At the age of 25, I decided to renovate a house I had bought at auction three years earlier. It was more than a good deal. Partly because of its poor layout, I estimate the house cost between a half and a third of the normal market price.
What is my estimate based on? The house was first offered for three times the price I paid for it. The price was far below the value of the land that came with the house. On top of that, straight after the purchase I received two much higher offers to buy it from me. Renovating an old house does not appeal to most people. They would rather build a much more expensive new house to their own design. That certainly has its advantages, because an old house holds more than one surprise that is hard to spot without previous experience.
LESSON: People are looking for the ideal home. A run-down house with a poor layout does not tempt anyone to renovate it, even at a minimal price. Perhaps many people lack imagination and cannot picture a shabby old house turning into a beautiful renovated one.
Table of contents
How to start renovating an old house
It is a good idea to treat a house renovation as a project, and every good project should have a plan. So apart from the first step, clearing out, it is worth planning everything thoroughly so that you do not do something you will regret during the building work and renovation. Above all, major decisions such as the layout of the rooms should go through several rounds of pros and cons. Also ask more experienced people for advice, as they can give you a new perspective on the whole situation. Invite them without any obligation and ask how they would solve your building dilemma. Do not push your ideas on them. First and foremost, try to hear someone else’s independent opinion.
Getting advice on the shell construction is one thing, and getting advice when choosing a kitchen or accessories is another. When choosing my kitchen, I easily compared all the options online and picked the best value one.
2022: With the high demands and rising energy prices in 2022, I would probably have applied for the New Green Savings (Nová zelená úsporám) subsidy and insulated the house properly. It is hard to say whether insulation would have made the damp problem worse or better. With an old house, you can put together a comprehensive project and apply for funding for new windows, wall and ceiling insulation and possibly a solar power system. In the current situation, I would probably also go for a proven solar power system, but only if I wanted to live in the house myself. Try asking for quotes for solar panels, a heat pump or a combination of both. You can then assess the possible benefits.
Clearing out before renovating a house
Once the paperwork was done, I took over the house along with its “tenants”. Because the house was in poor condition, I offered them a very favourable rent, for which they could not have found even a studio flat in the area.
MISTAKE: The house was in a really bad state and I naively thought there was nothing left to damage. So I did not take much interest in it and did not check on the tenants.
When clearing out the house, it became clear that the occasional check would certainly have saved me dozens of hours. That is how long I spent clearing the house and the adjoining sheds, which were filled mainly with an enormous number of two-litre plastic beer bottles of the Braník brand. To give you an idea: I counted the plastic bottles in barrow loads, not bags, and there really were a lot of them.
Until I had cleared everything out, I still did not understand what the tenant had needed the plastic bottles for. But when I was clearing the small stove out of the kitchen, I found one half-melted bottle inside and more ready in the fuel box.
LESSON: Not everyone behaves logically or ecologically :O.
Budget and cost of the renovation
Before the renovation, I estimated the cost at 450,000 CZK (about 21,000 USD). At the end of the article, you will find out whether I managed to stick to the budget. I should point out that my idea was rather naive and I had not thought many things through. But that is natural on a first “attempt” at a renovation. A more expensive renovation was also on the table, and I even considered a mortgage. Do not forget to compare mortgages properly -> for example in this comparison tool. Many people turn to their existing bank for financing and get the loan without any problems, but they can end up overpaying by tens of thousands on the mortgage.
In general, it often does not pay to cut corners if you want to live in the house for a long time. Things like the roof, roof trusses, insulation, damp-proofing or heating are very hard to change later, and you could be setting yourself up for very costly extra work within a few years.
Tip: For smaller renovations, ordinary loans are the most suitable. You do not have to put up your whole property, which may be worth several million, as security for the loan and deal with months of paperwork. Many people mistakenly believe that every consumer loan is an evil best avoided. You can borrow even smaller amounts for just a few percent if you do not have a bad credit history. Remember that inflation alone is around 3-4% a year.
Where to start? Demolition work…
In the house, the plaster had to be knocked off or scraped away, the old radiators cut out, the old electrical wiring ripped out and everything prepared for the new installations. To be honest, knocking off plaster and scraping off layers of paint was probably the part of the whole renovation I enjoyed least, for several reasons.
I did not do everything alone, as a friend helped me. With two of you, even boring, mind-numbing work like scraping plaster is a bit better. On top of that, roughly every hour and a half we broke up the work with a bottle of beer. That beer goes down incredibly well when every part of your mouth and nose is coated in dust.
Hammers, scrapers, dust, mess and beer.
