I Bought A 1930s Flat!
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- Опубліковано 19 вер 2024
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What about a utility sink instead of bathroom then you can save the pantry?
do you like the way yt renders film grain?
curious about what french tv shows you so wanted to watch tho 😂😂
The basement tools/junk look like a treasure to the right kind of person who appreciates that sort of thing.
Karolina you are Pretty
Karolina trying to trick us into believing she just bought this flat, and she didn't already own it since it was built in the 1930's cause she lived in it
Right?! My home 🏡 is from 1927 and my husband and like they details like 2 cabinet built ins, fireplace that we use, tye mantle for Halloween 🎃 👻 decor. We see tack marks where the wood floors were covered with carpet, now restored. Cove molding. Yet there’s issues.
Oh, I believe she bought it recently, I also believe she cheekily bought it because she lived there in the 1930's and has a bit of nostalgia for her old digs...
Fucking stop @whaaa t
@@mrflibble3226 report the bots instead of replying
Or I can do both.
I want this to be a whole series. Two of my favorite things: home renovations and Karolina just being her sassy self
Exactly!
Yes, please!
Exactly my thoughts, PLUS she has great style to do stuff so I know this flat is going to come out amazing
Since she didn't make an official playlist yet I made this one to go updating as she posts
ua-cam.com/play/PLZrVbzd3XCOsA8-5BZRHrXFK1gCO4FFEV.html
@@geminievilyou.are.a.legend:v
I was in Poland for the 3rd time in my life this weekend. I was walking around the city and I was thinking how funny it would be to run into Karolina. Then I was like "Don't be absurd. Do you how big Poland is, how could you run into her?!" .....
Not even five minutes have passed since that though and I see a beautiful tall lady in vintage clothes walking to me. Thank you for taking a photo with me. It really made my day 💜 Congratulations to being a home owner. So cool to accomplish this at such a young age 🎉🎉🎉
Oh my goodness, what fun! Lucky you :)
Wow such a nice story ❤️
That is so awesome. You manifested it
Probably best that I didn't see her the last time I was there. Very hard not to propose marriage immediately. "Let's live in an 18th century grand house together" etc.
aww what a nice coincidence
This completes the trifecta
- Bernadette's NY sewing room and London flat renovations
- Micarah's RV and house renovations
- and now, Karolina's 30's flat renovations
Looking forward to how this'll turn out!
Also Rachel Maksy's recent farmhouse adventures!
Oh would someone please give me the links for these? We are renovation an old house and I'd love to have some inspiration!
@@svschlotterstein
- Bernadette's NY sewing room and London flat renovations - ua-cam.com/video/d32Ypfz_5TM/v-deo.html / ua-cam.com/video/d3hdx-4bpIU/v-deo.html
- Micarah's RV and house renovations - ua-cam.com/video/hti87p_aT7I/v-deo.html
- Rachel Maksy's - ua-cam.com/video/pNNaaPIgyho/v-deo.html / ua-cam.com/video/HKvLWNUa_sA/v-deo.html / ua-cam.com/video/0vBfMDwEG4Y/v-deo.html
and also WithWendy! She has a whole series about renovating her new house
Wow Bernadette Banner is Transatlantic?!
The flat you've got sounds exactly like the one we recently moved out of: 90+ years old (survived WWII bombardment, actually), folding doors, floor plan where you just walk from one room into the next, tiny little bathroom not actually designed for anyone to be bathing in, and so on. The only difference is our old wooden floors hadn't been covered by anything and were thus extremely creaky, along with the entire rest of the building - the downstairs neighbors' dryer spinning felt like an earthquake haha. Our landlord kicked us out when he decided to sell the place, but it was certainly an... experience to live in. Best of luck with the renovation process and overcoming as many of the perils of old Eastern European housing as you can!
actually, the whole walking-from-room-to-room thing was in a sense invented by bauhaus at the end of the 1920s, so flats from around that time to be built like that is not too unlikely. I think is is so awesome to see design in action from 100 years ago! I would like to live in a piece of design history myself, so I am happy you got to have that experience.
@@cottonsheep2367 Houses have this too! My house is (probably) 100 years old and had this too. We eventually got rid of the extra doors tho.
Edit: I live on the west of Poland, this part of my country was actually in Germany before the war, so that explains it.
"Because post pandemic shortages are no joke"
As someone who is also renovating her first apartment (built in 1956), I feel you, sister. I feel you in the deepest, darkest ,and most desperate corner of my soul. I feel validated, I feel seen.
And all because we had severe lockdowns.
@@Emppu_T. Because people should die for your convenience.
@@Emppu_T. well at least some lives got saved
Lots of delays for lots of reasons. I've been waiting for flooring to replace some nasty 1970s carpet, but the people who were supposed to be putting it in got sick for a week, and that delayed stuff. Thankfully most of the things I needed I had, or could get from the family business, but I'll be glad when my floors are in so I can arrange furniture.
