Laura is a young adult and was moving out of her folks place into a new place across town. Germany is not like some other “housing” markets. It is often the case that when you get a new apartment the person who has to renovate the apartment is the new tenant.
However, depending on the degree to which you plan to renovate it may be a costly venture. This is one of the reasons why people in Germany don’t tend to move very often. I was speaking with my friend Martin about how the process was going when he told me about their initial visit after the renovations were completed. Laura went into one of the rooms and it simply did not seem quite right and it took a while for her to determine what the problem was.
The landlord had hired a couple of very clever handymen who were tasked with replacing the windows in the bedroom. The windows were actually directly next to each other but they were different heights. They didn’t actually bother to ask if this was correct instead they put in two different size windows. Martin did speak with the person who did the renovations to get this oversight corrected. The walls were painted, the windows corrected, the wardrobes built, then correctly built. It looked like everything was just fine.
This is Germany so the kitchen was just as empty as the living room. Laura and Martin went to Ikea to purchase a counter top and cabinets for the walls. I am not sure how long it took to assemble, but from looking at Martin it must have been all weekend. To the best of my knowledge everything was done and Laura should have been doing the unenviable task of unpacking and putting things away.
We were both sitting at our desks and it seemed like Martin was doing a lot of talking on the telephone about Laura’s apartment. Later in the day when the phone calls slowed down I found out that there was one more little renovation detail that was causing complications. Laura reported that the water pressure seemed to be getting less and less with each day. When the renovations were done molding was placed around the rooms where the wall meets the floor. It was a small decorative touch that in this case was the root of all the problems.
In the kitchen there was a small pipe in the wall at this junction and when the molding was attached with small thin nails, several of them actually punctured the water pipe. Thus the water was slowly leaking out of the pipe into the wall.
The problem was caught before it became a big problem for the building, but this unexpected damage did create problems with the renovations specialist.