The search for a house
My girlfriend and myself have been looking for a house for about 1,5 year at the moment when we bought our first house. It has been a real struggle to buy a house in 2024, but we finally got our first house which makes ourselves really happy homeowners! Before this house we looked at about 20 other houses which we didn’t get to buy. This house fits our needs as it is still close to the fruit farm, and the garden and space besides the house allows for outdoor activities for ourselves.
The house we bought
The house we bougth is located in Limburg Netherlands near the city Venlo. build year is 1951, and it’s basically in the heart of the village as it is right besides the church. This house has been a rental house for the past 74 years and was originally designed to have the angled walls because besides the house there was another street. Luckily for us this street has been added to the garden a long long time ago which gives us a gigantic garden for dutch standards in the center of the village.
Move in or renovate
When we got the keys and looked arround, The house didn’t seem to bad for us. We discussed a while about what to do as we could just move in as it was. after some analyzing with some related experts we came to the conclusion that the moment right now is the moment to renovate the whole house. That is because once we live in the house we can’t do any decent renovations anymore, and only patch up room by room.
Since i like to do things well i said, we either do everything and make it our dreamhome, or we do nothing at all. So together with my girlfriend we decided to renovate the house completely as well as possible.
The big plan
Since a renovation is the way forward, and basically everything needs replacement as the whole utilities are 75 years at this moment it made sense to also make some more extreme designs and just don’t think about what you got, but think about what you want. We did that, and after alot of sketching the conclusion was made. We need to connect the living room to the garden to have a nice feeling in the living room. Also the kitchen needed some more space, and a connection to the garden. While doing so, it means sacrificing the storage area. Because a storage area for washing and so on is required a home extension was required so we decided to add an extension the the right side of the house where we can make the washing room, and expand the kitchen.
The front door would be moved as it’s in the wrong spot, and this would create a complete new entrance hall for the house. we can also make a toiletroom in here now, and a new connection for all the utilities.
Upstairs a new bathroom and toiletroom have to be realised as we are removing the old bathroom and toilet from the ground floor.
Our plan with the house
What we need to do
To make our plan reality, there was alot to do.
We had to do this in order:
- demolition of ceilings
- take out the ground floor to make new nice concrete floor.
- remove powerlines, radiators and waterlines.
- clean up the garden to get access, and get rid of junk ASAP.
- dig out the constructionsite for the extension.
- build a new utility cabinet.
- Demolish everything we build new, or is not required anymore.
- build new walls and roofs.
- install electrics, and floorheating.
- get new windows and outside doors
- build the sanitary rooms
- build the kitchen
- garden work
Starting of "The demolition"
We started demolition work in December 2024. We started with the ceilings which was a horrible job to do. The ceilings consisted of stonemesh with chalk. This was extremely dusty, nailed very tight to all the beams. To get rid of this we really had to hammer everything.
After that we got the old bathroom walls out on the bottomfloor to make some space for a big breakthrough of the livingroom.
The first step in demolition
Demolition of "The Walls"
Taken out the bathroom and kitchen we had to wait a few days to hear if we would be allowed to remove the wall between the living room and bathroom/washing room. In this time we decided to clean up upstairs as there was alot of walls on the wrong place but also some walls which were just too weak. For this reason we decided to remove these aswell.
I also really like the old floor in the living room as it is real french oak wood, so i took this out to save it and keep it in good shape.
upstairs wall removal and wooden floor removal
After doing all that we could remove the wall in the living room which finally gives us a view of what our new living room will look like in size. after taking that wall out we could remove the complete wooden underfloor in the living room which was a bit rotten at that moment. This has been caused due to the wall insulation which locked the moisture beneath the floor. Once taken out the flooring i could see the outside of the basement, this made me realise this is my only chance to ever insulate an waterproof this, so i took this chance and started digging to coat the outside of the basement with a rubber coating and put EPS insulation in just because we can.
Wall Breakthrough, floor breakthrough and basement painting
The garden
Arround the middle to end of Februari we started to have some better weather. This was very much required to get started in the garden as everything was just wet before, and since our garden (which we figured out a bit later) is a 2m thick clay layer this would cause some complications.
The first steps were to open up the garden, so remove a fence which was completely overgrown. After that i could access the garden, replant all the bushes which were in the way and drive through with the shredder to clean up everything, this gave us a clean driveway.
In the back of the garden we have a pond which i removed, this was a complete concrete pond with alot of concrete and rocks all arround which made me fill up a lot of bins with debree. I decided to buy myself a bucket for the excavator to filter out all the rocks, and i have made alot of use of this bucket. this was a big job, but also a fun job with the excavator as it put my restored boom through alot of work.
After getting that pond out it was time to get closer to the house. This ment the first thing that had to happen was to remove the old carport as this was rotten, and we had a home extension planned on that spot.
I started by taking the roofing off, and stripping as much as i could. Since it was still winter everything was dirty and wet. When having the roof off i decided to take the rest down with the excavator to get some quicker cleaning up done. Most work of this project was too get all the junk to the junkyard.
When i had the carport gone we started taking the driveway and terrace out so i could dig here freely and clear everything up from debree.
At that point i also picked up some really nice super big tiles from ebay which came in handy for our garden during the renovation as they were a square meter each. This was ideal to move arround with the excavator and a clamp.
getting the floor ready
The toiletroom was still intact, but it was time to remove this as it wasn’t required anymore. Once having the whole old toilet out i removed the toiletroom aswell.
After having everything out, the heating was up as that was still operational until this point because our house required heating to dry up from the period before we bought it. I started draining radiators, and cut everything out with the angle grinder. I sold the metal to a scrapyard and that got me enough money for the next project the uttility cabinet.
Because our house is old there isn’t a real utility cabinet. Because we build an extension we have to get a new utility cabinet becasue everything is going under our home extension which is not allowed either.
This is a expensive operation, but i think it’s good to do it as it allows us to make everything future ready. For this reason i build a utility cabinet which is nice and wide, this way alot of routers, gateways and other stuff fit in here nicely.