666 likes, no joke
"Damn, those are some fine folding doors" - a sentence only Karolina could utter.
I could literally smell the basement from memory 😂 It is so refreshing to see a "real" old flat, like Central European old... It feels familiar, my grandparents lived in a flat with similar vibes to it. Must the the 60's socialist charm lol
Greetings from Hungary!
Oh no now I too can smell the basement
Yep, it's unnerving.
Greetings from Czechia. :-D
Sorry, kids, but it's Eastern European charm. You find it in Romania too. Embrace the truth
we wanted a smaller house in a great location, and no one had renovated the kitchen. I know what kind of kitchen I wanted. (I'm not into cooking, so I wanted few cabinets and wanted to make it simple and white). And of course everyone renovated their kitchens before putting them on sale. Finally the agent knew someone wanted to sell their home, and they were "Well we have to renovate the kitchen" and the agent was, "I know a buyer and they'll buy the house NOW as they do not want a renovated kitchen". I love my kitchen I did myself!
I hear that! I wanted a 1920s house that hadn't had the space "opened up" by removing walls like they love to do in the States. I wanted that separated kitchen. Finally found it during the pandemic when a guy who didn't cook was desperate to sell. I'm not changing anything!
That makes me happy to hear, I find it so stressful to imagine all the broken cosmetic things I have to do before selling. Maybe someone wants that
The amount of beautiful craftsman houses here that people paint all of the woodwork and fireplaces white and open up the walls and "modernize" the kitchen to sell it....ughharghh
@@blackstarninja6785 ughharghh indeed, the trend for covering up all the nice woodwork and painting every single thing white saddens me
@@blackstarninja6785 Oh i know! Unfortunately all the beautiful woodwork in my house is already painted, but at least it's still here, and all the art glass windows haven't been replaced with vinyl.
Karolina, why are you able to get me interested in sh*t I thought I'd never give a damm about?
First fashion, and now RENOVATING A HOUSE!?!?!?!?
Seriously, I think you're the only person with the power to get me interested in these kinds of things. :)
Cute 🥰
Try Rachel Maksy. She is good at making almost anything interesting. She moved earlier this year and made some fascinating vlogs on that.
Try Rachel Maksy.
Explain things and make it interesting
@@kristianbjrnjensen5388ok I will try Rachel Maksy, ty for informing me:)
Congratulations!
Old homes are the best, the history, the quirks, the random creeks in the night.
My home is 170 years old, and only had a bathroom put into it in the 1980s. The outside toilet is still in my shed hooked up.
European living, am I right?
What?! None put a toilet 🚽 in till 1980s ha ha what luxury! 🛀
@@Timetravel1111 I know right, my uncles house still only has an outside toilet. It's attached to the side of the house.
The house I moved into about 5 years ago had a shed attached to the side of the house, and that was the bathroom. No heating in the house either.
We only lived there a year :/
*creaks
"get into those nooks and creekies"
My house used to be a stable in the 1800 (it was build 1818), so it wasnt even intendet to be a home in the first place. At some point in the 20. Century somebody decided to move in there and began to transform it. I'm living here for 18 years now and renovated a lot myself (like the kitchen and bathroom and I transformed the attic into bedrooms) but it still has some of the 1818 stable quirks, like a hook used for hanging the pig carcasses that I now use for bags or the walls that made up the pig pen are now surrounding the dining area
I'm highly allergic to old homes, not only do I not fit into them (regularly scraped my scalp on friends' houses that had very old homes) but I tend to have nightmares about former residents. Like a restructured orphanage, where I slept and had a nightmare about a kid that climbed the foodcabinets and screamed all the time, like she was possessed. I prefer new homes, it feels more silent there, if you know what I mean.
I am so happy you blurred your windows. It's such a smart move. Congratulations on buying a flat! I also just bought a flat, too. Very proud of you!
My first apartment was built in the '20s. This was in the US and these fourplexes were built to be low cost housing for WWI veterans. It had tiny closets and a large bathtub, ceramic tile in the bathroom and on the kitchen counters and lower half of the wall. There were little art deco details here and there and I lived there in the early '90s so a lot of the original features were still there and untouched. I loved living in a place with a sense of history like that.
OH NOOOOOOOO!!! I have two girlfriends, but very few people on YT are happy for my relationship success. They disl*ke all of the videos I make with my 2 girlfriends. Please be kind, dear jan
is it not normal to have tiles in the bathroom in the US?
@@burdistan Not in cheap apartments like mine was, but in houses it's pretty normal. Although in the house where I live now the bathroom floors are vinyl but the shower wall is tiled.
My husband and I lived in a couple of places like that in the late 90s, early 2000s. I miss those huge bathtubs….
