How to renovate properly

After a few years, even the most beau­ti­ful house or flat is begin­ning to show signs of wear. The only rem­edy is to “reju­ven­ate” and breathe new life into your home. Accord­ing to a sur­vey car­ried out by IfD Allens­bach in 2019, almost 9 mil­lion Ger­mans – that’s more than every tenth – were plan­ning to ren­ov­ate their homes in the next few years. But if home own­ers want to be sure that their home not only looks but also feels good after­wards, it is highly advis­able to take a few things into account.

Tip 1: Pay attention to healthy materials

People spend most of their time indoors, where they are sur­roun­ded by walls, floors and ceil­ings. In order to ensure that res­id­ents feel safe and com­fort­able at home, a healthy liv­ing envir­on­ment is becom­ing more and more import­ant. These days, newly built houses are increas­ingly air­tight. As a res­ult, the nat­ur­al exchange of air is less fre­quent. It is there­fore advis­able to act­ively ensure that our indoor air is as unpol­luted as pos­sible. In addi­tion to reg­u­lar purge vent­il­a­tion, it helps to choose only “healthy” fur­niture and ren­ov­ate with “healthy” build­ing mater­i­als.

Tip 2: Careful preparation

Even if the house or flat is only ren­ov­ated instead of newly built, expert pre­par­a­tion of the sub­strate is of cru­cial import­ance. When repla­cing the old floor cov­er­ing, the screed under­neath must be even and sol­id; cracks and hol­lows must be filled with lev­el­ling com­pound. This also applies to walls when repla­cing the wall­pa­per. Make sure to always remove old adhes­ive residues before apply­ing new adhes­ive so that it can firmly adhere. To elim­in­ate the risk of mold and at the same time pre­vent the form­a­tion of odors, it is import­ant to check for resid­ual mois­ture. Only when everything is dry should new adhes­ive be applied.