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In Germany, rental contracts are often unbefristet, or unlimited in their tenure. Want to hang a painting? No sweat—tenants are used to making their homes their own. Still, Alicia Freksa took it a step further than most when she rented a 300-year-old farmhouse in Bavaria with her partner, David Lakenbrink. They overhauled the kitchen, scrapped a ceiling, and even widened the doorframes.

Before signing the lease, Alicia and David called Hamburg home for years. They moved there after finishing their studies in Munich, and while Hamburg offered them plenty of opportunities in the advertising industry, they found themselves drawn back to the hills of Bavaria. The region was always close to their hearts, as they’d both grown up surrounded by the hills and lakes of southern Germany.

“We are mountaineers, and we would travel back to the south to meet friends, and then go to the Alps, South Tirol, Switzerland, or Austria,” Alicia says. “In Covid times, we realized we couldn’t have our urban city life with the restrictions, and that we needed more time to go outside.”

It was around this time that Alicia launched Roggenwolf, her online baking supply store. Her business quickly found its audience—you might remember the sourdough craze, or banana bread frenzy, of the early pandemic. Yet, Alicia knew that her business would soon outgrow her home in Hamburg, and she did what she could to keep it under control. “I realized I had to keep it small so I would be able to move it south eventually,” she said,” but we didn’t know when that would happen.”

“At one point, we stopped looking because everything was going well in Hamburg,” Alicia says, “but this house came to us.” An acquaintance of David’s father said her tenants were leaving, freeing up her rental property in the Wendelstein region of Bavaria, close to where David grew up. The couple travelled cross country to see it for themselves.

On arrival, they were stunned by its location in a gorgeous spa town 30 minutes away from David’s parents, but they realized how much work the rental would require before they could move in. Even their landlord was surprised by the extent of the renovations they had in mind—and the first contractor quit within three months. They struck a deal with the landlord: She would finance all structural repairs, while the couple would bear the cost for the customizations that made the house their home.

And the customizations were no short feat: Alicia and David worked hard to preserve the existing structure for the building, but they knew what they needed to be comfortable. The couple are both tall, so they wanted to extend the short doorframes to match their height. They wanted to update the heating system, and the kitchen that came with the house just wasn’t for them. The couple are obviously eager cooks and bakers, and they’d wanted a kitchen from German designer Jan Cray for years, so they splurged on one as an investment in their future. “We want to live here a long time—ten or twenty years at least,” Alicia explains.

They started by removing the Küchenhexe, a massive woodburning stove that weighed a ton. The antique was beautiful and sturdy, but it lacked the chimney system required to function—and to get it out of their kitchen, they had to rent a forklift. Once it was out of the way, the couple worked from the ground up. They wanted to replace the dated radiator with underfloor heating, which meant ripping up the wooden floorboards and dealing with what lay beneath them.

“David and his father dug a meter and half deep, then found these big stones to remove, but one was so big, we couldn’t get it out of the ground,” Alicia says. “So we had to dig a bigger hole and bury it underneath the floor.”

However, the biggest surprise during the renovation was hidden in the kitchen ceiling. As the couple added extra height to the door in the kitchen, they angled a flashlight into the ceiling cavity. Hidden up there were wood beams made from bark on tree trunks. The couple removed the rest of the ceiling to examine the beams, and they decided to peel off the bark and sand down the trunks. They liked them enough that when they added another layer of insulation to the ceiling, they left the now-elegant wood beams partially exposed to match the exposed-beam ceilings throughout the house.

With the renovations complete, the couple have quickly made their home a workplace as well: Alicia runs her bakery business out of the office, and David has a small photo studio upstairs. There’s enough space for their young family, including their recently born child—and they say the renovation was worth every cent. “People here can live in the same place for more than ten years, and they’ll always complain about the ugly floor in the kitchen,” Alicia says. “With some work and a little investment, you can make life so much nicer—if your landlord agrees.”

More Rental Revamp stories:

This Designer Couple’s Vibrant Berlin Apartment Is Constantly Evolving

How One Renter Turned Her Loft Apartment Into an ’80s Dance Studio

Nick Laciok’s DIY Düsseldorf Flat Is a Perpetual Work in Progress

Project Credits:

Kitchen: Vivian Graé, Jan Cray / @jan__cray

Photography: David Lakenbrink / @davidlakenbrink

* Editor’s Note: This article was pdated on 1/28/25 to reflect the correct spelling of Alicia Freksa’s last name.