Short answer: what to record before the first blow
Before strip-out, three things need recording: exactly what is removed, what stays or comes out to be reinstated, and the condition of everything around it — stairwell, lift, neighbours’ flats. A floor plan marked up in colour, a short room-by-room list and dated photos and video are enough.
“We’re replacing the whole kitchen” says nothing about the kitchen door, the radiator under the window or the socket that feeds the next room. Two weeks into the works, those details turn into arguments about what was in scope and who pays for what.
The list: remove, keep, take out and reinstate
Every element goes in one of three columns. Remove, and take away. Keep in place, and protect with film or boxing. Take out and reinstate: internal doors, radiators, period door handles, cornicing restored separately.
On site, the same is marked with masking tape directly on each element: green stays, red goes. For the reinstate column, decide where things are stored during the works and who is responsible for them. What is worth keeping in a renovation is covered in a separate guide.
The surroundings: stairwell, lift, neighbours
Photograph the entrance hall, the inside of the lift, the flights of stairs up to your floor and the neighbours’ door. If you can, arrange with the neighbour below to look at their ceiling under your bathroom and kitchen: old stains and cracks are recorded before work starts, not after the first complaint.
Email the photos to the property manager. A dated email beats a folder on your phone: a month later nobody argues about whether the scratch on the lift door was already there. Note the water and electricity meter readings while you are at it.
Services: what runs through your flat
In an apartment building, shared soil stacks and water risers often run through your flat, and sometimes cables or gas supplying the neighbours. Before strip-out, mark on the plan where the stacks, stopcocks and consumer unit are, and what runs through the walls that are coming down.
Cutting a pipe that feeds the flat upstairs is the mistake that turns day one of strip-out into an emergency call. If there is any doubt about what a pipe is, work at that spot stops until it has been checked.
What must not be judged by eye
In Eixample buildings some interior walls are load-bearing, and a partition that looks thin may be carrying the floor above. Neither a photo nor the wall’s thickness is licence to remove it: a professional determines what each wall does, and that is settled before strip-out, in the project.
The stop rule: if something unexpected turns up behind the plaster or under the floor — a rotten beam, lead pipes, material that looks like fibre cement — work in that area stops. Photos, a visit from the technician, a written decision, and only then do things continue. Extra work is priced and approved before it is carried out, under the same procedure as any other change to the renovation.
Example: the floor under the old covering
A typical Eixample scenario: under the laminate or lino there is old hydraulic mosaic tile. Sometimes in good condition, sometimes half broken. The “what do we do if we find it” decision is made before strip-out: keep and restore it in one room, lift it and reuse it as a feature, or remove it. Otherwise a crew whose instructions say “remove floors” will simply follow the instructions.
The same logic applies to timber floor joists, old doors and cornicing hidden above a suspended ceiling. Better to decide in advance what happens to a find than to decide on site with the schedule pressing.
Protection, removal and next step
Agree protection of common areas, the rubble route and the skip location with the property manager, and get a permit from the ajuntament for a skip in the street. We carry out strip-out within the agreed scope, with one person responsible for the site, and report every find before anything is added to the works. Send us the floor plan and photos: we reply within an hour, in Spanish or Russian.