If I had to draw a lesson from the demolition, it is that I made one fairly major mistake here. I kept all the internal partition walls in the house and laboriously knocked the plaster off them. “I should have demolished everything.” That exact sentence kept going round in my head for the next six months. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and designed a new, better interior layout.
Ceilings: As you can see in the next photo, the plaster stayed on the ceilings, as it was very solid throughout the house. The ceilings were only stripped of years of built-up paint and given a new skim coat. In some parts of the house, reinforcing mesh was also used. We did not even cut channels for the new wiring, as everything was pulled through the original conduits. Only the bathroom got plasterboard suspended ceilings.
As I have already mentioned, I knocked some walls back to the bare stone or brick, and in some places I partly kept the plaster because it seemed OK. On about two walls, I painstakingly scraped off around 7 coats of paint and then ended up knocking off all the plaster anyway. The paint layers gave me a lot of fun. Every time I removed one, another three appeared, all nice and colourful. And once again I said to myself: “I should have demolished everything.”
TECHNOLOGY: I was quite fascinated by the number of mortars and options for what you can put on a wall. This house used up a lot of bags of different brands with different purposes. I always asked for advice. Technology for renovating old houses has moved on a lot in 10 years, and so has the range of options. I remember that just 10 years ago, when we were renovating my parents’ house, mortar was mixed only in a cement mixer, with a set ratio of white and red sand. Ten years later, I used the mixer about twice. Today, builders prefer to mix small amounts of ready-mix from a bag straight in a bucket. I have to admit that the ready-mix from a bag can be almost as hard as concrete. I certainly would not want to chip it off…
LESSON: Think twice before you leave old walls standing!
Installations
Once the walls were bare, the installations went in, which I left to experienced tradespeople. The only bigger job was digging down to the drain, which I had to connect to with a new waste pipe. The water meter was also moved. It used to be inside the house and now went outside, so a meter pit had to be dug.
Considering how vague my instructions to the electrician and plumber were, everything turned out fairly well. That is experienced tradespeople for you.
Let me go back to the internal partition walls once more. In the bathroom, there was an extra thin 7-centimetre wall made of hollow bricks laid on edge. It should have come down! But I took pity on it and gradually made three fairly large holes in it. Then the electrician partly broke it, and during the plumbing work a bigger chunk was knocked off than necessary. After that experience, I did not try to fix anything to it. We will see how it fares in the future.
The other brick walls were not so fragile, but they suffered from another problem, which showed best when you held a spirit level against them. So a thick layer had to be applied when plastering to at least partly level the walls. Compared with the new partition wall made of aerated concrete blocks, the difference was really big.
The roof as the foundation of the renovation
Alongside the installations, a new roof was also put on: the battens were replaced and the roof structure was levelled with boards. For this job I chose a trusted craftsman who does roofing in his spare time. Thanks to this, the price was very reasonable and everything was finished fairly quickly. Following advice, I chose clay roof tiles, although I was mainly tempted by metal sheets or other cheaper options because of the price. In the end, visually nothing beats a quality clay tile roof, at least in my opinion.
CRAFTSMEN: I chose almost all the craftsmen on the recommendation of family or acquaintances. They were all from the local area, and this approach proved to be the right one. I can hardly imagine renovating a house somewhere near Prague where I don’t know anyone. Good craftsmen are probably still better found through a recommendation at the local pub than on the internet, although it depends on the trade.
Windows
Before ordering the windows, I did some research, and windows from OKNOSTYL came out best. I was mainly looking for the lowest price, but I was also pleasantly surprised by the smooth installation and the way the whole order was handled.
I fitted the accessories and blinds myself afterwards. Jirka the bricklayer cut and fitted the window sills with his characteristic care. Everything fitted perfectly and worked well. After the installation, I kept wondering why OKNOSTYL is so much cheaper while the quality is very good. I never figured it out. Perhaps the windows will give up after 10 or 20 years. For now, though, I am absolutely delighted. When they forgot to deliver one part for fitting a window sill, all I had to do was send a message and everything was delivered right to my door.
Fitting the French window to the garden also turned out well. It was measured even before the opening was knocked through. This story also had a happy ending, and the fitters handled the installation very well, although they managed to give me a real scare with several minutes of standing around and remarks like “This is f*cked, it won’t fit”.
What to do with the house after renovation?
During the year-long renovation, I thought several times that I would move into the house myself, but in the end the original plan won: I had renovated the house as a so-called buy-to-let investment. Because the house was renovated and repaired for letting, price was the main criterion when choosing everything.
