House Status
Because everyone wants to know what the status with our new house is, here's an update.
The house is paid, we got the keys and it's officially ours now.
But before we move in, we have bunch of things we want to have done first:
- renew the sewage service shaft
- renew the roof insulation
- renew the electric wiring
- remodel the bathroom
- replace the cellar windows
- renovate all rooms
The sewage shaft is old and crumbling and no longer legal, so it needs to be replaced. We feared that the same would be true for the actual sewage pipes but apparently they are fine. We had a company check it with a camera and they will also make us a reasonably priced offer for replacing the shaft. So this point is covered.
The roof is our biggest grief right now. The roof space is very small and the access is through a small hatch from the outside. This makes just replacing the insulation more difficult than anticipated. It might not be possible to only renew the insulation and instead it may be necessary to take down the whole ceiling 
. We're also having a hard time finding a company who would even talk to us. The only offer we have so far is about 5 times the amount we had calculated for this.
The electricity is still old GDR style aluminum wires and not up to safety standards anymore. We have an offer that is within our original estimate, but we might need to save some money by taking up the offer of my mum's husband to help us do most of it ourselves and have a certified electrician do the final check only.
Remodeling the bathroom is relatively low on my personal list as I'd be okay with shitty looks as long as there's a working toilet and shower, but Kaddi really wants this to be done. We have some preliminary numbers but no official offers, yet. This might get more expensive than anticipated, too.
The current windows in the cellar are a joke and need to be replaced. Luckily this is a straightforward task and a comparatively small amount to spend.
Finally the basic renovation is the only thing we can already do, so that's what we spent the long weekend on. We started by removing a wall in the cellar and began removing the old wallpapers. The latter proved to be very time consuming because some of those wallpapers just refuse to let go.
Besides the (literal) pain of removing the wallpapers, the uncertainty of how to deal with the roof is currently dragging us down a bit. We really need to have a second (or third) comparison offer before we can proceed with anything else. If you can recommend a roof insulation company near Berlin - let me know, because winter is coming.
On the plus side, we got us a new gadget - a Bosch Cordless Impact Drill. However the one purchase I got the most use out of so far are my Wondergrip gloves. Highly recommended.
