Little Khrushchev. Before and after renovation
We, a young married couple Marianna and Nikita, received an apartment in the old center of Alma-Ata, with the most Soviet renovation - dark and cramped. When the question arose of how we wanted to see the renovated space, there was no disagreement: we always liked the Scandinavian style, even before it became wildly popular, but at the same time we wanted to keep something from the past, to match the house. This is our first home and our first experience of designing, renovating and decorating.
- Location: Almaty (Alma-Ata), Kazakhstan
- Rooms: 2
- Bathrooms: 1
- Ceiling height: 2.55 meters
- Budget: about 600,000 rubles (3 million tenge)
Having lived in this apartment for a year, we knew exactly what needed to be redone during the renovation and how to redesign the space to our needs. We made a plan of the future apartment with the arrangement of furniture. When the renovation work began, we knew exactly where we would need sockets, lamps, how wide doorways should be, and how far they needed to be moved to arrange furniture.
During this year, we selected and ordered lamps, plumbing, fabrics and various little things on the Internet, bought chairs. In order not to spoil the appearance of the brick wall and avoid unnecessary chasing, we ordered ceramic switches with external wiring.
Directly repair work from the first to the last day took 2 months.
In the process of remodeling, we abandoned the corridors, increasing the area of the bathroom, kitchen and room by 4 m². They moved a couple of doorways, making enfilade passages. The opening in the kitchen is reinforced with a channel, which we did not hide, because it has very beautiful rust on it. A dressing room was arranged in a large room. They completely replaced the electrical wiring and water pipes, made a new screed and changed the flooring, changed the windows. The walls and ceiling were visually leveled and plastered.
The space invaders in the bathroom are Nikita's idea, and he strictly followed the work of the tiler.
The kitchen is Marie's solution: she selected appliances, kitchen furniture and everything else. The kitchen set was ordered from a local workshop, and ceramic handles were brought from a trip to India 7 years ago, and they decided to use them instead of the standard ones.
Since the kitchen is tiny, we used the window sill as a work surface, so we tiled it - it turned out to be very practical and elegant.
Not only do we like simple and comfortable Scandinavian style, we are also fans of retro. Therefore, we decided to use some of the furniture that already existed, but add something of our own to it: we repainted the cabinet in turquoise, restored and re-upholstered an armchair from the 70s. The fabric for the upholstery of the chair, as well as for the new cover for the old, but extremely comfortable American sofa, had to be ordered in Hong Kong - we did not find anything suitable in local stores. By the way, a sofa, a large mirror in the bedroom, which in a past life was a door from a huge antique closet, and an underframe in the kitchen have been waiting in the warehouse for years - and they did. An old Soviet wardrobe-wall fit perfectly into the dressing room. We removed the doors from it and use it as a huge storage rack.
The most "Scandinavian brand" - IKEA - is not represented in Kazakhstan. Even those few interior items that we still have in the apartment appeared with a fight. For example, for the transportation of a curtain rod by plane from Novosibirsk, we had to pay 2 times more than the cost of the curtain rod itself (for oversized cargo), and we ordered a bed through a transport company and waited for delivery for three months.
The sliding door system came to us from the USA. The door leaf was made for us at a local carpentry workshop. They also made countertops for the living room, kitchen and bathroom, which turned out to be quite inexpensive. The large table in the living room is used as a work table, as well as a dining table when friends come. We rotate it 90 degrees and you're done: 8 people comfortably sit around.
