First week of renovations...

[VJ]

Just a quick log of my renovations, first week has passed...

Things that have been done:
- removal of the kitchen
- removal of the kitchen floor and wall tiles
- smoothing of the walls and floor
- removal of tiles from the corridor floor

Things that have been done wrong:
- electrical cabling different places in kitchen
- kitchen wall is not straight
- kitchen floor is too high (well, higher than they expected it to be, making some kitchen planning more difficult)
- miscounting of the needed amount of tiles

Things that are annoying for them (which they discovered now):
- levels of the concrete floor in the corridor is higher than expected, so it will be quite some work to remove it

Things that are annoying for me:
- distance between kitchen floor (without tiles) and top of window sill (which would be one with the tablet) is 85 cm; cabinets need to be 82 cm high to fit a dishwasher, a counter top is 3 cm thick => problem to fit kitchen cabinets... The only feasible workaround is to have cut-outs in the countertop to accommodate the window hinges (then it would fit). I don't like this solution, but there is not really an alternative.
- some rooms are not like the building plan I have: the kitchen is 20 cm longer, but 5 cm narrower; the bathroom currently is still a mystery due to gipscarton walls.
- door solution is complicated (problem finding good doors): most manufacturers only have options in which it is assumed that the door in closed is parallel to the wall. But if you have no wall like that, or the wall is very thick (mine are 30cm), their "standard" solutions don't fit.

Things on the short term to-do list:
- redo the walls in the kitchen
- add electricity to the walls in the kitchen
- lower the corridor floor
- remove the doors
- remove the bathroom walls (so I can determine the size and plan the bathroom properly)

[Belwarrior]

sounds like you are better off building your own house from scratch

unfortunately living in an apartment has alot of adjustments to make..

[Umfriend]

Close to a year ago I quipped that you would be ready by the time you would move. I may be a prophet yet! Would be interested in a few pictures showing your palace.

[VJ]

Belwarrior: problem is that the previous owner(s) did fast renovations - eg not smoothing walls but putting gips-cardboard panels). And I'm removing all of that...

Umfriend: photos will come, but now it basically seems nearly impossible... but don't joke about the moving out... there may be an opportunity in a different country... But even then I'll still be partly in Poland.

New revelations: my bathroom my be 30cm bigger than visible. In one wall is this small door behind which the meters are, the room looks like this:

_________6_______

 ____1__.---2-.
|             |
5             3
|_______4_____|

At location 1 is a small door behind which the meters and valves are. And it is a huge space, walls 3 and 4 have gips-cardboard and tiles, wall 5 is normal concrete, and wall 6 is concrete. The issue now is walls 1 and 2.
Filming with a mobile phone through the access panel reveals that wall 2 hides, from wall 6 towards my room:
- concrete wall (6)
- gips cardboard (panels, just attached to the wall but looks completely pointless)
- flexible pipes (which appear to be water pipes to the my shower)
- huge empty space
- brick wall (looks much more recent than the building)
- gips-cardboard
- tiles

So while we will have a better view once the tiles and gips cardboard and other things are removed, we are now assuming that the previous owners at one point built the brick wall to hide the pipes. The ventilation shaft is somewhere else, so at first there seems to be no logical reason as the why there is such a big space there. I have the plans of the apartment, but they contain a lot of errors: my kitchen is 20 cm bigger than on the plans, so they are not usable as a reference. I plan to ask my neighbour if I can measure their bathroom: if theirs is significantly larger than mine, I know how it comes. So this type of surprises makes planning quite difficult...

The interesting thing is that at the moment, I seem to have a good kitchen layout planned (confirmed by several kitchen installers), and my idea for the bathroom layout also looks good (bathroom planner has something very close).

[Fat Tone]

How long before VJ finds the skeletons?

It may be been convenient to build the wall there not only to hide pipes but also to butt up to a bath.
In the main bathroom in my house there is a false wall at the foot of the bath that has water pipes in it, but the gap is only ~15cm.

In my ensuite, before I rennovated it, the water pipe for the shower came down from the loft inside the gyp-board you are describing and the end of the copper pipe had been bent round very roughly on a small radius. This was ok until I had to maintain it.

Nowadays I have almost no pipework in my loft and when we eventually rennovate the main bathroom there will be none - all will go under the floor boards and up where they are needed. It's not a priority though as only the kids use it, and we all know how keen boys are on being clean

[VJ]

Skeletons found!

They guys started removing the bathroom...one floor (green)... a second floor (black) and... yes! a third floor (red). The the walls: a layer of tiles, a layer of this gyproc, then compressed wood panels, bricks, OLD PIPES that were not connected but just "stored" there and gyproc. The room is now stripped down to the concrete wall, and it gives me... 30 cm more over a length of 3 m. Rather than two rooms that measured 140cmx100cm and 140cmx160, I now have one room that measures 170cmx315cm (the wall separating them also had its fair share of layers). The way the pipes are may complicate things a bit more than we first anticipated, and thus require a rethinking of the layout.

[VJ]

Woohoo.. more sekeletons...

We wanted to move some pipes in the kitchen, so called the plumber... He comes, looks in the kitchen and says: "You have old pipes?!". My contractor answers: "that is what is here?". Plumber: "All the pipes in the building should have been renovated and replaced by plastic pipes 2 years ago". So we went to the building administration. After some checking, it was revealed that the water pipes to my kitchen were not changed, and neither were those to the flat below me.
Obviously, the pipes need changing, so now it is a whole discussion on who should pay for it, who takes responsibility of the pipes and how the whole procedure goes.

