Unfinished renovation from the previous owner: what to check first

What to check straight away, before you start furnishing

Walk through every room with a torch and a plug tester, and look at things a viewing did not give you time for. Open every socket and switch cover if you can do so safely, check whether radiators and taps actually shut off, and run water in every basin, bath and shower to see how it drains.

Look under sinks and behind the washing machine connection for damp, loose fittings or hoses held on with tape rather than proper clamps. In older buildings, especially Soviet-era panel blocks, also check whether ventilation grilles are blocked or painted over, since previous owners sometimes tile or plaster straight across them.

Take photos and dates of everything you find. If a problem turns out to be serious, this record helps if you need to raise it with the previous owner, the apartment association, or a tradesman you call in later.

• Test every socket and switch with a simple plug tester
• Check that stopcocks, radiator valves and the boiler shut-off actually work
• Run water everywhere and watch how it drains
• Look behind and under appliances for taped or unclamped hoses
• Check that ventilation grilles are not blocked, painted or plastered over
• Photograph anything unfinished or suspicious, with the date

What is simply ugly, and what is actually dangerous

A half-tiled wall, mismatched socket covers, or a door that sticks are annoying but not urgent. They cost you looks and convenience, not safety, and they can wait until you have a plan and a budget for the room as a whole rather than patching piece by piece.

Dangerous is different: sockets that feel warm, a smell of damp behind new plasterboard, water staining on a ceiling below a bathroom, or a floor that flexes underfoot near a wet room. These point to problems hidden behind finished surfaces, which is exactly where shoddy work likes to hide.

If you are not sure which category something falls into, treat it as the second one until someone qualified tells you otherwise. An hour of an electrician's or handyman's time to check is far cheaper than discovering a problem after it has spread.

If the electrical work looks doubtful

Mismatched sockets, missing covers, or wiring visibly added after the fact are common signs that electrical work was done cheaply or by someone unqualified. This is not an area for guesswork, since a fault behind a wall does not announce itself until it causes a fire or trips the whole flat.

Have a qualified electrician check the consumer unit, the earthing, and any circuits that look like they were added later, particularly in kitchens and bathrooms where water and electricity meet. Our electrical work starts from 49 €/h, and a proper inspection of a flat's wiring is usually a matter of an hour or two.

Do not wait for a symptom like a burning smell or a tripped fuse before you get this looked at. If the previous work was done without the right permits, it may also need to be brought up to standard before an apartment association or insurer will treat it as compliant.

How to decide what waits and what does not

Sort what you have found into three piles: safety issues, things that affect daily use, and things that are only cosmetic. Safety issues go first, always, regardless of cost. A door that does not lock properly or a socket that sparks is not a project for next year.

Daily-use problems, such as a shower that will not drain properly or a kitchen tap that drips constantly, are worth fixing soon because they get worse with use and because living around them is tiring. These are often a good fit for an odd-job callout, from 39 €/h, since many are an hour or two of work rather than a full renovation.

Cosmetic issues can genuinely wait. There is no reason to rush a mismatched wall of tiles if you are planning to redo the bathroom properly in a year. Rushing a patch job now often means paying twice.

When unfinished work runs across several rooms

Sometimes the problem is not one wall but a pattern: the same shortcuts in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the hallway, suggesting the whole flat was renovated by the same hand in a hurry, or that the seller ran out of money partway through. In that case, patching room by room tends to cost more in total than treating it as one job.

It is worth getting a proper look at the flat as a whole before deciding where to start, since problems in one room, such as a bathroom that was never properly tanked, can affect a room next to it over time. A fixed-price flat renovation, quoted from 180 € after we have seen photos or visited, gives you one figure and one guarantee rather than several separate patches.

This is also the point to think about sequencing: electrics and plumbing before plastering, plastering before flooring, and anything structural checked before any of it. Doing the rooms in the wrong order is a common way that previous owners' shortcuts get built into the next round of work.

When to call a specialist immediately, not later

Some signs mean the same day, not the same month: a burning smell near a socket or the consumer unit, water actively leaking through a ceiling or wall, a gas smell, or a door or floor that will not close because a structural element has moved. We do not do gas work ourselves and do not touch load-bearing walls, and either of these needs a specialist directly.

For anything electrical that worries you, call a qualified electrician rather than testing it yourself beyond switching off the relevant breaker. For water damage, stop the source first if you can find the stopcock, then get someone to assess how far it has spread before you cover it up again.

We are on call around the clock for urgent jobs within Tallinn and Harju county, and a call-out is 25 €, deducted from the bill if the work goes ahead. It is worth using that rather than living with a problem you are not sure about.