@@elisabethmontegna5412 Me too. I made sure to have a nice soak every Sunday afternoon and I could almost swim in it. That was lovely. 🛁
As someone who grew up in many fixer upper homes, (a few of which were a century old) I can only in good conscience say buyer beware. It might seem like a nice dream to want to get yourself a vintage space and clean it up and modernize it, but in almost all cases these projects can take years and beyond that often still have deeper structural issues, some of which are impossible to address. I'm not saying don't chase your dreams, absolutely do. I will always cheer on anyone who decides to take on this kind of challenge... but be very careful, do your research, think ahead, be wise and be reasonable and have a solid plan because it's going to have to be your home.
As a person who has been renovating destroyed apartment (cat's fecies smeared on walls and black spiderwebs in the corners, not mentioning rusty pipes) for about a year and a half, i'm so proud of you!
Here's hoping those spiderwebs are not sticky!
@@kneau I’d be more worried about the cat feces than the spiderwebs. 🤢
@@WaterNai yes
@@WaterNai it was very stinky
It smelled about a month before we've found all the sources of odor
I just found you and am delighted by your content. Perhaps delighted is the wrong word for your moving video "what's happening in Poland right now". I am a US citizen aged 81 and though I have traveled a lot I have never been to Poland. Thank you for sharing parts of your life and for giving me a glimpse of Poland past and present. I am looking forward to your new home renovation.
"Polish Ham for Every Home" 😂🍖🏠 BUT seriously, what a fabulous adventure! There's nothing like having your own space and customizing it. Congratulations! 🌟🌈💃
I hope that book was saved
My favorite part is when the renovation manager told you no and you fired him! You’re awesome!
I was honoured to be invited to my friend's flat in the centre of Kraków. It's an old house and family is trying to preserve the past of this house and flat is looking really unique and beautiful. Especially i love the mix of many generations and their furniture, cutlery etc.
I myself live in a 1960s apartment, we have fixed it up great and honestly from the inside it doesn't look that old, except when you go in the backyard and look at the building from the outside. the backyard is tiled for some reason, and the tiles are no joke marble and granite, except that it isn't polished, and the landlord hasn't kept the building in great condition from the outside, I rlly wish they did cuz like it's a beautiful piece of pure Muslim and Saudi Arabian architecture. The railings on the balcony are stained glass, the stairs and floors are all marble and granite.
we added those exact doors to most of the house. We had to get them from a company in Chicago that makes them from real wood, but you have to paint and finish. The outside is 1950's but, when people come inside they are "well, this wasn't expected!" Also the trim, we aged the inside as much as possible! I love this story also, it's every renovation story!
What is the door company? I have an old house and someone renovated and took out all the old doors except the back door which is just decrepit. I'd love to put "old" doors back in.
@@kikihammond5326 same! Let us know if/when you find out
@@kikihammond5326 ditto on the doors! Just want to check them out since I'm in Chicago.
@@kikihammond5326 it's worth checking how much a local carpenter would charge. Not all doors are the same height or width, then there's shipping and installation costs. Sometimes bespoke is cheaper, refer to it as made to measure. Bespoke should really mean unique rather than fitted.
My grandparents had a house of a similar age they bought it in the 1950s but it was built earlier. The most distinctive thing was the secret room in my aunts (later my) room. It was basically storage under the eaves of the house but it had a tiny door that was hidden by a dresser. It always felt like the kind of place that a young governess in a gothic horror novel would discover some horrible secret.
F in the chat for the pantry. I love pantries too but I have to admit a bathroom is definitely more important.
Your plans all sound amazing, can't wait to see the finished flat! And I think you're doing ok time wise with the amount that needed doing. We've still not don't everything in our house after five years, and we're now selling it lol.
F . I love a pantry.
I've been looking at old farmhouses in the US and many of them also have the bathroom in the kitchen. Back before indoor plumbing most people bathed in a big tub in the kitchen, so it probably didn't seem strange to them when they got plumbing to just slap a bathtub right there. (Plus, they wouldn't need to add pipes all through the house)
But as someone who has only lived in modern homes, the idea of bathing in (or next to) the kitchen is one I don't know if I could get used to. It's my number one hindrance to buying an old house.
I lived in a house in Kalamazoo, Michigan built in 1880 and the bathroom door was off the kitchen next to the oven. We ended moving because my 4 children were convinced it was haunted. I thought the house was awesome!
My 122 year old house also has a bathroom a door away from the kitchen 😂 it is only a half bath but has the massive linen closet that would totally make sense if people were bathing in the kitchen.
Plenty of old tenement-style apartments in New York City (plus other American cities) also had the bathtub in the kitchen. Many of these still retain the same setup...
Such a lovely, bright space! And those huge windows and glass doors! Oh, the light for your hobbies and projects! It's beautiful!
Your flat has so much character! It’s beautiful and it makes me happy that someone who appreciates history is bringing it back to loveliness. We’ve been renovating a cabin built in the early 1980s. Not as much history here as your place but lots of work needed. It’s satisfying to see it transform. And many of the parts I thought we needed to change have grown on me so we’re keeping as is.
