The blah blah process

To the inquiring minds out there wondering about the housing process, aka the blah-blah process:

On Tuesday we hung this sign around town looking for a Nachmieter. We've already had a fair number of calls, so we'll keep it this way until it dies down and then pay for an ad in the paper if need be. I thought I'd make it as eye-catching as possible in an effort to stick out from the sea of ads.

We've shown the apartment 4 times in the last 2 days, so this is good. We had one group of girls text us last night to say they wanted it, so Stefan will be calling them today to give them the landlord's contact info. The problem is we need a Nachmieter the landlord likes, and we're pretty sure he doesn't want a bunch of university girls making it into a WG/roomie situation. We like them because they like our paint choices and wouldn't require us to paint everything white again. Two other parties are seriously interested, so it's looking pretty good. It looks like we don't have to worry about paying the July rent, but we'd just really like not to have to paint this place before we move out!

We ordered the (drumroll please!) hardwood-style linoleum floor on Tuesday. Thanks for your votes, they confirmed our decision! Second-guessing when a chunk of change is on the table is no fun. It will be installed next week on Friday. We're keeping the old baseboards because we're cheap and think we won't care. I'll be glad when it's in and done with.

The kitchen components themselves are in a fine mess now. On Wednesday the measuring guy came to confirm our kitchen plans and - according to Ikea - answer some questions we had that Ikea couldn't answer. Ikea had deferred and this guy had no clue. Herr Tille downstairs was very nice and called in an electrician he knew to help, but later called saying the person wasn't very helpful and we were all back to square one and a half. I say half because we knew we had some serious issues to work around, but we don't know how serious, and regardless, the kitchen will have to be redesigned again. BLAH BLAH! The bottom line is that we have a sneaking, nasty suspician that we will be stuck having to line up our dishwasher/sink/range and oven in a weird way that will kill all usable counter surfaces just because of where certain hook-ups are and how expensive and/or complicated it will be to do extensions. Stefan's very handy with building things, but this is a little beyond him - especially at this time of the year. Yes, this much trouble in a rental. Thank you Germany.

So, randomly, anybody have any guesses as to what this little white wall-mounted box in our bathroom is? Stefan thinks it may be a wall-mounted wet wipe holder. Which I find super weird. Not that he's ever heard of such a thing, but really...it's just weird.

In happier news: While the guy was measuring the kitchen and talking with Stefan, I managed to get all the other rooms measured and sketched. Each room is now drawn to scale on graph paper and each piece of furniture we own has also been created to scale on graph paper. So I've been rearranging furniture and trying to repurpose what we have, etc. We're happy to see that everything fits nicely in the new apartment as far as furniture goes. Once we figure out a few more things we can decide if we want to paint anything and if so, which color. The main sticking points are what to do with the little bedroom (which the fusebox labels actually call a closet, go figure) and where to put the couch in the living room. The living room is tricky because it has two focal points opposite each other, the fireplace and the giant picture window looking out to the balcony. Our couch has a chaise on one end to further complicate things. I'll probably post a poll on that soon as none of my ideas seem to be any good.

Please pray about this kitchen situation. We're going to be pretty disappointed and frustrated if, after having to spend this kind of money and effort, we end up stuck with an inefficient kitchen with no great countertop area. We need some answers and some creativity in this department - and before the end of next week - or we can forget about having a kitchen ready to use when we arrive in July.

Please also pray the whole Nachmieter thing works out. There will be enough to do moving out of here and getting the kitchen set up at the new place without having to worry about painting the old apartment and whatever else the landlord throws at us.

PRAISE be that we are able to get into this apartment to do all these measurings, floor installations, kitchen junk so early. I don't know what I would do if we had to move in first! Thank you God for this ability!