From what it looks like now, it seems I would have to pay for the changing of the pipe, but it would remain under their responsibility. Still checking though...

It delays everything with about 1-2 weeks...

[VJ]

The icing on the cake...

The previous owner signed a document, stating that "the apartment will not be connected to the new main pipe, and the owner of the apartment takes responsibility for the old main pipe in case of issues". I was not informed of this situation at the time of purchase, and the document was signed only 3 months before I purchased the apartment.

So I can be very lucky that nothing happened in the past year, and that the issue was discovered. The building administration has already said that they will make a document stating that my apartment is again complying with all the standards, and responsibilities are normalized (mine starts at the meter).

I am however considering to take legal steps against the seller though. First there was the issue that she claimed it was "fully renovated", but the electricity was old. However, the term "fully renovated" is open to interpretation. But this water issue is clearly fraud! Some colleagues told me I might in in a slightly weak position, as no problems occurred... but I would guess that to be besides the point: she hid vital information from me that could have given me many problems and I had extra expenses because of that. The only complications are the language, and the fact that I don't know if it is worth starting legal action (it might end up costing more than it brings). One option might be to get a direct agreement (e.g. contacting the previous owner with a lawyer and see how it plays out).

As far as the renovations are concerned, the water issue is fixed, the gas pipe removed, there will be a new main cable for electricity, and the works can start again. By the end of next week, I expect to have the floors in kitchen, corridor and bathroom, and maybe already a showercabin and toilet in the bathroom. Then we would have to wait for the rest...

[UtwigMU]

Legal action: find out how long court cases last.

In Slovenia on average court case lasts 7 years and legal situation is terrible. Example: a woman bought a new car which was crashed by the dealership. She discovered and sued. Lawyers here escalate court cases all the way to supreme court, so as to find a judge who will comply. After spending ~10.000 Euros on court case and 7 years latter she was rewarded 4.000 Euros. Meanwhile the owner of dealership bankrupted original company and opened new company, so there was no one to pay.

Or when I was let go from one company where I worked, I asked a friend who is a practicing lawyer and expert on work law. He said: after several years and several 1000 Euros, you will get a judgement which says you win, which you will then be able to hang on your wall.

[Chucky Cheese]

Law??

Hey VJ...are there any disclosure laws covering the fact that the previous owner did not disclose that fact at the closing of the purchase?

[Umfriend]

I think that in VJs case the question is one of personal liability, not limited (corporate) such as in the cases of UtwigMU. Personal liability is harder to escape.

But yes, the question is how much you would be able to claim if awarded, how much in legal expense you should be able to recover as well, how much expenses you would actually incur and how much you could expect to actually recover from the seller. Then there is the question whether you might sue any real-estate agent/broker.

If it's just about EUR 1,000 it is probably a huge waste of time. In the Netherlands you would IMHO be able to succesfully sue for misrepresentation assuming the value of the appartment would have been lower for a reasonable buyer had you had full disclosure. But then, we are great and I am not sure about Poland

[VJ]

Yes... The case in point is that the apartment was sold as fully renovated, and vital information was deliberately hidden from me. The "fully renovated" was a big argument of the previous owner, but I did not like the kitchen nor the bathroom, so decided to have them renovated. As such, the whole thing coincides with kitchen renovations, and it basically did not cost me much (apart from a week delay). But I still feel cheated with it.

On the plus side, it did improve relationship between me and the building manager, has he appreciates that I get everything fixed in a safe state, and is now much more understanding towards the fact that I am doing big renovations.

As I understand, the real estate agent (here) carries no responsibility; they just serve as the messenger and tell what the seller tells them. But it must not be good advertising for them is people have such complaints. My current plan is to go real estate agent who handled my case, and showing him the letter. (I will not mail him beforehand; I want his first reaction)

Most likely, I will not make a case out of this, but I want the seller to know that I know.

[Umfriend]

Did you have your own real estate agent?

The fact that you have incurred expenses due to renovation of your own choice such that you had no additional cost due to the fact that the appartment was not fully renovated as advertised would, IMO, not make a difference in the Netherlands. You contracted on the basis of the information provided to you and the main issue here is whether a reasonable buyer would have assigned a lower value had the information been correct.

[VJ]

That is also how the situation would be in Belgium, and the situation how I see it.

In Belgium, you buy an apartment with "visible and invisible faults", but a fault that is was known by the seller and deliberately kept from the buyer. This was the case here: a vital piece of information (a contract that concerns the owner of the flat) was kept from the buyer. In Belgium, the easiest procedure would be to go to some "ombusdman", and then the whole thing should finish quite fast.

[VJ]

I consulted the real estate agent.
He said that under Polish law, contracts/agreements are not automatically transferred. The document was signed by the previous owner, so he would keep full responsibility if something would have happened. In such an event, they don't consider the current owner, but the owner at the time of the contract. So while the agent agrees it could have given me many problems, the end responsibility would have been the previous owner.

This of course means that I never carried responsibility and theoretically did not have to replace the pipe (other than to avoid a whole lot of mess in case the pipe breaks in a fully renovated kitchen).

Jörg