Why a farm? Future plans? Time to get some questions answered! / Renovating an 1908-old Belgian farm

Hi there! I'm Marina. And I'm Ilya. Today we decided to make a short introduction slash Q&A video about us, about this YouTube channel, why we decided to start it and what content to expect here, about our future plans and hopes. Let's go! We bought this house in October 2020 and got the keys in December 2020. Yeah, how we got the keys. There were no keys, they were lost somewhere along the way. This house was, this farm was standing abandoned for almost 10 years. Only the last one and a half, two years a man was living here, but he was not taking care of it at all, so it was just a place On this channel you can expect all kind of renovation, demolition and exploratory videos in and around the property. You know, it's not only a house that we bought, we also bought a hobby. Since we spent all our savings on buying it, we have no other choice than to do all the renovation and demolition works ourselves. Ilya does it right now with all the demolition. I do the talking, Ilya does the work. Yeah, and it's definitely a life-changing choice that we made back then. Why we decided to start this channel? We want to, first of all, we want to document our progress and to share our experience, but also we would like to motivate other people to follow their dreams and do not be afraid of starting a new project. We found a lot of inspiration on other YouTube channels and we want to give back. Even now, when we look back how this front yard was looking three months ago and now, I can't recall how it was looking, how overgrown it was three months ago. And it's a huge difference that I can only spot when I watch the video from back then. Yeah, and it's really motivating to move forward when you see how it was and how it's right now. And to understand that you do small steps, but you just do it. Especially when you have no choice. It's like going out of the comfort zone, it's definitely for us. Our management came to inspect. Okay, so why a farm? I can't say that we have been dreaming of buying a farm. When we started to look for a house, we were looking for a lot of ground, quite a peaceful position and also for a house with a camera. And this is how we ended up with a farm. Yeah, and it was really challenging to find a house, which met with all these expectations. And it's hard to find in Belgium, because it's a small country, the density of population is pretty high. So I could imagine that in USA, it will be easier to find. Yeah, maybe in France. In France as well, yeah. But here in Belgium, it's pretty... It was challenging. A quest. Challenging quest. Yeah, that's true. And yeah, then we found this farm and Ilya said, let's buy a farm, he said. It will be fun, he said. Why not? Let's try. It is a lot of fun, but it's me mainly who's stressing out sometimes, who have ups and downs. But Ilya is always looking at the bright side and he's always... He cheers me up and gets me back on track. So we are happy with our choice and the way we have chosen. A little bit about us. We are both working full-time in IT companies and that brings another challenge, that we have no experience in construction and renovation. But I hope that it will help, our logical mindset will help us here. As you can pick up from our accents, we are not... Originally, we are coming not from Belgium, but from Ukraine. We moved to Belgium six years ago. Ilya got an interesting job offer and we decided, why not? And again, why not? Let's try. It looks like all life-changing choices are made with this question. Why not? Yeah, let's try. We moved for new possibilities, for the chance to learn a new culture and to live, experience a new culture. It was always my dream, since my childhood. Also, we moved for more stability. Our kids were still very small back then and they could easily pick up the language. Right now Kate, she's 10 and Maxim, he's 8 years old and they can speak Dutch very well. Much better than me. For you, English is also difficult. Ilya, his logical mindset, all the languages are very difficult for him. It's like a never-ending struggle. Yeah, they're not logical sometimes. They do, they do, they have the structure. The language and programming languages, they do have structures. They're different. Too many exceptions in real languages. I'm fine, I'm fine. Our plans for this house, we bought this house, this farm to turn it into our home. This place has a lot of potential. Yeah, it's quite a big renovation project, so... It's not the biggest castle, but still for us it's very big. Yeah, it's quite big and it's hard to do everything in one go. Yeah, taking into account that we are doing ourselves. Yeah, with limited resources, so we want to focus on the main building first to move here as quick as possible. Yeah, because right now we are renting the house and it's quite expensive to pay both. We have divided this, we have divided the whole project into three phases. The first phase we are focusing on the main building to be able to move in as quickly as possible. As Ilya already told you, because we are renting the house, renting out the house, so we will do some works, some works on electricity, on electricity, plumbing, heating, replacing the roof. We are outsourcing to constructors, but the rest of the jobs we're gonna do ourselves. And this is the first phase. The second phase will be the stable behind us that is next to the house. It's gonna be our living room, kitchen and workshop, but it's gonna cost us time and money. And we would also need an architect, because we need to rebuild a bit to make the door openings and a window bigger. Yeah, we have this idea in our heads, but we still need to visualize it. So yeah, everything can be changed during the next year. It's okay to change. And the third phase of our project is gonna be a barn behind us. It's we didn't yet make a tour about this barn. I'll promise I'll do it as soon as possible, but it's really a treasure on this farm, because it dates back to 1777. We found it on maps from this time. He's just like, hey, my cutie, it's neighbor's cat who comes to visit us every day. And he's an inspector. He's checking the progress. Yeah, and I'm really excited about this third phase, but it's still in a far future when we will do it. Right now we want just to conservate it. Yeah, there are some tiles. The tiles were broken and the roof was leaking, so some of the beams got rotten. We need to conserve it. Also, there are rising damp from the ground. Yeah, so it's also a big renovation project, but we... And this is the barn that we probably have the plans to turn it into a breakfast or guest house or something for our friends to come and visit and live there. They will have all the separate facilities and will be standing apart. I'll tour it, I promise. Very soon. Maybe next month. It's very big and it has no light inside, so we have to arrange all the settings to show it properly. Let's do it. Let's do it. So, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video and got some questions answered. See you next week!