Take these hints and tips however you want, I’m speaking from experience, you might or might not agree, but hey each to their own, have a gander and see if the below could help you.
So some of you that have had experience of renovating in Bulgaria will be able to relate, to the rest of you, take this as a warning / guide or stuff to watch out for. Whatever you know about renovating in your home country, you will not have come across anything like this.
Ok so lets assume that you have found a house that you want to buy, great you love the house, you like the village and the views are great, not to mention how cheap it is to buy. So what do you need to look out for? The houses here come in 4 main types of construction mud brick (see my other post about mud bricks here), concrete (quite rare) stone, and brick construction. If you get a concrete house just be warned that this is reinforced concrete, so when you are doing your renovations just remember that knocking that wall down, or making that door or window bigger will be more of a task than you realise. With a mud brick house the main areas to look out for are damp and water getting in, if you have a hole in your roof, then it won’t be long till you don’t have a house anymore but a pile of dirt! Stone houses are great but these are not readily available on the second hand market, as most are still lived in, and the prices for empty houses are quite steep, but if you’ve got the cash then go for it. The last on the list is a brick house, now you might be thinking I know about them and I know how things are done, well you will probably be wrong, brick houses like ours have a mud mortar, so just when you think you have drilled that raw plug in and it will hold, you will soon find that it falls out easily.
Now each type of construction has it own benefits and cons, but the way I look at it, is if the house has been standing 60 / 70 years or more, then they must have done something right in the first place, and as long as you’re not going to massively change the property, then you should be fine.
So what else should you watch out for? Well to begin with check the roof, you can nearly guarantee that there will be some leaks as they don’t put waterproof barriers in place and with the high winds and extreme weather you can get in Bulgaria there is a good chance that some of the tiles will have moved, so getting the roof done should be the number 1 priority, after that you know that your house will still be standing and you can get to work inside.
Next should be checking the beams on the upstairs floors, if you are lucky you will have wooden floors, that you can sand and varnish and they look a treat, but if like most people you will have mud floors (yes they pretty much used mud for everything back then). The mud floors are usually quite solid, but again get water on them and you will soon have a sloppy mess downstairs. You will also probably note that the floors are wonky and uneven as hell, so you can either knock all the mud down and start again or do like I’m doing and building a supported floor above the mud floor, that way you have a nice flat floor to walk on. So why would I keep the mud floor, surely it’s easier to knock it down and start again, well yes, but mud is a great insulator, and believe me with the heat we can get here in the summer and the bloody freezing cold we can get in the winter, the more insulation you have the better it will be living in your house.
So what’s next on the list, that’s your windows and doors, unless your house has been renovated in the past, it is a safe bet that you will have wooden doors and windows. Also you will notice that they have single panes of glass and not the normal double glazing we are used to. Don’t worry you can get UPVC double glazing in Bulgaria, but before you go rushing out and follow the realms of most expats, there are benefits to wooden frames. Firstly don’t forget its the character of the house you fell in love with, and unless you renovate sympathetically, you will soon be taking the sole away from the property. Also to get a new wooden window or door made is actually quite cheap, and if you are getting them custom made (or making them yourself like I will try to) you can get the double glazing glass cut to order to fit your frames. Cut to order always sounds expensive but believe me it really isn’t here, there are glass cutters in just about every town and some villages, so with a good bit of looking around or asking about you will soon find loads of recommendations where you can get what you want for cheap.
So now for the two areas of the house that make my skin cringe at the thought. Not because I mind doing them, but because of what you might find – plumbing and electrics!
So plumbing first, if you are very lucky you will find water inside the house, nearly all houses have an outside sink and this was usually the only water source with the property, so first thing you have to figure out is how the hell you are going to connect to it and get it into the house, now to be honest after past experiences and the hassle that can be involved, here is a top tip, find out who the local builder is in your village and pay them to do it! I know this might sound lazy and maybe it is, but if you dig the trench and get all the pipework ready so all they have to do is connect it, then this could be the easiest money well spent. An average local builder will probably charge between 40 to 50 levs for an 8 hour day, that’s roughly £20 – £25, which in the grand scheme of things is peanuts but will save you hours or days of hassle, as they are used to dealing with this abortion of plumbing outside, believe me sometimes you really can’t understand what the hell is going on, and also where the heck to get the parts from to make it all come together. So for a few quid, dip into your pockets and let some other poor sod deal with the crap, after all you can sit down, put your feet up and watch how they do it, and you will make a good contact in the village if something else goes wrong, and also your standing in the village goes up as people appreciate you spending your money in the village, not bad for a £20 investment is it?
Once the water is in the house the rest of the installation is a doddle, well near enough but believe me that’s the hard part out the way.
And now for the do or die mission that are Bulgarian electrics. Rule number one forget everything that you think you know about electrics, as a Bulgarian will not have followed any of those rules, Rule number two, expect everything to be live, even when you have turned the fuse box off! So you will be looking round your new house and will probably notice light fittings hanging down held together but a bit of tape, this is standard and will most probably have been installed by the local electrician, this is the norm and you will find this all the time, they don’t seem to use joining blocks, just wrap the two wires together and cover in tape. Also fully expect lights to be spurred off of sockets, and sockets to have been spurred off of lights, or for it to just be one continuous circuit with everything on it! Also you will probably notice that some sockets have basically speaker wire for electrics which then lead into what could only be described as an industrial cable, essentially whatever they had to hand was used, so if you can I would highly recommend that you complete re-wire the entire house, at least that way you know if it has been done properly and the correct cables have been used, plus then you will know that any cable you find that you didn’t put in is not live. If you do decide to keep some of the existing wiring you might find that you need a new fuse box (very few have a normal circuit breaker box), in this case ask your builder buddy to do it especially at the main box for the house, that way her can figure out WTF is going on with each cable and wire it all up for you, there is a good chance that you can probably get him to do this the same time as the outside tap, so that’s water and electric into your house in a day for around £20 – £25, not too bad is it.
