I bought my little house several years ago and rented it out. The house needed serious tender love and care by the time I finally moved to Graskop. I started with the renovation project in 2021 and had to rely on different contractors to get the work as I wanted it. I had several major setbacks during the renovations, as it turned out that the back wall was built with substandard material. I had to rebuild the bottom wall completely, while the top story had to be supported so as not to collapse on top of us all! The wooden windows throughout the house were also mostly rotten after years in the wet Graskop climate, and I replaced them with modern aluminium frames.
I saved up for every project individually and tackled them one by one, which probably made it more expensive. I also realised that every project needed to be discussed in detail with the contractors (and double checked) as they sometimes did not see the picture that I had in mind!