Renovation and plastering
For the building work, I did not hesitate at all when choosing a bricklayer, because a master of his trade had already done many jobs for our family: Jirka the bricklayer. Jirka’s advantage was that he could see the building as a whole and point out possible complications. Another advantage was his extreme skill and attention to detail. One weakness of Jirka’s was what today’s terminology so often calls time management.
The old plaster had come away from the wall, especially near the floor, and in some places there was even damp and mould. I didn’t know exactly whether this was because the house had been poorly heated and ventilated over the past five years or whether the problem lay elsewhere. The first important step was adding a gutter on the other side of the house as well, where the damp was worst. Then renovation plaster was applied up to a height of one metre throughout the house, which should keep the damp at least partly in check. So far everything looks fine, but we will see what the first winter does to the plaster.
LESSON LEARNED: Communicate with craftsmen as far in advance as possible and set deadlines assuming from the start that they will overrun by 14 days.
I valued the quality of Jirka’s work, but his speed fell far short of my expectations. He always came for 2 to 3 hours once every 2 to 3 days. I needed to speed things up. I was recommended Radek, a bricklayer who did work on the side, and he managed to finish the building one to two months sooner.
Floor renovation
The first room had parquet flooring which, according to most people, was past saving and fit only to be ripped out. I have always liked parquet, so I wasn’t going to give it up so easily. I scrubbed it several times myself and then got down to sanding. No sanding with a special machine, just punk-style sanding with an angle grinder. In about three goes, while creating an unbelievable cloud of dust, I managed to sand the parquet down.
The parquet really wasn’t in good shape and was partly missing along the edges. I invested 3,000 CZK (about 140 USD) in Solakryl, which we had already tried out on old wood. The effect is almost unbelievable. You apply a thick coat to crumbling wood and the wood turns into stone that will withstand the test of time for decades to come.
MISTAKE: Solakryl can also be mixed with sawdust, and once dry it forms a hard compound that is ideal for filling holes along the edges of a room. It works brilliantly for this, but I decided to coat the gaps across the room too. That was not a good idea, because now and then a bit of sawdust dried on the parquet and created an unpleasant ripple.
In the other rooms, it was the turn of the tiles, where I used slightly more expensive but good-quality tradesmen and floor fitters. Here too I was happy with the work done and with the deadline being met, but the price was a little higher for me, as up to then I had done everything on a low-cost basis.
Bathroom
A bathroom is a bit of an art, because you need to choose a large number of items and make them fit together, all in a fairly small space. The key thing is to sort out the layout, which is hard to change later. I liked the idea of a brick partition wall, which seems more suitable to me than a glass shower enclosure. The brick partition divided the space in the bathroom and created some privacy around the toilet.
The fragile partition also greatly limited me when placing other components such as the water heater or the mirror. For example, it took us a whole week to hang the mirror. Every day we came up with a new method, which in the end turned out not to be very good.
Kitchen
I had set aside a 260 cm wall for the kitchen. The internet is full of kitchens for around 10,000 CZK (about 460 USD) that look fairly decent. I managed to order one for 8,000 CZK (about 370 USD) from a company that was having a clearance sale. I didn’t have high expectations, and the quality of the final product pleasantly surprised me. My dad and I assembled the kitchen over a weekend, and all that was left was to do the silicone sealing and add an LED strip light.
I chose an integrated sink for 1,200 CZK (about 55 USD), even though many people tried to talk me out of it. This choice was mainly for simplicity. I should mention one drawback of this sink here. In some places it flexes and moves. Overall, it doesn’t feel very sturdy. On the other hand, I would highlight the LED strip above the worktop. The quality of the worktop lighting is extremely good. To be honest, I have never stood at a kitchen unit that was better lit.
The tiles behind the kitchen units came from a clearance sale at a builders’ merchant for under 1,000 CZK (about 46 USD).
Renovating the door frames and the doors themselves
The door frames seemed fairly good to me, so I kept them and only removed the varnish using a variety of techniques. Then I mixed ordinary paint with the Solakryl mentioned earlier, and you can judge the result from the photos.
The doors themselves were simply painted in ivory, shortened and rehung. They were also fitted with new brass-coloured handles.
For the bathroom, new door casings had to be made and a door from a hypermarket adjusted. I originally wanted to replace the front door with a new one, but then, together with a skilled local carpenter, we insulated it well enough with polystyrene and tongue-and-groove boards. The glass in the door also had to be replaced with insulating glass.
Heating
Heat pump or gas? I left that dilemma to others and went for the cheapest option: Stiebel Eltron electric panel heaters. The biggest advantage is the purchase price, because even with installation you end up at an incredible figure of around 20,000 CZK (about 920 USD). Each heater also has a thermostat, so you can control the temperature nicely.
