowed to go home.
The final flourish of our construction odyssey was supposed to be the installation of the bathroom furniture and a pair of swing doors in the toilet — to hide our shy little boiler. Defying all logic and common sense, we invited friends over on the same day the workers were scheduled to come.
Guests were expected at 7:00 PM.
The installers — at 9:00 AM.
Ten hours sounded like plenty of time for the job.
It wasn’t.
First, it turned out that the walls — which had just been painstakingly leveled — were crooked after all. Then, the brand-new vanity cabinet under the sink was also crooked. The installers got into such a heated argument about exactly where and how much the screw-up had occurred that, in the process, they tore off a piece of trim from the new door. Under my leaden stare — tinged with just a hint of madness — they hastily assured me they’d fix everything back to normal.
In the end, it was decided that the cabinet was to blame. Clearly, it needed something sawed off — for "preventive measures." Doing that in our apartment wasn’t an option, so the workers left but promised to return.
In an hour.
Maybe an hour and a half at most.
While they were off to their workshop and back, Nastya and I discovered several nasty-looking dents on the surface of the wall-mounted cabinet door. They smirked arrogantly right at eye level, as if mocking us, daring us to practice even deeper detachment from material possessions. After some furious complaints via messenger, it was decided that the door would be replaced.
Probably.
In about a month.
Time flies when you’re in a scandal, so when the workers finally returned, it actually felt surprisingly quick. Once the vanity was secured in its rightful place, and the sink was solemnly installed on top — like a crown on a rightful monarch — we suddenly realized there were no handles for the drawers. And nobody knew where they were.
At that point, I wanted to chop all the hired clowns into tiny pieces, but my wife convinced me that a full-blown meltdown would suffice.
We improvised: temporary handles made from strips of painter’s tape stuck onto the drawer fronts, one over the other, creating a little “tongue” you could pull to open them.
By then it was almost 7:00 PM, and the swing doors for the boiler closet were still untouched. It was becoming obvious the installers wouldn’t finish before the guests arrived.
And so it was: when Yulia and Pasha walked in, they weren’t greeted by a typical house pet — no cat, no dog — but by a laser level perched grandly on a tripod right in the doorway.
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| "Meow?" |
If they were at all surprised by such an avant-garde welcome, they stoically chose not to show it.
When the guests arrived, the workers immediately started fidgeting and apologizing for not finishing earlier. There was even a timid attempt to flee and come back another day to finish the job. That idea was promptly and firmly shut down.
We decided to divide and conquer: the installers would keep working, and we would go drink cider and play board games. To give them a boost for the final stretch, we armed the guys with pizza and gave them our blessing for great construction achievements.
Somewhere in the middle of the evening, already a little tipsy, we went to inspect the results.
Aside from the temporary painter’s-tape handles and the bold dents in the bathroom cabinet door, everything looked fantastic.
In a benevolent mood, we agreed on future dates for fixing the remaining issues, paid the workers, and sent them on their way.
Yulia and Pasha congratulated us on the practical end of the renovation, and then we all returned to the table, to spend the rest of the evening in a state of gastronomical and conversational nirvana.
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