Where to start
Start with how you will use the space, not with a list of materials. Describe who lives in the flat, what works today and what needs to change. Then gather the documents you have, think through access, working hours and where you will live during the works, and set a budget and timeline range. With that, you can ask a contractor to visit.
You do not need everything for the first visit. You need clarity on the essentials and an honest list of what you do not know yet. A contractor who sees that list can tell you straight away what to find out first, without wasting your time on options that do not suit you.
Describe your life, not the interior
Who lives in the flat and how old the children are. Who works from home and for how many hours a day. How often guests come and whether they stay overnight. How much you cook. What you store and where space runs out now. Whether there are pets. What annoys you about the current layout: the morning queue for the bathroom, a kitchen where you cannot see the children, a hallway with no room for the pushchair.
Split the list into essentials and wishes. The essentials drive the layout and the quote; the wishes are what can be added if the budget allows. Note separately what you want to keep. In Eixample flats that is often the hydraulic floor tiles, plaster mouldings, original doors or timber beams. Keeping things is work with a price too, and it has to be accounted for from the start.
Documents: what you have and what is missing
Gather what you already have: floor plans from the purchase documents, the cédula de habitabilidad (habitability certificate), records and photos of earlier renovations if they survive, and the comunidad de propietarios rules on building work. Electricity bills help too: they show the contracted power, which matters if you plan induction cooking, air conditioning or underfloor heating.
Photograph every room, the consumer unit, the risers in the bathroom and kitchen, the windows and the building entrance. Some of this may be missing, and that is fine: just note what you do not have. If the building has recently had its technical inspection (ITE), or the comunidad is planning work on the façade or risers, that is also worth knowing before the quote.
Access, working hours and where to live
How will materials get into the flat: lift size, stair width, whether you can unload outside the entrance. In the Eixample, street unloading is time-restricted, and the lift in an old building often cannot take a sheet of plasterboard, which affects how the job is organised. At what hours noise is allowed, under the comunidad rules and municipal regulations, confirmed with the city council. For a house in Castelldefels or the Garraf the question is different: can a lorry reach the plot, and where does the skip go?
And the main one: where will you live? A full renovation that strips out bathrooms and kitchen is not compatible with living in the flat; a partial one sometimes is. There is a separate article on this decision, but it must be made before the programme, because the sequence of work depends on it.
The budget frame
Set yourself a figure you are prepared to spend and one you will not go above. As a reference for a full renovation: our Basic tier starts from €1,000/m² excluding VAT, so a 100 m² flat starts from €100,000; Standard from €2,000/m²; Luxury from €3,000/m². The exact specification and price are set in the quote after the site visit and measurements.
Add what is usually charged separately: furniture and appliances if they are not in the quote, the interior design, permit applications and a contingency, especially in an old building. If the budget does not match the wish list, it is better to find out at the essentials-and-wishes stage than halfway through the works.
Timeline: count back from moving in
If there is a date by which you need to move in, count backwards from it: handover and cleaning, the works, delivery of materials and bespoke furniture with their manufacturing lead times, the permit, the interior design and the quote. How long the permit takes depends on the category of works and is confirmed with the council or a gestor, so do not promise a move-in date to anyone until the category is known.
Deadlines usually slip not on site but on decisions: tiles chosen late, a kitchen ordered after first fix, the comunidad's consent requested at the last minute. The dated decision table described in our materials article removes most of these risks.
First contact and the site visit
In your enquiry it is enough to give the address or neighbourhood and floor area, attach photos and plans if you have them, briefly describe what you want to change and give a budget and timeline range. We reply to enquiries within an hour. Then come the site visit and measurements, and only after that the quote.
We run projects in Spanish and Russian, with one person responsible from the first visit to handover. Our own crew does the work, specialist trades go to trusted subcontractors, and payment follows the contract in stages. If the visit shows that your project first needs a wall checked, the building's drawings found or the permit category clarified, we will tell you straight away, before talking numbers.