Renovation of Existing Property - Our Way to the House

Now a look into the basement, initial state. There are 5 rooms: hallway, "heating", fireplace room (with storage corner), laundry room, sauna room.

In the hallway we find the old meter cabinet/fuse box on the wall. There is a new staircase from around 2010. The cabinets on the left in the picture were not salvageable after 2.5 years without proper heating/ventilation.


Well, better than nothing, but this has to go first:

(All classic zeroing, black-gray and possibly red. No proper equipotential bonding or separate grounding)

Metal housing with sharp edges, the insulation does not like that at all:


Fireplace room, only authentic with wooden ceiling, curtains and subsequent brick wall to a storage area:



The storage room behind the wall was made "livable". Laminate on the floor, drywall on the wall and ceiling panels. Not a good idea for the poor wall behind.


A small heating room. Here the district heating comes in, connected directly to the radiators at 10 bar and 100°C without a heat exchanger.


The water connection is also concealed there:

Hmm… isn't it the bathroom down here on the bottom left?

That was a house we wanted to buy first, but the seller backed out. The floor plan is included purely for informational purposes because it is a nice example of a split-level house. You can find a floor plan for the current house in , where I am looking for ideas for a future extension

Ah, thanks, I didn't know that thread yet. Unfortunately, there was little feedback. Have you already decided on a version?

A laundry room, tiled up to the ceiling. In the back left corner there is slight water ingress during rain (through the joints).


Sauna room: to the left of the sauna a seating tub as a Kneipp basin. Additionally, a washbasin from the original kitchen of 1960 with a boiler, to the left outside the picture a door with stairs to the garden. The sauna (built in 1968) was disconnected, only the light works. Inside is a storage of spare tiles and natural stones.

(Note the wooden ceiling - all these are slotted screws, a pleasure to remove)

The goal: somehow new water pipes must be routed from the connection room to the laundry room. The path through the hallway is unsuitable. So through the fireplace room and sauna room. For this, everything in the way must be removed (ceiling cladding, sauna, brick wall in the fireplace room). Also, the tiles on the wall are obstructive, because pipes must also go there and it is difficult to remove them afterwards.
Since the sauna room is going to become the workshop, we do not need tiles there and in the laundry room a plastered wall is sufficient.

Step 1: Storage corner in the fireplace room:

A musty room. The plaster walls seem to be causing problems, so everything is removed on the day of handover:
(15.12.2018)

Yes, the wall has suffered (same perspective and opposite direction):
(16.12.2018)

The passage for the planned pipe route is in the wrong place, so it is already being widened and the wooden ceiling is already removed:
(19.12.2018)

At the same time, in the hallway the old water supply to the kitchen / bathroom / laundry room was cut off and a construction water tap was installed:


Drillings from the fireplace room to the sauna room, alignment of the new supply route:


“Liberation” of the wall and wastewater pipe in the laundry room from the tiles:
(20.12.2018)

Exciting! Please continue to share your experiences - we have / had a similar approach to the renovation / modernization of our house.

Thanks to the momentum and mass of a 6kg hammer, the downpipes on both sides of the laundry room are history
(25.12.2018)

The damp corner is freed of tiles for further inspection:
(26.12.2018)
(The cause and quite simple solution will come later under "Small things that take a lot of time at the outdoor facilities")

If you lay a pipe, you need a pipe hole drilling machine:

With water cooling pressure tank for the maximum rotten egg experience.

Holes drilled, basement a debris field:


Laundry room without tiles, but with thick-bed mortar residues:


Sauna dismantled (and wood ceiling):
(05.01.2019)
Found a self-picker for the sauna stove on Ebay Classifieds.
Got a disposal confirmation from the city for unknown insulation materials and two asbestos boards, to properly dispose of everything for flat fees of 9€ each.

Away with Kneipp corner and tiles in the sauna room:
(10.01.2019)

Found a note for free scrap pickup in the mailbox. No problem, I don’t want the basement waste in my trunk and the tub is gone:


What’s also gone is the partition wall in the fireplace room. Neatly sorted into construction debris and aerated concrete (hazardous waste!):


Next, the walls have to be worked on to be able to lay pipes.