The apartment upstairs is about 70 sqm in size, but not yet rented. I’m estimating about 300 cold rent. Not much needs to be done upstairs. The kitchen and bathroom need to be tiled, we or our people will do that, my husband is a craftsman himself. We get tiles for free... but it probably won’t be finished until summer, we are focusing first on our apartment downstairs, which should be finished by March 1st or April 1st.
The heating will be completely redone, so far it was heated with oil and hot water was produced by an electric instant water heater, so electricity, hopefully soon everything will run on the new gas heating. The gas connection costs us 300 euros, I have already agreed on this with the gas supplier. We are currently getting quotes for the heating system, underfloor heating for the living room and bathroom downstairs, some radiators, water connections, sanitary installations...
We already have one... we’ll see what the others charge, we have about 20,000 euros budgeted for it. It has to be done anyway, so we can’t weigh rent against costs. An empty apartment is no option in the long run, it just deteriorates and in a few years we’ll have even higher renovation costs.
The current status is that the lower apartment is being gutted, the old plaster ceilings have been removed, wallpaper is off, these days we will start removing the tiles in the bathroom and living room. My husband is doing all the drywall work himself, so the ceilings, boxing in the bathroom, partition walls... plastering and filling is also done in-house.
The entrance will remain as it is now. We will make a breakthrough inside so that the breakthrough/entrance then goes through the dining room (formerly kitchen, simply swapped the rooms). We have to see how to sensibly separate the upstairs and downstairs apartments. I’m having a friendly architect come for that, let’s see if he has a good idea. I suspect we will just install drywall walls with doors that can be locked. Otherwise, there aren’t many options. Next to the basement stairs doesn’t work, too little space after all. A rear entrance is really nothing in my eyes.
The neighbor is old, just had an operation and is now going to rehab. I don’t think we will really have problems with each other as long as I don’t change anything about the garage...
The trash bins are on the other side behind the house, if anything, I’d probably have issues with the left neighbor because of that.
We have now decided to make the best of it... there’s no point in arguing with the building authority and neighbor.
If anyone else has a good idea for the entrance, always feel free to share. It’s not too late for a plan change.
Thanks for the contributions so far... some things have already helped me!