I always wanted a house of my own. I always wanted to be free.
Nothing special until now, as this is something everyone wants. But most people hurry on fulfiling the one that is within their grasp, postponing the other undefinetly. I realised that the only way to get a house at this age, was with a 30 years loan, and that was going to tie me to a desk job for the rest of my youth. The only viable solution was to make it produce the money to cover the bank rates.
So, I started searching for something spatious, old and clearly not refurbished, to get a small apartment for me and at least one studio for renting. It was a long search…
But it was worth the wait as I ha d found the ideal 250 years old building, simple local architecture with a bonus: a big basement, ideal for partying with friends. But the hard part was just begining, as trying to get the bank to fully understand my vision, in a world where new boring flats are the standard, was crucial to my plans. It was a long and crazy process but it was worth it. Meanwhile, Emil came into my life, bearing not just love and buterflyes, but a lot of passion for refurbishing ruins (perfect match 🙂 ) and a carpentry workshop. Two years followed filled with hard work (office&site) but with a lot of support from our parents we managed to finish a 2-bedroom apartment in time to cath the Airbnb hype, by posting in August 2015 our spare room. Surprisingly, we had a full house onward, with guests around all the time, a lot of late night dinners and local ‘tuica’ drink, we gathered all the money and invested everything in the second apartment. Thus, in march 2016 we inaugurated the Bike Loft, and it was an even bigger success. Airbnb ensured a constant flow of cool relaxd people, so we started renting even our own bedroom for the summer, sleeping over our parents homes, friends and even outdoor. All this to start our 3rd work site: The Bike Studio, and it was ready in record time: the autumn of 2016. Thus, the Bike House was finished.
But the story goes on, as our random bookings made us continue our sleep-over pattern, changing to available rooms in the house, parents places or random (rather imposed) trips around the area 🙂 Last winter we took our well deserved vacation and left to South East Asia for 3 months and relaxed so much that we forgot to stop renting one of our apartments to keep it for ourselves. So, in March 2017, we came back to a house full of nice, funny cool guests but no place for ourselves.
So yes, we moved aut of our home and rented a house for us to stay. Amused, our friends and family always ask us when are we going to do Airbnb here as well 🙂
Bike House 141, Brasov 