I overlook the unavoidable (cough exhausting) bureaucratic part and the fact that first of all we had to throw away all the useless thing left by the previous owner and concentrate on the test the contractor has done on the building.
First of all we needed to check out the structural soundness of the floor searching for original surfaces and conducting a few test in the basement that wasn’t used at all in the past; the cellar right now is untreated and not so high, so we wanted to dig less than 1 meter and refurbish the room trying to make it healthier.
And here are the test results …
We removed the red carpet in one of the room and find out a nice original floor that we’d like to reapply or sell and since the same goes for the one in the small room with the balcony we decided to remove all the tiles. In the end we discovered that the central part of the building has no reinforcement bars so we are the lucky winner of a contingencies structural work !
On the other hand digging the basement we discovered groundwater at approximately 50 cm deep so we can compensate the unexpected costs with the fact that we will dig just below the surface.
Let’s keep our finger crossed and hope there will be no more surprises ^.^
Home Renovation Journal 