home improvement

I've had my laptop recharged for a couple days now, and we even have the internet working with wifi in the house, so pictures or not it's time I post something!

I really wish I could post some pictures of the house..
In the meantime let me tell you about our latest home improvement projects.

There is a fireplace in the living room.
When we met the landlord he said it was closed, but having someone clean it should be enough to put it back in service.
It looks like this
only with that in front of it:

So of course when we got the place the first thing we did was to call a chimney guy for "ramonage" (= cleaning the suit out. I'm too lazy to look for the English, and I bet it's going to be "ramonage" or something).
We opened the little panel that was in front of the fireplace, and low and behold, there were bricks inside!! Our little cleaning turned into a renovation project!
We had a fireplace renovator come and he estimated the cost to about 1200 euros (a little more in $, probably $1,600 or so). Ouch.
While we debate whether to have it done now or wait till next winter we had an other guy coming for a second estimate, a couple hundreds less would have been nice.
The second ramoneur was definitely more professional. He gave ONE look at the bricks and said : " looks like someone used the piping for the heater, see it's warm". For our defense we are not professionals, and it was not that warm, it was "barely not cold".
So off we went down the stairs, and sure enough the previous owner used the chimney as an existing pipe for the heater. Getting a new piping system for the heater plus renovating the existing chimney would be about 20,000 euros. Hmm thanks but no thanks. We'll put candles in front for decoration... :)

I am so happy we got a second opinion!! I can't imagine how stupid we would have felt when the first guy would have destroyed the heater piping with a huge shovelglove!!!
I will remember this story now and always get a second opinion for stuff I know nothing about!

Now with the money we didn't foolishly spent we are thinking of getting a deck, to have a nice outdoors space for company. :) I already contacted 2 companies for estimates.