Renovating an Altbau Apartment in Vienna: Keep the Charm You Fell For

What makes an Altbau apartment in Vienna special

The Viennese Altbau, the pre-1945 apartment building, is usually a Gründerzeit building from the second half of the 19th century or the early 20th century. It has qualities that are hard to find in new buildings: high rooms, large windows, solid walls, suites of rooms with double doors, and a proportion that people find pleasant at once.

It also has quirks you need to know about. In many buildings the ceilings are timber-beam or Dippelbaum ceilings (solid timber beams laid side by side), whose load-bearing capacity should be checked before heavy loads such as natural stone floors or large tubs are added. Pipes often run in old risers in the corridor area. The layouts date from a time when kitchen and bathroom were ancillary rooms and not the heart of the home.

Renovating an Altbau in Vienna is therefore always a translation. You translate a floor plan from 1890 into the life you lead today. When the translation succeeds, you get the generosity of the Altbau and the comfort of a new build under one roof.

Why piecemeal renovation destroys Altbau charm

Many Altbau apartments are renovated in stages. First the bathroom, because it is the most urgent. Then the kitchen, because the old one is giving up. At some point the floors. Each stage is planned by a different firm, and each brings its own standard.

Anyone who has viewed apartments in Vienna knows the result. A bathroom with glossy tiles in the format of a DIY-store brochure, out of all proportion to the ceiling height. A kitchen with a suspended ceiling and halogen spots, under which the stucco has vanished. A laminate floor in the hallway because the parquet was damaged there. New interior doors of standard height that look like foreign bodies in the tall walls.

The charm of an Altbau is rarely lost through one big decision. It disappears in many small ones.

A whole-home concept prevents this, because before the first building measure it determines which language the apartment speaks. Then even the new bathroom is planned in the proportions of the Altbau, and the kitchen gets lighting that emphasises the stucco instead of hiding it.

What doing nothing costs you. Staged renovation feels easier because every step looks small. But you open the same wall twice, live on a building site for years and walk past the compromises every morning. Each stage also fixes decisions that the next one must work around. What such a concept covers is described in the article on the whole-home design concept.

Keep, add, renew: the three basic decisions

At the start of every Altbau renovation is a survey with three columns. Every element of the apartment is assigned to one of them.

Take a typical case. Imagine a second-floor flat in the 4th district, just under a hundred square metres, ceilings over three metres high. The picture is clear: stucco, double doors and the herringbone parquet in the three rooms stay. The box-type windows are properly refurbished. Pipes, bathroom, kitchen and heating are renewed. In the hallway, where the parquet is too badly damaged, it is patched with matching reclaimed timber, or a material is chosen that is deliberately designed as a new floor. Why a continuous floor makes such a difference is explained in the article on continuous floor coverings.

At Richard Atelier the question is not "which tiles do you like?" but "how do you want to live?" Only then do we decide what the old apartment keeps.

Services in an Altbau: pipes, ceilings, windows

In a complete renovation the invisible work often accounts for the greatest part of the effort. It is also the main reason why a whole-home concept pays off: if you renew the pipes properly once, you do not have to open the walls twice. The most important points:

• Electrics: Old wiring without a protective earth and with too few circuits is generally replaced entirely. We plan for kitchen, lighting and possibly smart home at the same time.
• Water and waste water: Old pipes of galvanised steel or lead are replaced. The position of the risers determines where bathroom and kitchen can sensibly go.
• Ceilings: Before heavy built-ins, the load-bearing capacity is checked. With timber ceilings we clarify this with the structural engineer.
• Heating: Many Altbau apartments have gas floor heating (a boiler in each flat). Whether a switch to district heating or another system is possible depends on the building and should be clarified early.
• Windows: Box-type windows can often be refurbished so that they become tight again and much better in thermal insulation. In protected zones, changes to windows and façade are possible only to a limited extent.
• Acoustics: High rooms with hard surfaces echo. Curtains, rugs and built-ins with fabric or timber noticeably improve the room acoustics.