Panel heaters also take up little space and look quite good. If you heat with electricity, the key is to set up the so-called low tariff, where the heaters can only run for about 20 hours a day, but at a much lower price per kWh.
I also left a back door open in the house for a wood-burning stove, which the tenants did not install in the end. I had the stove installed during the renovation, and at full power it could heat the house well.
On the electrician’s advice, I set the monthly electricity advance payments for the house at only 1,500 CZK (about 69 USD). If this budget is enough, I think it is a very good price. One more note on the panel heaters: they are completely silent!
2022: Panel heaters are great, but probably more for a holiday cottage or a new house. For an old house, I would choose a different option today, because without the wood-burning stove the heating costs in winter would be unbearable.
Insulation
I did not bother with subsidies and green savings/nonsense, because the cost of applying for such a subsidy is roughly the same as what I can save on the whole thing by thinking logically and accepting some compromise. And I also did not have the energy for it. What is more, for a guy who works as a freelancer for start-ups, subsidies are stupid (I could think of a worse word, the one starting with “p”). On the other hand: A fool is he who gives, and a bigger fool is he who does not take. It kept nagging at me. I did not take it.
I did the insulation with 10 cm of mineral wool, which I fitted under the floorboards and covered again. The whole job cost about 15,000 CZK (about 690 USD). I want to assess the effect after the first winter. Of course, I could have used the services of a company, but I tried to do it all myself.
SUBSIDY CORNER: During my studies, I did an internship at a project centre that deals with subsidies. It was a very interesting universe. Dozens to hundreds of people who just sit and write subsidy applications. On the other side are more people who assess them. Other people design them. Now someone also has to build software for it, and so on and so on. Where is the added value? And what does it bring to the people who receive subsidies? For me, mainly that they have to focus on subsidy programmes and cannot fully focus on their core business.
So as not to just criticise subsidies, three years ago my mum and I managed to get a boiler replacement subsidy of 100,000 CZK (about 4,600 USD). But the logic of subsidies bothers me, even when I am the one accepting them. I also feel sorry for the people who, instead of doing something fulfilling, sit and write nonsense. And I also feel sorry about the money needed to run this monster.
Renovation cost
Price was something I paid very close attention to the whole time, but in this section I do not want to give an exact cost breakdown. With a clear conscience, I can say that I managed to renovate the house for roughly 550,000 CZK (about 25,000 USD), not counting my own work or the work of friends and family.
If I were to put a price on my own hourly work alone, it would come to around 180,000 CZK (about 8,300 USD) for that year. I could afford this time investment thanks to my main job working from home, which was not tied to specific hours. When the bricklayer needed help from 7 in the morning, I went, and I only started my own work in the afternoon, which then stretched into the late evening. When something needed preparing or unloading, I could do it at any time.
Quickly adding up the purchase price of roughly 350,000 CZK (about 16,000 USD) and 550,000 CZK (about 25,000 USD) for the renovation, I am at 900,000 CZK (about 41,000 USD), which is an excellent result in every respect. A smaller new-build in the same area, including the plot, costs around 3 to 4 million CZK (about 140,000 to 180,000 USD). Yes, a new-build has the advantage of a modern layout, but this little house is on a beautiful historic street close to the centre. Each has its pros and cons.
Thanks
Just as every book has acknowledgements where the author thanks the people around them, it would not be fair if I did not thank the people around me too. My main thanks go to my closest family, whom I turned to with every problem and with whom I discussed everything thoroughly. My dad also contributed his occasional work, which, apart from one failed concrete pour, was very helpful.
The second big thank you goes to my friend, who came to the house to help me now and then for almost the whole year, just for a beer and a kebab. Yes, I owe him here and I know it well.
And last but not least, thanks to all the tradespeople for their craftsmanship, advice, tips and, above all, the work they did.
I should also mention Stavebniny Správka, where I bought all the building materials and often got a nice discount. And while I am at it, I must also mention the Dacia Logan, which I used to haul away all the rubble and bring the materials to the site (today it is happily in service somewhere in Ukraine).
Renting out the house
When I posted the advert, there was quite a lot of interest in the house, so I could calmly choose between potential tenants. The deciding factors for me were trust in the tenants and a long-term let. I did not want anyone who would see the house only as temporary housing for six months. In the end, I chose a middle-aged couple. Moving in, signing the tenancy agreement and the whole handover took place within a month of finishing the renovation.
Return on the renovation investment
As Pavel Bambásek and many other investors write, the annual rental return on a well-bought house or flat is between 4.5 and 6% a year. This means the investment pays for itself roughly 20 years after purchase. For the house I renovated, even after adding the 180,000 CZK (about 8,300 USD) I value my own work on the house at, the payback period is just under 9 years. The annual rental return on the investment is therefore a very decent 12% a year. All of this, of course, under ideal conditions and with no further investment.
