Blog Themes - Buying and Restoring a Czech House

As the blog gets larger I thought I might help readers interested in certain topics by creating some pages which list the blog's content by theme. I promise to update the pages as new posts are added.

The themes are: Czech Nature, Czech Customs & Culture, Places to visit in South Bohemia, Buying and Restoring a Czech House, Czech History and Politics, Day to Day Life in the Czech Republic. This post covers Buying and Restoring a Czech House, click on the links above for the others.

BUYING AND RESTORING A CZECH HOUSE

• Restoring an Old Farmhouse Making a Home
• Getting Ready for Czech Winter
• Scything
• Well in the Cellar
• Art Nouveau Architecture - New Property Search company
• Latest on the Central Heating
• Thaw
• No Hot Water
• Whether To Get a Czech Lawnmower
• New Stove
• Decorating a Czech Farmhouse
• Bohemian
• Update on the House
• Indispensable Tool
• Dryrot
• Chopping Wood
• Roots - Love of Wood
• Roots - The Shed
• The Search for the House
• The Search for the House 2
• Finding the House
• A First Look at the Barn
• Looking Back
• Finding the House - The Old Man
• Debating the Builders
• My First Winter in the House 1
  
• My First Winter in the House 2
  
• My First Winter in the House 3
  
• My First Winter in the House 4
  
• My First Winter in the House 5
• Chimney
• The Party
• In the Orchard
• Making Our House a Home
• Whitewashing
• Beer - Czech Breakfast
• Beginnings - the House
• Why Buy a House in South Bohemia
• First Impressions - The Train
• Beginnings - Fairies
• Beginnings - Puppets
• Beginnings - The Puppeteer

The search for the house

I had been visiting the Czech Republic for some time when I decided to buy here. I am often asked what led me to make that decision. I often joke that it was my mid-life crisis - and as is so often the case with a joke there is some truth at the heart of it. I needed somewhere I could relax and allow the poet in me come to the fore, work was increasingly pressured and I was finding it hard to stop doing "stuff" even at my Cotswold home. So I decided I needed a Czech chata - a hut in the woods, somewhere beautiful to go and be amongst nature.

Looking back I recognise now that it was more complex than that. I rather suspect I wanted more even then, but did not admit it. I am pretty sure I was looking for a way out of my frantic lifestyle. There were certainly other more obvious motives, the most important of which was simply one of friendship.

And so it was that, after convincing my husband that I was serious and gaining his agreement to the purchase of a chata for a modest and affordable sum, I asked my friend to advise me how to go about buying such a thing. She sent me a link to a website which brings together properties from a variety of estate agents, less for me to find the property but more to get a feel about what was out there and at what cost. What it did tell me was that it was impossible to tell anything much from a website. This was partly because everything was in Czech, and partly because Czech estate agents have no idea how to photograph properties they are selling - it was amazingly common to find a property advertised by a rather bad photo of a badly decorated bathroom.

In the summer of 2005 I arrived in Cesky Krumlov, armed with some properties I was interested in and proceeded to look. My friend advised me rightly that often a good-looking property would be spoilt by the context in which it was sited - so many Czech villages and towns have their communist eyesore blocks of flats or factory farms which really spoil the feeling of the place. It helps therefore to have someone who knows the area and who can prevent a wasted journey. She also advised me that some of the best houses would never make it onto the estate agents' and would come via someone who knew the owner. How right she was!

If you are looking for a house or cottage to buy in the Czech Republic, may I suggest you visit Czech Property Search