Time for a renovation

My grandmother has been living in the same house her whole life. She was born in the house and she says she will also like to pass away in the same house. This is not unusual to her generation. Many people had to flee the war and families settled around farms where they then had many post-war generation kids. These kids grew up in these farms and also with the new war knocking on the door they had to be the heads of the families. This possibly created a special bond between the farms and the people.

My grandmother was for a very long time not willing to do anything new around the farm. Everything should be as it was before and as it will be for the future generations. At some point she realized though that there is no future generation for this farm. The population of the village is vastly decreasing and there is no agriculture in the area.

I told here a few times that she should relocate to some of the cities nearby so that if she gets sick, she would be treated properly. She understood my concerns but politely said no.

One weekend I took her to the nearby town where we were supposed to go for some grocery shopping. I needed a shovel because of the new snow so we also popped by at the local K-rauta. That was the eye opener for grandma. After a while we were already looking at a new kitchen, new toilet and possibly even a new outdoor kitchen for the farm. She got so excited that it was hard for me to get her out of there.

The following weeks we planned thoroughly the renovation (in Finnish: remontti) and we called several times the local K-rauta to get some advice. We got the planning to a stage where everything was ready and just an order a way and we did it. For so many decades it had been untouched and nothing had been renovated but now after a full renovation and many visits to the local K-rauta store, I have never seen my grandmother happier than she is now. As for me, I got so inspired by the advise and all those cool products in K-rauta that I am right now about to start building (in Finnish: rakentaminen) my own house. Isn’t that cool?