Slow Progress, or one room less makes a huge bathroom.

The bathroom that ate our spare room. 

The living room without the pile of wood from the bathroom demolition.

So, here's the housing update on the apartment we rented and the roadblocks we are encountering: to put it briefly*...we are sorta homeless. Well, not really. S's mom is so very generously putting us up until our apartment is ready. Which will be over a week after our lease was supposed to begin.

And....despite proclamations to the contrary as we monitored and inquired about the renovations, we now have one less room than when we signed the lease. This is kinda a big problem since the apartment was on the small side for us before this update. But we stopped by to check on the progress last Thursday afternoon** and it seems the bathroom is going to be pretty awesome. So....we are currently planning on sacrificing needed storage space for an awesome bathroom in the hopes that we can make it work for us. If not....I guess we will have to move again sooner rather than later.

I have mixed feelings about it all. Our landlord has been ill and is in the hospital (for the second time this month!) and we have never actually met him, in fact. Also, changing the layout of the apartment after it has been rented is actually not something one is allowed to do.*** But, as you guys know from before, I really appreciate a good bathroom in an apartment. And there are really no other housing options. Apparently the housing availability in our city is .4% or something like that. And the news apparently reported recently that there were 20 households who had no housing as of July 1st (which is when almost all new leases start and end here) because those people were not able to even find housing in their budget. So, after hearing that, I was left feeling thankful to have housing and lucky to have a newly renovated, spacious bathroom.****

*I know, I know, saying anything briefly is not my style.
**And it was perfect timing because the guy renovating the bathroom was having some trouble figuring out how to wire the electricity. S caught the error and told the guy how to do it right. Which I am glad of, otherwise we would have had a non-working ventilation fan and a light working only at half-power!

***Like, it is illegal.

****And anxious about the real possibility that our stuff might not fit. Eek. S said perhaps it is a sign we need to simplify our lives. I agree.