It reminds me of my grandma's house. It was a little cottage built in 1901. It had had a lot of weird quirks, including a door to nowhere hidden behind the fridge and an after thought of the bathroom. And the electricity was nuts. you could pop the circuit breaker by taking a shower with more than one light on. No heating ducts so you had to have all the doors open inside to heat everything. It was my first place though! (Grandma was living with my aunt and somebody needed to live there) Later on my mom ended up with the house after Grandma passed (at 100 years old!). She ran into similar renovation woes as you have, especially with the floor!! But with enough persistence and compromises we got it done. We found a lot of cool artifacts too, including old bottles and tins from the 1920s. Some very old posters we ended up framing.
No matter how frustrating things are now, you will love the end result. It will be wonderful to see what it's like finished. And when you can start decorating!
It is interesting to notice that people could live so old with that lack of comfort. Maybe because their bodies were more resistant, I don't know, but I have the same case in my family in law, an old aunt who passed away at 108 and still worked in a garden a few days before her death and lived in a very old raw house.
whoaa i'm so happy for you! always loved the kamienica vibes, i'm also renovating an old flat in Łódź, but by some miracle it was in much better condition AND IT HAS THE OLD OAK HERRINGBONE FLOORS *.* I'm so pumped to see what you will do with your space, i'm assuming it will be wildly amazing, vintage and original, can't wait for more of this content!!
Mad respect! Drzwi cudowne, no i ta przestrzeń... Warto było zachować drzwi, a wymienić renovating managera 😁 I to są w życiu właściwe priorytety. Czekam na dalszy ciąg tej historii!
As someone who has renovated a couple 1920's homes here in the Us I can relate. The quirks are a part of the charm. Sometimes you have to work with them rather than go against them.
In the USA, massive renovation jobs like this are sometimes called "the money pit". (There's a movie by that name, and the movie "Mouse Hunt" has many of the same "money pit" elements.)
Mouse hunt is a movie I haven't heard from in years! One of my faves as a kid
@@Gr95dc It's become a Thanksgiving tradition at our house to watch Mouse Hunt in the afternoon, after the turkey dinner. (Although it doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with Thanksgiving.)
I love both of those movies!
I don’t really think this a massive renovation. She’s essentially replacing windows, doing some dry wall and adding a kitchen and bathroom.
@@DOSBoxMom that's such a cute unrelated tradition to have
Ahh I love it so much, it's a diamond in the rough! There's many little details that remind me of my own 1930s home, like the giant holes in the walls to put the central heating through. Also 20 doors in 1 home. Anyway can't wait to see how you're going to make it your own!
My house used to be a stable in the 1800 (it was build 1818), so it wasnt even intendet to be a home in the first place. At some point in the 20. Century somebody decided to move in there and began to transform it. I'm living here for 18 years now and renovated a lot myself (like the kitchen and bathroom and I transformed the attic into bedrooms) but it still has some of the 1818 stable quirks, like a hook they once used for hanging the pig carcasses, that I now use for bags. Or the walls that made up the pig pen are now surrounding the dining area
I also live in a "Pig Pen"😆
With arching ceilings and stable windows...
but now configurated into a Studio...with kitchen , half walls and a modern bathroom 🥳
There's a unit in the lane where I live which was once a hay loft & stables. Originally, horses would be kept on the ground floor with the upper floor used for storing goods, hay, and fodder. It even has the original beam hoist & external barn doors on the upper floors. However, it hasn't been well maintained & parts of it are slowly crumbling. The current occupant is a musician, and the previous ones were a Cambodian migrant family, and before them... a group of Indian men who worked as delivery riders.
Surely the best part of the "basement haul" would've been a framed "Polish Ham For Every Home" print. Everyone needs that on their living room wall. Everyone.
Let's give it up for our vintage queen evolving into her new form - aesthetic goddess 🥰
I see exactly why you loved the place, and yet I would never torture myself by buying a place in this condition (no offense! You are very brave!) The windows, walls and floor, which I thought would be the main issues, turned out to be the easiest part of fixing this place up. I used to have a place that was built in 1922 and then when they went to renovate, they just added on to the back of the house. Not once, not twice, but at least 3 times over the years, judging by the seams in the flooring. The house was loooooong, it just went on and on! We had to pay $15k USD to put steel supports under the house because it was sagging. You could stand on the 1920s part of the house and jump on the floor and feel the house squish under you. And I thought that was a scary story! We were very lucky, because the previous owners had already done the difficult part: the kitchen and bathroom was funny and L-shaped, and the "balcony" was like 20cm, which means they had already made the difficult decisions you gotta make to fit modern appliances into older homes.