— ⏱️ A year after the renovation —
Changes and problems a year after renovating the house
The first year of renting out and running the renovated house did not go quite as smoothly as I had imagined. The biggest problem, which I am still dealing with, is damp walls. About two months after the tenants moved in (December 2019), the first wet patch appeared on a wall. Another one followed, along with the beginnings of mould.
Several experts told me to wait so the new plaster could dry out. Over the summer, all the plaster dried out perfectly, but in October the damp and mould came back. So it was time for several steps that should lead to a fix. The less damp wall has so far only been dug out from the outside. In the worst spots, I applied injection damp-proofing, where holes are drilled every 10 cm and filled with a special waterproofing compound. After the first few months, these steps seem to have helped slightly.
A dehumidifier also often runs in the house to remove excess indoor humidity. The humidity is around 60%, which is not such a critical figure. Hopefully, with these and further gradual steps, I will manage to get rid of it completely.
The second problem with the house turned out to be the electric heating, which uses quite a lot of power. Earlier in the article, I write about the low purchase price, but the trade-off is high heating costs. Because of this, I insulated the loft even better: I removed the original ceiling insulation and replaced it with 10 cm of mineral wool.
Over roughly half of the house, I added another 10 cm layer above the timbers. All the holes and vents into the loft were also sealed. I am not planning to insulate the walls, because the walls in the house are 60 to 80 cm thick and I was advised against it. Earlier in the article, I also mention that the tenants did not install the wood-burning stove. However, that changed after the first bill, and they now use the stove regularly. Given the damp mentioned above, the wood-burning stove is good for warming the house through and drawing some moisture out of it.
What would I do differently a year after the renovation?
I would probably keep the combination of heating, but I would buy a more powerful wood-burning stove and place it more centrally in the house. However, I would definitely have thorough injection damp-proofing done on the masonry from the inside. Unfortunately, when I was renovating the house in summer, there was not the slightest sign of damp. Even so, I probably should have found an expert with a moisture meter to properly examine the state of the masonry, the deterioration of the original damp-proofing and any rising damp.
I have definitely learnt my lesson here, and I would recommend this step to everyone during the first demolition stage. I might even recommend avoiding buying a house that shows clear signs of long-term damp in the first place. You cannot get water out of walls with a snap of your fingers. It is a long process.
This year it was also time to sort out the muddy yard and the area in front of the French window (the future terrace). I chose a simple option, and about 60 square metres were laid with H-profile interlocking paving. Both areas were sloped so that water could drain away easily. Along the house, kerbs were set in concrete about 25 cm from the wall, so that I would not have to take the whole driveway apart for any future damp-proofing work.
- H-profile interlocking paving (15,000 CZK (about 690 USD))
- Kerbs (3,000 CZK (about 140 USD))
- Excavation (3,500 CZK (about 160 USD))
- Bricklaying work (6,000 CZK (about 280 USD))
- Other small items (4,000 CZK (about 180 USD))
Smaller improvements also included fitting a small canopy over the door and tidying up the area around the water well shaft. The last major job was renovating the roof over the house extension, where we only put in new battens and replaced the broken beaver-tail tiles with newer ones. After that, the water was channelled into gutters, which this building had never had, so all the water had been running straight down to the foundations. This building also contains one of the living rooms of the house, which suffered most from damp.
In total, in 2020 I invested all the rent I had collected back into the house, along with a great deal of my own work, of course. By my estimate, the work done would otherwise have cost 2.5 times as much.
TIP 2020: Since last year I have also been tracking the costs and income from the house even more carefully in Google Sheets (a spreadsheet), where I record all the time and money I spend on the house. It gives me a great overview.
— ⏱️ Four years after the renovation —
In the fourth year of renting, the third tenants moved in. The damp problems persist, but thanks to many measures they are much smaller.
The latest measure, intended to cut heating costs and prevent mould, was thermal insulating paint. I chose one of the more expensive ones, and painting the whole house, including labour, cost 65,000 CZK (about 3,000 USD). I am really curious about the result, but early experience suggests it was the right step.
— ⏱️ Four years after the renovation —
The paint, combined with heating with the fireplace, worked, and the damp in the house disappeared completely. I hope this battle with damp is finally over. The thermal insulating paint has also made the house more comfortable to be in. However, the floor tiles are still very cold. If I were renovating the house again, I would probably choose different materials here.
USD amounts are approximate, converted at the Czech National Bank rate of 21.75 CZK per USD on 9 October 2026.
