By Sabine Klier
Hoses on the floor, moving boxes in the winter garden – this is what the dream apartment in Spandau looks like, which became a nightmare for Marita Berghahn (39).
For three weeks, two dryers have been rattling around in her apartment day and night. It smells damp, it’s loud, Berghahn can’t cook or take a shower.
“A horror,” says the mother of a son. The consequences of a pipe burst last year seemed to have long since been eliminated.
In the kitchen, dryers work 24 hours a day to remove moisture from the apartment. Next to it is the unpacked kitchen furniture Photo: Christian Lohse
Three rooms, 80 square meters on the 3rd floor, 985 euros rent, built in the 90s. “It was our dream apartment,” says the tenant. Her happiness lasted just two months. Then an older burst pipe was found. Berghahn: “In the end, we lived in a transfer apartment for seven months, in which one room was completely moldy.”
Her apartment had to be renovated from the ground up at that time. The walls of the kitchen and bathroom were torn out and rebuilt, the floors re-tiled. They were finally able to return in May: “The new kitchen hadn’t been delivered yet, but my son had health problems because of the mold in the replacement accommodation.”
18 moving boxes with crockery and pots are stacked in the conservatory. The kitchen cannot be used Photo: Christian Lohse
After eight months of delivery, the kitchen finally arrived in June. But when the fitters moved the makeshift sink away from the wall, everything behind it was soaking wet again. And the mold grew in the wall.
The consequences of a catastrophic construction botch! “As it turned out, the company commissioned simply left the rusty, holey pipes in the wall and only repaired the visible, external damage,” says Marita Berghahn.
In the bathroom, the newly drawn wall was opened. The mold was already growing behind it Photo: Christian Lohse
Since then, the dryers have been running around the clock. They also suck the water out of the floor, for which eleven holes were drilled in the tiles and the real wood parquet in the hallway, bathroom and kitchen. The medical service worker is now working from home because she has to empty the water tank of the dryers three times a day.
Eleven holes were drilled in the apartment’s floors to draw moisture out from under the parquet and tiles Photo: Christian Lohse
Berghahn is desperate: “The new kitchen hasn’t been set up, pots and dishes are stacked in 18 moving boxes in the conservatory. I wrote over 125 emails to the property management. I’m about to collapse.”
Already in January she demanded a 75 percent rent reduction from the landlord. It was only on Tuesday that she was granted 25 percent for the time in the moldy replacement apartment.
Marita Berghahn is at the end of her nerves and is now looking for a new place to live for herself and her son Photo: Christian Lohse
And the property manager offered her to move into the hotel. “Indefinitely. I can’t expect my son to do that,” says Berghahn. “We’re looking for something new now. It hurts to leave such a beautiful apartment.”