My favorite funny thing about my old house was that the part built in the early 2000s/late 90s had a laundry room, and it was MASSIVE, like literally larger than your bedroom in your new flat, and I liked to imagine the same people who did the kitchen reno were putting in the laundry room later, and they were like "we have to make sure that what happened to us, never happens again. Whenever someone invents a new household appliance that takes up a bunch of space, it's going in here, dammit!"
Side question: The worms, eeww, how does that happen? Were they hoarders? Was the place sat empty for a long time?
Regarding the dead worms, I think it was just wet and warm under the linoleum. Also a lot of tasty soggy plywood to eat. I think the worms were in the kitchen so there might been some scraps of food falllng there.
And yeah, the flat was probably empty for years, bc it would be impossible to live in Poland with windows in such condition. It's too cold for half a year
Your story about the steel supports is terrifying to me because my house has a crappy addition and I think it is sagging 😅 rip to my savings
wow honestly that’s a GORGEOUS apartment and you’re so lucky that you spotted it. well done for figuring everything out and good luck with it in the future! it looks magical and i’m sure it’s going to end up even better when everything’s finally finished
I just moved back to my family's village home to repair and renovate it, and I'm having very similar problems with the heating pipes. They're often in front of windows and ruined many of my original plans.
Be glad you're not dealing with soaked walls though! Since my house was built on the dime before proper water barriers and insulation were in style, the walls suck in moisture and ruin any wallpaper that's put up.
Ah as a building conservator i had a tough time looking for apartments in sweden. So many renovate shit this out of their places instead of caring for their original features. Just buy a new place or an already renovated place if you don't want the features and details that make the building special. Why make it bland and generic?
Window renovation is my favourite thing. But it's hard today to find good wood, idk the word for it in english. But once again, it's an issue with people don't knowing the importance in continuous upkeep in Windows, ut doesn't have to take a lot of time and effort. Windows before the 1970s are of good quality wood and can last for hundreds of years as long as you give it just a little bit of care. People don't have to change it to modern windows.
Loving this apartment for you!
Yes same here in Columbus, Ohio! In English we call that "old growth wood".
Arent wood windows also bloody terrible at keeping heat i side
@@edwardhisse2687 yeah often old wood windows "breath" a lot more. If its good or not depends on what climate you live in. Here traditionally we put in "inner windows" during winter to help with isolation. But it's become popular to instead change to modern well isolated windows. This can be bad for old building though because you change the buildings climate. Buildings need to breath or else you can start having problems with mould etc. But there are of course ways to install better ventilation etc in other ways.
Maybe you mean hardwood? Hardwood is stronger and heavier than softwood, and takes longer to grow.
I totally agree!
I love seeing how different people to do renovations, especially when they're trying to preserve the historic character of the house. My house is completely not historic, but it's nice to live vicariously through UA-cam 😆
We bought our house in part because there were unfinished rooms that we could decide how and what to do with them. We're turning a storage room into a toy and gaming room for the kids as our next project.
I don't know if you ended up considering this, but my apartment also has a very small kitchen and I decided to just not have a dishwasher. Especially living alone, and you said you don't cook much, you get used to just doing all the dishes by hand in the sink. I live alone and do cook often and a dishwasher is still not something I miss having.
brb watching every single video in Karolina's channel three times so she can pay off this renovation
Bathtubs in the kitchen is something you see in older New York apartments as well. People would put planks over the bath during daytime to have more kitchen space, afterwards they would use the bath. I think it's because the buildings didn't necessarily have geysers for each apartment.
General rule of any renovation is that "it's always takes twice as long and costs twice as much" as you estimate!
Oh, Karolina....you are now a kindred spirit. My husband and I moved to my dad's Camp Property with the quaint old house on it. Moved from a little over 1,000 sq. ft to a little over 400 sq. ft. Everything...Ev-er-y-thing...was painted yellow. ...except the hardwood floors, thank goodness! Like you, I knew we'd need to fix and renovate. But I didn't think it would take THIS long. ...we decided to move in and renovate as finances allow. Your flat is beautiful, Lady! And I can't wait to see what you do with it!!!! Thank you for bringing us along with you!
How exciting! That place has so much potential. I lived in 2 old apartments here in Berlin with no bathroom at all, though one did have a toilet in the former pantry, which was an improvement over my previous flat with a toilet off the stairwell and a 5-liter boiler in the kitchen for washing dishes and myself;-)) Love your door solutions. My friend took the original door from her former pantry and made it her bathroom door as well, since the bathroom had a crappy 1980s door on it. Excellent choice. How wild that the basement phone still works. I can't wait to see the future episodes.
Your new home is BEAUTIFUL. You are so lucky that you had time to do the repairs before you moved in.
we bought ours with no floors, or toilets, interior walls, ceiling.....but we were broke and had no option but to move into it and build it around us. (work really stopped after we installed the electricity and air conditioning--too comfy)
oh, and i love all that cool stuff you found in the basement. those keys are neat
Congratulations! Yeah, old houses, every show we ever saw with people renovating an old house, they were so 'excited' to find beautiful hard wood floors under funky what ever, not us, we found rotten particle board saturated in cat urine. I can't wait to see your final reveal!
