Okay, I’m finally getting around to posting a blog showing you our new digs. After 4 months of living here, and although we still have things that need to get done (i.e. decorating the walls), I think our place is finally at a point where it is worthy of a blog.

If you’ve ever wondered how to rent and renovate an apartment in China, this is the blog for you…

First, don’t arrive on the first day of Chinese New Year. By far the most important Chinese holiday, it is 15 days long and everyone leaves to go back to their hometown to celebrate with family and relax. So we basically did a lot of waiting around the first two weeks, but thankfully we were staying with friends until we were able to move in to our place (a place we had committed to via text while we were back in the States). Within a week though, we did manage to meet with the landlord (great to meet her in person instead of just through text) to sign the lease and pay our deposit and one year rent up front (those are our finger prints in red ink, no signature needed).

Upon signing and receiving the keys to our new home, we set out to see what needed to be done to the place. Our’s was in better condition than most, but there is almost always some major renovation that needs to be done.

Because of Chinese New Year we still had to wait another week before we could hire any workers to start plastering walls, painting, baseboards, sinks, toilets, ect. So we used the extra time to plan 🙂

Besides planning, I figured I could start doing a few things to prep the house.

Still not sure what that thing was, but more importantly, why was I not wearing any gloves?!?! Always wear gloves.

After hiring a guy to plaster and paint the walls, I left Kristen in charge of renovation and taking care of Elise while I flew back to our old city to figure out a way to get our stuff from there to here.

Ultimately, we decided to use the train instead of a moving company. They picked up our stuff outside the Xining apartment building, put it on a train, then dropped it off at the Xi’an apartment – everything intact and accounted for – for about $125!

As you can see in the picture above, Kristen had done a great job of managing without me. The paint job looks great!!!

Reno continues with guys putting in baseboards and the internet guy (standing behind) waiting to install our internet.

I asked for a receipt after the baseboards were installed (never expect a formal receipt)  and this is what he gave me…

Now that things were starting to come together, it was time for Kristen and I to head to IKEA (yes, we have one in our city) to purchase a “few” things.

We had also been given a few things from another foreign couple who left the country last summer, which our friend had been storing for us at his apartment. His place is only a 10 min walk from our house, but on this day it took an hour because of an alley traffic jam. Expect alley traffic jams.

In all, we stayed with our friends (and we still are friends) for a month while we made our place livable, and have been touching things up ever since.

But here is a video taken this morning of what our place looks like today!

Huge thanks to our good friend Todd who is a handyman extraordinaire (and we were staying with his family) because without his help we would still be living in a hotel. Here he is preparing to cut a bigger hole for our kitchen sink while wearing my snorkel mask as safety goggles… a true man! So, last but not least, always have a friend who is a handy-man, and speaks fluent Chinese 🙂

For the next post, an update on Elise!