So essentially I would say that 90 – 95% of the work can be done by yourself, but if you are unsure then give the builder a call and get him in for a day to sort the crap out that you either don’t want to do, or are a bit unsure about. Plus if something goes wrong, you have someone to call and they should come back out and fix it for free.
So now you have figured out what’s what in your new home and the basics are sorted out, it is time to start planning your new home, the beauty of in-renovated houses in Bulgaria is that basically they are a blank canvas, you can put anything anywhere, your not restricted by where the bathroom or kitchen must go as you will probably need to put in all new drainage, pipework and electrics, so spend some time and really think about how you want your house to be. One thing to bare in mind is where the chimneys are, now this might sound daft at this stage but the majority of heating in Bulgaria is done through log burners (called Petchkas), you can go for stand alone wood burners in various rooms, one main wood burner or boiler with central heating, or a pellet boiler, so cost up and figure out which system you will be using. For us we always go for wood burners, as with the central heating options you will either need a battery back up system or a generator to power the pumps when the electric goes off (and it will in winter), the way I look at it, is if the Bulgarians can survive the harsh winters here with just a wood burner then so can I, plus I don’t have to worry about the power going off, and I still have somewhere to cook if it does.
How do you source materials? Simple answer is Facebook, might sound nuts, but join as many expat groups as you can find in your area, here you can ask the questions to other expats and sometimes Bulgarians on where to source decent materials and you will also get reviews on who’s good, who short changes you, who charges way to much because you are a foreigner, and if they speak English or not. We have found this to be invaluable especially when you are in a country where you don’t speak the language and have no idea where anything is. Chance are there will have been another expat at some time that has been in the same situation as you and had to solve the same problems, so get joining and asking those questions, it will make your life so much easier (believe me I spent 1 whole day looking for somewhere that sold a fridge!).
Wood Wood Wood, nearly all timber here is untreated and has not been dried out. So you have two choices either buy the materials in in plenty of time so that you can let them dry, or use them as they are and make sure you fix them well and truly in place, as once the wood starts drying out it will warp and bow, so if you need 2 screws use 5! You can buy dry and treated timber, but it will cost you a fortune and you will have to go and collect it, so unless you have means of transporting large amounts of timber in 4m lengths then give this option a miss. Also you will quite often get wood that is bowed like f**k and don’t expect all the timbers to be the same size or thickness, I ordered 27 lengths of 8×6 the other week, every single piece is a different length and slightly thicker or thinner, so best bet like me, get a table saw so you can trim all the lengths to the same size if your doing framing work, fortunately my wife, sister in law and myself like the rustic look so if a projects a bit quirky we think that it adds to the charm, but each to their own preference.
Cement and concrete – you need to bare in mind the extremes in temperature here, I had a guy round the other day doing some roofing work (as I’m a bit of a fat bas**rd and break tiles if I’m on the roof) and he was mixing up some mortar for finishing off the tiles. He proceeded to ask me for floor tile adhesive to put in the mix, which I thought hang on, this guy doesn’t have a clue, he is using the floor tile adhesive for roof tiles, WTF have I done hiring this guy to do some work! Turns out the tile adhesive here has cement in it as well as a glue, which apparently helps to bond to the roof tiles, but also flexes slightly in the extreme temperatures, hey you learn something new everyday, so moral of the story hire a local now and again and ask questions, its the local knowledge that I’m starting to pick up that will help me to complete my projects, and help them to last the weather here. So now I know and I’ll be using that technique on many more projects, so that was another few quid for the day well spent as my future projects will benefit from the local knowledge.
Buy in bulk! If you can and you have storage on your property, then when you go to the builders merchants, try to buy in bulk, as one it will save you on delivery in the long run, but also quite often you can negotiate a discount because you are spending so much with them in one go, I got a 5% discount on my last order, might not sound much but every penny counts and I got enough stuff delivered for enough projects for 4 weeks, so now all three of us can crack on with multiple projects at once.
Tools – every mans passion! I love tools even though my wife thinks I have enough, I know that I don’t ! So do you buy in the UK or Bulgaria. First off the quality of the tools in the UK are far superior to the ones in Bulgaria (even if they are the same brand), I brought a lot of tools with us as I had them already and just made sure that I brought plenty of adapters for the plug sockets. But for large tools I have bought in Bulgaria and there are plenty more on the list 🙂 . I decided to buy the large and expensive tools here for a few reasons, firstly spare parts, if it’s a Bulgarian brand then getting your tools fixed is really easy and can work out quite cheap in comparison to the UK, secondly all new tools from the large DIY stores come with a 2 year guarantee, so anything goes wrong, it’s just down the road to get it sorted, and thirdly we didn’t bring a particularly large van with us this time, so space was a premium, and my missus and sister in laws personal items were of more importance than some more tools (I kinda see their point, plus I get to buy new tools to play with so win win).
Right so you know what to look out for, how to source your materials and where to buy your tools, so your next step is to take the plunge and get stuck in. The way I look at it, is if I can do it, then anyone can, but if your not sure then get a professional or feel free to contact me and pick my brains, I don’t know everything but I’m happy to help if I can. I’m not claiming that I know everything, nor is this a definitive guide, this is just my ramblings from my experiences. Good luck and have fun.
