Handyman and renovation in Friedrichshain

Friedrichshain covers two very different kinds of building within walking distance of each other, and that difference matters far more than the district boundary does.

The building stock

North and east of Frankfurter Allee, and around Boxhagener Platz and the Samariterviertel, it’s Gründerzeit Altbau — same solid brick, lime plaster and boarded floors on joists as Neukölln or Kreuzberg, but with a more mixed renovation history. Some done thoroughly after 1990, some given a quick cosmetic once-over, some barely touched.

Then there’s Karl-Marx-Allee. The 1950s blocks along it are a properly distinct kind of building: generously sized, solidly built, parquet floors, decent rooms, and in places original fittings still doing their job. Much of it is listed, which changes what you’re allowed to alter. Behind and around it sit later Plattenbau blocks, with the panel construction and fixed service routes that come with them.

What I get called in for

In the Altbau it’s bathrooms and kitchens, in flats that got a light-touch renovation twenty or thirty years ago and have been rented out ever since. Usually that means a flat that looks serviceable with real problems behind the surface — circuits that were extended rather than renewed, tiling laid onto unprepared walls, and floors that got covered over instead of dealt with.

There are a lot of shared flats here and a lot of turnover, so a steady part of my work is turnaround: making good, repainting, replacing knackered flooring, and repairing the wear of several tenancies. That work wants doing quickly and in an organised way rather than elaborately.

In the Karl-Marx-Allee blocks it’s different again — sympathetic kitchen and bathroom work inside a protected fabric, real care over the original parquet, and repairing in preference to replacing wherever it’s possible.

Practical points

Listing status is the first question on and around Karl-Marx-Allee, and it’s not a formality. Find out what’s protected before you commit to a design.

Milieuschutz applies in parts of Friedrichshain too, with the same effect as everywhere else — certain modernisations need permission from the Bezirksamt.

In the panel-built stock the constraint is structural. There are real limits on cutting into panels, and the services sit in fixed positions that cost a lot to move. A kitchen or bathroom there is about doing excellent work inside a footprint that isn’t going to change.

Access is better than Kreuzberg — wider streets, more parking, more buildings with a courtyard you can actually use — which quietly makes bigger jobs here easier to run.