Apartment renovations and investments
After coming to Sevastopol many times and staying in some not so nice apartments, i decided to renovate to my
standards and then rent quality apartments,

"Anyone who's ever lived in an apartment knows how absolutely stressful the moving-in and adjustment phase could be.
 Aside from worrying about how to fit all your stuff in a new space, there's also the factor of trying to make the apartment habitable.
I've moved around a lot and have encountered all sorts of apartments - from www.bloomingorgeousflowers.co.uk shops to ones
who used to house a dozen cats.
Usually I just let things be and just move on on putting my things inside the house, but this time I've decided to take a different approach."

I have now completed 3 renovations of my own and been involved with several others, the latest renovation is
shown below, it was a small 40 sq mtr 2 room apartment, and every cm was vital, although the local builders
are not used to working to such tight measurements, we got pretty close to it and turned a very soviet style
apartment into a very modern Euro renovation  with a extended  Balcony making a additional room,
Anyone who is interested in buying an apartment or having an apartment renovated, either for there own private
use, or as a holiday home, that can make them some additional income when they are not here
please e-mail us for more information.
We can offer you many different management package's for your apartment, what ever suits your needs,
weather it be meeting your clients at the airport and taking them to your apartment,
or finding clients of our own for you, making shore that the apartment is cleaned and the bills are paid on time

 as well as checking that the apartment is secure on a regular basis
Hear are some photos of the apartment before and after it had been renovated...    
The completed photos will be added very shortly,
but for now you can see the condition when we purchased it and various stages of the renovation

The first set of seven photos are in its original condition, the apartment had no hot water and the only form of
eating was the strange looking log burner in the 6th photo,
the bathroom was not really big enough for the shower, but by changing the shape we now have a full sized
bath and much more space as well as room for a washing machine, fridge /freezer and a 60cm longer Kitchen
!the renovation work was started in the middle of October

The next and Final photos to be add with the the finished item, Just over 12months after we Started this,
even if we had not had the bad weather and worked on it through out the summer season, it would have still taken 5 - 6 months to complete,

The next project will be a medium size renovation of our apt on Bolshaya Morskaya,

the floors were damaged when a central heating pipe burst one night, and the ceiling need replacing to make it look more modern,
the previous owner used chip board to make the walls look good, so that will have to come off to, along with new floors, so we are looking at starting that after the Christmas Holiday, but will get all the doors for the bedroom and Bathroom  order this side of Christmas, I am to do 85% of the work myself and hope to have it finished in 2 - 3 months,

At the moment we are trying to sort out the documentation to fit a independent gas water and central heating boiler into another apartment, but the paper chasing is causing us a few problems, and we have just heard that they are going to  stop the fitting of these type of boiler until some new rule come into play, so as usual we are far from shore what we will be working on next, but if  by luck we get the first one done we will then do the same on Bolshaya Morskaya, but its to soon to call for now
but I will be updating this page as and when we have some progress ! 

So now that everything is finished, its time to start all over again,
We recently had a chance to buy the apt next door to us, and in time plan to make both apts into one, the new one also has a sea view ,

I still plan to do some of the work on Bolshaya Morskaya, but have less time than I original expected as getting the project passed for the gas boiler took slightly longer than expected !
and also have to make the new apartment look good for the summer 

These Photos were taken at the end of October, just before it was finished,
I had to leave Sevastopol at short notice so again the end date has been put back, but now its just a matter of tiling the Kitchen and giving the walls a coat of paint ! 

Mid April and the apartment is just about liveable, apart from not having a Kitchen
There were quite a few things that I was not happy about, the door frames had a step at the bottom which looked horrible, so I ripped them out, removed it and lowered them, but the floors were at different heights so  it all had to come out and be re done as we were on Holiday when they were fitted the first time, so it was the middle of may by the time we had it as we wanted, and with the upcoming holiday season that meant leaving the renovation with out Kitchen and bedroom furniture until the  end of August as it was a full time job managing the rented apartments   

By early mid March the apartment was almost finished and  you could see  at long last that this renovation was coming to an end, the apartment was rewired Russian style, very different to how it would be done in the UK, but at least the electric meter was sunk into the wall and hidden

Everything seamed to be going well up until the middle of January and the the weather turned !
Like everywhere in Europe it was the coldest winter for 80 years , and in Sevastopol case it was -25
but as luck would have it my 90 days were almost up, so there was only one place to head and that was for Thailand  +30, no problem what so ever !
due to the low temperature and in this case no heating in the apartment, we were fighting a loosing battle trying to get the rendering  to dry, if we had gone for wall paper instead of painting the walls we could have got away with out doing most of the rendering, but then the walls would have been bowed and up to 75 mm out top to bottom, but it was a expensive and time consuming job to re render them, Plaster board would have been much quicker but uses up more space, which is something we don't have in the case 

By the end of February the windows were fitter to the Balcony and the air conditioner repositioned.
We also decided to cut a hole in the wall and have a fish tank fitted flush to the wall, at the moment it is being used as the sound systems for the builders

 

After 6 - 8 weeks the apartment was starting to take shape !
All the rubble and waste had been disposed of, and the new walls for the bathroom was well on here way, the old wooden floors were removed as they were 100 mm  end to end from being level !
The original waste pipe for the toilet has been removed   and a smaller one cut into the wall, this can only be done on top floor apartments as the pipe is only being used as a breather pipe, the water meter and isolator has also been  sunk into the wall and  the area above will make  some storage and give it a feature as well,
We also decided  to make the Balcony much bigger and  use it as a office, so the air conditioner is now in the way and needs to be moved  
These are it at its worst ! 3 weeks into the project,
we decided to open the wall between the Kitchen and the lounge so we could use the corridor  space to
make the Bathroom slightly lager and have a space for a washing machine and fridge/ freezer