We just renovated one from 1905 (in the US) and yes! We feel your pain! Not a pristine beautiful hidden-under-a-carpet floor, waiting for its big reveal. Just cat pee on "meh grade" pine, oak, or worse. It is like an archaeological investigation in bad building techniques of the last century. But still, it has a great flow and style and more interesting details than the current beige box hyper insulated gee, wonder why I have mold marvels they are building these days.
I'm 18 months into a "this will be just a few quick cosmetic changes" renovation but let me just say that it's so worth it when your vision comes together. Big library walls are absolutely where it's at, as is churning through multiple designs for an impossible space until you finally find something that actually works.
Awesome space, cool doors, hoping that the rest of the renovation goes well!
Congratulations! I looove watching home renovations, they are so satisfying, especially those involving old buildings. Good luck with the IKEA kitchen, hope fits!
PS I will be awaiting the "next episode of renovating your flat" 😅
My house is a complete 1965 ranch, that needed no renovations! I bought it solely because of the knotty pine basement & bar. Last year we discovered the herringbone patio that was under the deck. I love my original patio.
Good luck & have fun!
I love the quirks of old places like this, but they do tend to invite dilemmas. I'd have been sad to get rid of that pantry, too, even though under my ownership it would be full of expired cans and unmarked soup sachets.
Whatever you do, please keep the phones. Such a sweet story. I love this whole house so much!!
We bought a 1930s cottage 7 years ago, and it took 18 months to get it up to a point where we could move in (by which point I was 8 months pregnant with my second baby!). Everything needed doing. It is such a journey fixing up these older homes, but honestly so worth it! Well done for taking on the project, it can be so rewarding
Congratulations on owning your own place! I love that it’s in your preferred area of your city and that it’s a pre-WWII property….a vintage flat for a vintage gal. The ceilings look quite high which must make the rooms feel larger. Those old keys are wonderful! Do you have plans for the basement space? I thought I saw plumbing for a washing machine but I could be wrong. We’re all cheering you on in this big project! 💜 from 🇨🇦!
I am SO excited to watch your renovation progress!!! I’m sure it’ll become more beautiful with every update. I love seeing people renovate with historical preservation in mind rather than trying to “modernize” everything.
yellow and orange colors are good for dinning room they usualy provoke a person for eating . pink - relaxation , blue calming , green to make focus . A lot of red would make you agressive and leads to insomia . It's my personal skills
I love this! I bought a year 1940 duplex in March and I've been renovating it as well. Its been interesting peeling back the layers of previous renovations from 90s, to 70s, to 50s, and then the original. Can't wait to see what else you do with your place!
I love watching this, I'm excited to see it transform and if a friend of mine were doing this I wouldn't mind getting my hands dirty to help renovate - but damn this would be my personal nightmare to own...
I just get so stressed out and overwhelmed if my own living space has corners which are hard to keep clean...
I need light, easy to move furniture, enough space to comfortably move in any room and cleanable surfaces if I don't want to be miserable.
I’m so invested.
I know how hard it is to arrange the renovation, but the result’s definitely worth it!
12:40 chimney walls can be removed, but they are condition : first if it's yours chimney than do as you please you can destroy it ,second: if it's of one of apartments downstairs then you need their agreement but not very likely that they accept to destroy it because it means they can't use their chimney, thirdly :if it's from the basement and nobody uses it you can still ask the condominium about it. (ps not an expert so you still need to ask someone)
I have a 1908 cottage and one of the first things I did was reverse the swing of some of the interior doors. It's an easy fix and I'm surprised your first handyman refused to do it. Looking forward to seeing how you decorate. No doubt it will be charming.
Congratulations on your new home!
A few humble suggestions: (since its really hard to understand the layout from a video. )
If you can't save the wood floors, linoleum would be great for the period of the apartment.
Maybe keep the small kitchen entrance and use a portière as a door. Or make it into a narrow pantry.
I can't wait to see the next episode! Good luck! Embrace the quirks! That's what makes it unique.
I lived in a building built in 1926 for about a decade.... I still miss that apartment even though there was no place to park, no water pressure to speak of and the downstairs neighbors were a pain. The moment I opened the upstairs door and saw the windows and the built-in bookcases I was sold. It had a murphy bed in the front room with a dressing area, built-in cupboards in the hall...a footed tub. Ah.... The kitchen was about as big as a postage stamp. Given half a chance I would have bought that place! Enjoy the process. I hope we can shout 'Welcome Home!' soon.
Welcome to the land of old home ownership. I have a 1915 home in the Midwest USA. I started tearing out carpet in our upstairs knowing that there’s wood under the hallway and we saw some wood under the room’s carpet. We cut a big square out and found surprise asbestos tiles.
