Renovation of old buildings, what awaits us

You don’t have to bring the whole house up to new-build standards.

That’s exactly what we thought as well. We wanted to "observe" the exterior insulation for a winter first, and the same with the roof.

What definitely has to be done immediately are the windows, bathroom, kitchen, floors, walls, and electrical system.

On the topic of the roof:

You don't have to bring the whole house up to new-build standards.

You can save a lot here too.

Remove the roof covering yourself, have the rafters checked by the roofer and put up the foil, then re-roof the roof yourself. Possibly using the "old" tiles.

I don’t know how much "normal" concrete roof tiles cost for a roof of that size, but I believe I once saw an offer in a hardware store advertisement where 130 m² of Braas roof tiles cost well under €10,000. I’m not going to put 60-year-old tiles back on the roof and then have to set up the scaffolding again and redo everything in three years with a bit of bad luck...

It's always a question of how much you have to turn the Euro over. With my proposal, the substructure is initially up to date. It's not a huge effort in a few years to redo the tiles if necessary. Of course, it always depends on the condition of the current tiles. In my case, the tiles are 37 years old and I will calmly put them back on the roof.

Then yours are almost only half as old! Surely one cannot judge that without having seen them. However, the assembly of scaffolding is also very expensive, and I would not skimp on (I think it was) 6-7 k€, because you only find out whether you saved money when it is already too late.

Before we decided (and got the opportunity) to build a new house, we were once close to buying a house from the 60s with 190m² of living space.

The plan was: All windows new, 2 bathrooms new, kitchen new, (Ab-) water pipes new, roof new, floors new, radiators new, electrical system new, remove two or three walls, facade only painted.

At the end of the calculation, which already included some DIY work, the renovation costs amounted to a round 200,000. Our bank advisor also said that renovating an old building usually costs from 1,000 euros/m². Later it also turned out that the basement was slightly damp and that the chimney would have needed renovation as well. I am sure we would have found even more surprises, so that in the end 250,000 euros would have been on the bill without having a truly new house. Only because of the good location and the plot did we enter negotiations; however, the house was reportedly bought by someone else for the asking price. That was a year ago now. The family simply moved in there and are living in the house at the level it was found.

One can probably do that if one feels comfortable. At the bank, we were told that a family also interested in the house would only do the wallpaper and walls. Well, we'll wait for the surveyor tomorrow first.