If you are interested in surface heating or cooling in an Altbau, you will find the possibilities and limits in the article on heating and cooling through surfaces. Lighting in high rooms follows its own rules, explained in the article on the basics of lighting design. Once the pipes are quiet in the walls, the real question begins: how do kitchen and bathroom fit into this architecture?

Renovating kitchen and bathroom in an Altbau

Kitchen and bathroom are the rooms where the Altbau most needs to be brought into the present. At the same time they are the rooms where most mistakes happen.

With the kitchen, the first question is that of location. Does it stay in the small courtyard room, or does it move into one of the large rooms facing the street? In our example the couple opt for something in between: the small room becomes a pantry and utility room, and the kitchen itself moves into the middle room of the enfilade. A long run of units with an island stands freely, set back from stucco and windows, so that the architecture stays visible. Now imagine the evening: friends around the island, the stucco rose glowing above them, the dishwasher so quiet that no one notices it. How this can also work on a small footprint is shown in the article Thinking big in a small kitchen. You will find our services around fitted kitchens on their own page.

In the bathroom, the riser, the fall and the ceiling height are the decisive factors. A level-access shower needs build-up height for the drain, and that is not always available in an Altbau. A freestanding tub needs a ceiling that can carry the weight. The details are described in the articles on the bathroom in the Viennese Altbau and on the freestanding bathtub. If you only want to tackle the bathroom, you will find more on our page about bathroom renovation.

One design principle helps in both rooms: new things are allowed to look new. A modern kitchen in a Gründerzeit room looks right when it holds back, has clean lines and uses materials that suit the parquet and walls. Oak, matt lacquer in warm tones and a calm worktop get on better with stucco than high gloss does. And who decides whether a wall may move at all? That is the next topic.

Permits and the building community

In a Viennese Altbau you never build entirely alone. The property management, the other owners and sometimes the building authority have a say. For most work inside the apartment, such as new floors, a new kitchen or painting, no permit is needed. It is different for interventions in load-bearing walls, risers, chimneys or the façade.

Anyone who wants to open a load-bearing wall needs a structural engineer and, as a rule, a submission to the building authority. Anyone who touches common parts of the building, such as pipes or windows, needs the consent of the other owners in condominium ownership. The details are described in the article on permits for conversions in the Viennese Altbau. For wall openings there is a separate article on the load-bearing wall in Vienna.

It is often wiser not to join rooms by demolition, but through generous openings or sliding doors. In an Altbau with its enfilades in particular, this creates lovely transitions that need little intervention. The article Semi-open instead of open shows possible solutions.

The course of an Altbau renovation with a whole-home concept

A complete renovation of an Altbau essentially follows these steps:

1. Initial conversation and project sheet with photos and floor plan.
2. On-site survey with measuring and inspection of pipes, ceilings and windows.
3. Clarification of permits with the property management and, if necessary, the authority.
4. Concept with layout, zones, lighting and material palette.
5. Detailed design, selection of furniture and appliances, cost schedule.
6. Building phase: strip-out, installations, bathroom, floors, window refurbishment, painting.
7. Fitting of the built-ins by our joinery workshop Tischlerkultur.
8. Furnishing, handover and snagging.

One person accompanies you through all eight steps, from the first sketch to the handover. That person coordinates the trades and knows every decision that was made along the way. Nobody has to explain your apartment twice.

Bespoke built-ins are especially valuable in an Altbau. No modular wardrobe makes use of a wall height of 3.40 metres or an alcove next to the chimney breast as well as a made-to-measure one. Ours come from Tischlerkultur, the Viennese joinery tradition behind Richard Atelier since 1935. Imagine a door in the alcove opening onto a wardrobe exactly as deep as your coats are wide, the grain running unbroken up to the stucco. You can see examples on our page about fitted wardrobes. For the choice of timber, the article on solid wood in interior fit-out helps.

On costs: a complete renovation of an Altbau has no fixed price, because the condition of the building fabric varies greatly. Bathroom and kitchen are usually the largest individual items, and what they cost depends on the scope, the fixtures and appliances, and the materials chosen. A reliable estimate follows in the first consultation.