😬 Asbestos tiles
Old apartments are such a joy! My sister recently bought one from the 50s and they had to rip essentially everything out and start anew. Doors are important, pretty folding glass doors can really make the room! If there's a way to keep original features, I think it's always worth it. Can't wait to see what else you do with the apartment!
I recently bought a 1920s house.. and I’m really looking forward to seeing all your renovations.
The house I bought had awful carpet that smelt like cat pee, but I knew there were floorboards underneath from older photos. After pulling up the carpet, the floorboards were just really bad in some places and I’m still struggling with what to do.
I also did the same thing.. where I fixated on the beautiful stained glass windows and figured everything else could just come together 🥲
I love this. I lucked out and was able to buy a house in 2020. It makes my heart happy whenever someone buys a house to live in and take care of instead of just buying it to rent out and be a scummy landlord.
Given you sense of style, the apartment will be beautiful when it is finished. It took over 6 months to renovate my apartment. The entire neighborhood (Bunker Hill, L.A.) has been under construction or renovation for more than 8 years. Currently, I can sleep through jackhammers. I am viewing it as a metaphor for my life. Soon, all will be completed. You will have an apartment as beautiful as you are.
Incredible you've been still working on videos in addition to all of this. Managing a project like this is way more work than you guess. All the best wishes for your new home!
YES! I'm so here for this journey!!!!
Omg 😱 Congrats, you finally found a place of your own aesthetic!
My late uncle was a woodworker as a hobby, and after he passed I helped clean out his basement, which was also his work-space. This flat's basement made me very nostalgic, and a little teary. It's beautiful how things like craft work can create familiar spaces in completely different regions of the world.
Congrats on the apartment!
OH. MY. GOD, Karolina!! lol Listen, I SEE the remarkable potential in that flat. It truly does have a kind of character that tells you how great it can be...once it's all done. But, my goodness you have a lot of work to do!! (And have been doing, since you've obviously been at this for months.) I'm _CERTAIN_ it's been frustrating, and expensive, but I have the strong feeling that when this place is done, you will actually LOVE IT!! Good luck to you and your future there! (And know that compared to that place, my house isn't so bad, so I feel _MUCH_ better about the renovations I have to do, lol. Thank you for that!)
My daughter just bought a 1930's bungalow this spring. we just got the floors finished last weekend.. well she went on vacation to the beach and i stayed home working on floors and her basement and yeah! she has hot water for the first time since they moved in the beginning of August. The whole time I am like look at this history, and she is like look at this cold water and bathroom that has no floor. I have 2 weekends to get it ready for her baby shower.
It looks like a lot of work, but you can clearly see the gem it can become!
Congratulations on your new (well, new to us) home ♥️
I'm so glad that you talked to an architect and that you decided on the second renovation manager. Given the number of Polish fitters and tradesmen here in the US, there must still be a few left in the old country.
It's so cool that you're sharing with us the progress and the story of your new home! Can't wait to see how it improves from now on!
you are brave AF. i would gut that thing down to the framing and build it back up again. i love me some antique everything... but i also need things like stable high voltage electricity, radiant heat flooring, and hot water forever because i have done the primitive living without electricity, hauling water from a lake, and heating water on the woodstove, and it is not awesome when it never ends.
i can't wait to see more of your journey through renovation land!
I can't wait to see the renovations and the finished product. The flat has so much potential. I can understand why you chose it. I hope all goes well. I'll be anxiously waiting to see videos about the new flat. By the way, I'm jealous of your basement haul. I collect similar vintage objects too.
When buying an old place, in pretty much any country, you need to leave room in the budget for replacing the windows. Windows are the one expensive thing you have to do. If they are rotten it's a health hazard, but if they aren't, they are still a huge energy/ temperature issue. Many other things you can get over or around with diy renovations but windows need to updated. My house was built in the 40s in the south of the US. There are a lot of windows. I still have 5 original windows, 2 in the semi outdoor laundry room so it's not a big deal. But we have temperature issue where the old windows are and there's water damage to the walls underneath those windows. The new windows match the style of the originals and are energy efficient.
When I bought my flat, my mom was like "Oh, but it's so small! It needs another room.", so her idea was to take the kitchen out onto the balcony (which was in the kitchen), and make a sort of a dinning room where the kitchen was originally. The renovation was done, but then the people from the gas company came to see the renovation and it turned out we couldn't move the oven like we wanted to, because the oven is supposed to remain in place, as per building plan (plus the gas pipe was there; also, it would have blocked access to the window, and that window is the only one that has the drying rack), and we couldn't move the gas counter (much) either. So now I have my kitchen out on the balcony, but the oven and fridge are still in the "room" (no space for the fridge on the balcony; wanted to get a small dishwasher and no space for that either). To make matters worse, the humidity in that room\ kitchen is awful, so my food spoils way too fast (good thing I have a fridge!), and I keep getting mold in some places. Thanks for the bright idea, mom. Now I'm thinking of looking for a new flat, but it's so stressful, and money doesn't grow on trees (we've spent almost as much money renovating as we did buying the damn place), and with the war in Ukraine, I'm not sure what tomorrow even brings. 😔
oof that sucks. Is there any way to insulate your balcony space (I am assuming you just extended the flat out onto it).
@@lilyh5647 I'm not sure, actually. We've done the warmth insulation (don't know what it's called in English, when you attach special styrofoam panels on the exterior of the wall and cover them up with some finishing mix), but it doesn't seem to help against humidity.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 humidity needs ventilation to let the damp out. Just opening the window a bit, especially when you're cooking will help. Sodium Bicarbonate in hung about in cotton sachets will also absorb some damp. It takes time though and will need the bicarb changed monthly, though its very cheap.
@@michellebyrom6551 thanks. I actually keep the window ajar most of the time because of it.
My favorite part: the first contractor tells Karolina the folding doors cannot be opened the other way, and she knows that is not true, so she just hires a different contractor to get it done.
I love how you are trying to preserve many key, historic features, and loved the video. I can’t wait until the next installment to see your problem solving and progress!
Love all the original details and quirks. The Basement space is an awesome little addition. Glad your getting close to the fun part.
thought I read the title wrong for a sec 😂
congrats Karolina, you really earned and deserve it !!
I am currently buying a 18th century house. The frantic renovation mindset is felt and appreciated. We just spend the last four days trying to figure out how to get a staircase to the attic where my loft will be without losing space or ending up in a ceiling beam lol.
When I got my house it didn't have a bathroom either and was considered a 2 bedroom even though it had 3 since the heating and cooling didn't reach the added on room. But it made it so much cheaper but like you said we got to make the bathroom look the way we wanted it to within reason lol. But I wouldn't have changed it for the world because making it look the way we wanted was much better
My parents sold our 1908 house a couple of years ago, it had been in the family for something like 90 years and 5 generations. I will never stop mourning it.
Ah the joys of home ownership! You'll love it when it's done.
I'm delighted that you're keeping the integrity of the apartment. Most people gut them. It costs more to do what your doing, but it's absolutely worth it.
I'm honestly so jealous, I recently moved into a 1930's house and the only surviving remnants was the small decorative spots at the top of the walls and a tiny door under the stairs-
Plus or minus some damaged doors with locks torn out by previous owners to sell. :')
I love that you're keeping the integrity of the home while still renovating it to make it work for you! Also, I just started renting a house and I did the exact same thing of spending hours in the empty rooms, excited for what I would do with it.
It's really amazing to see someone trying to have a different approach to real estate, loving the quirks and trying to salvage the original while making it habitable.
It does deter me to see with the other videos how long and costly and streneous it is, but it is worth it!!
Such a gorgeous flat, please keep us posted, I could watch this for hours, I'm starting to look at houses myself, no chance in London whatsoever but elsewhere especially up north around Lancaster is kind of in my budget, I keep seeing old stone houses that are completley derelict and I'm so tempted :D cant wait to see what you do with the place!
I've seen some very old keys framed in a fabric lined shadowbox frames and hang in a hallway. It was an old church converted house in central London. I always loved the idea and wanted to recreate it but never had the right type of keys and those you found look perfect for the job and they are part of the flat so it would be a nice thing to display it like that. Just an idea...
Oh I really love to see when these kind of old and...not so neat flats or houses get renovated and made all new. So nice! I'm looking forward to the result.
And your dad wears a nice hat :)
How about the sewing machine - did you keep it? How does it look and work?
Pantries are indeed awesome! I had one in my first flat as a student. And I missed it in all my further living places :D
CONGRATULATIONS KAROLINA!!!! You do have your work cut out for you. I think I saw some antique tools in your basement. Those could be worth quite a lot of money if you were to put them up on a sale site... the money could offset the renovation cost.
Also, you seem to be a very savvy business woman with how you handled the old renovation manager. Your request was not ridiculous in the least so I think you replacing you uncooperative reno manager was an amazing badass move. I hope your flat owner fixes & updates everything in hers/his building for the good of all residents. Time for them to stop being lazy & get the electric, gas, water into the 21st century (or at least much closer to it) I finally wish you good mental health & quick completion of this renovation so you can enjoy your new home & complete independence.
I get the door thing. If I ever find a place with Dutch doors I’ll cry tears of joy. I wanna live my Briar Rose ready to pick berries moment.
I can relate to wanting an old place that wasn't too renovated with finishes that didn't fit what I wanted! My partner and I bought our 1885 Victorian home (Canada), with the whole house being very 1980s with floral wallpaper, and pink carpet.
I love that you found ways to re-use old doors and love the flipping of the folding doors! One business that I have frequently used in our renovations, is using architectural salvage places. They often have pieces of old houses that I've been able to incorporate into ours so it feels like they were always there and are period appropriate.