What it costs and what is included
In the premium segment we price a kitchen renovation in Barcelona as part of the home, using three tiers: Basic from €1,000/m², Standard from €2,000/m² and Luxury from €3,000/m², excluding VAT. The exact figure for your kitchen comes from the quote after a site visit and measurements, because the money goes less into the door fronts and more into what sits behind them.
A kitchen covers strip-out, new water supply and drainage, dedicated electrical circuits for appliances, levelling of walls and floor, finishes, bespoke cabinetry, worktop and appliance connection. If the kitchen is done on its own, without the rest of the flat, the quote also has to cover protecting adjoining rooms and working around people who still live there. Cabinetry and appliances sit on separate lines, so you can see what each part costs.
What to check in an older building before design
In the Eixample, Gràcia or the Gothic Quarter, a kitchen is almost always inside a building more than a century old. On the visit we look at four things. First, the soil stack: what it is made of, where it runs and whether a new connection point is possible. That decides how far the sink can actually move. Second, electrics: the contracted supply and the state of the consumer unit. Old wiring will not cope with an induction hob, oven and dishwasher running at once.
Third, walls. In many Eixample buildings the interior walls are load-bearing, so opening the kitchen to the living room needs a technician's design and structural reinforcement. Fourth, the floor: level changes between rooms, old tiles under laminate, the condition of the slab. Houses in Castelldefels or the Maresme tell a different story: gas boilers in the kitchen, water heaters inside cupboards and pipes under the floor that nobody ever drew. You want to know all this before falling in love with a particular layout.
The order of decisions: from layout to cabinetry
Kitchen decisions follow a fixed order: layout, then services, then exact appliance models, and only at the end the cabinetry. Our full kitchen renovation guide goes through it step by step; here is the short version of why no step can be swapped.
The joiner builds carcasses around the dimensions of each integrated appliance and around the water, drainage and socket positions. Change the fridge after the factory has started the order and the unit has to be remade, sometimes the one next to it as well. Move a socket ten centimetres and it ends up behind a side panel. That is why we fix appliance models in writing before measuring for cabinetry, and we take that measurement after plastering, when the walls are in their final geometry.
Extractor, gas and induction
The most common argument in a Barcelona kitchen is where the extractor air goes. In an apartment building you usually cannot run a duct out through the facade, and not every building has a shared flue. Whether an outside exit is possible depends on the community rules and municipal regulations for that specific address. If it is not, you fit a recirculating hood with a good carbon filter and build its replacement into maintenance.
In a premium renovation we usually remove gas and move the kitchen to induction. That removes the ventilation requirements of gas appliances and frees up space, but it needs a dedicated circuit and a check of the contracted supply. If a gas boiler stays in the flat, its position, flue and service access must be settled before the cabinetry is designed. Hiding a boiler in a sealed cupboard with no ventilation is not an option.
Open kitchen: the Urgel flat as an example
The Urgel flat in the Eixample measures 109.80 m², with four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen open to the living room. The floor is herringbone parquet, which added conditions to the kitchen design from day one. The parquet had to run into the kitchen area or meet the tiles along a clean line, with both floor finishes at the same height and no thresholds.
An open kitchen is seen in full from the living room, so appliances are mostly integrated, worktop sockets are planned in advance, and extractor and dishwasher noise becomes a comfort issue for the whole space. Island versus peninsula is covered in a separate article. The key point here: with an open layout, lighting, extraction and the floor junction are resolved at design stage, not during installation.
The mistakes that cost the most
First: ordering cabinetry from an old measurement before the walls are levelled. One centimetre along a wall becomes a gap or a unit that will not fit. Second: not checking the drain fall when the sink moves. A waste pipe run three metres from the stack without enough fall will block for years. Third: a single circuit for every appliance. The breaker trips when the oven and kettle go on together, and that cannot be fixed without opening walls.
Fourth: choosing the tiles or stone for the splashback before the hood and socket heights are known. Fifth: forgetting access to stopcocks, filters and the trap. A good kitchen lets you turn off the water or change a cartridge without dismantling the cabinets.
How we run a kitchen project and next step
General building work is done by our own crew; specialist trades such as stone or complex joinery go to trusted subcontractors. One person is responsible for the site and you deal with them directly, in Russian or Spanish. Payment follows the contract, in stages.
To get started, send us a floor plan or photos of the kitchen and the address. We reply to enquiries within an hour, arrange the visit and, after measuring, prepare a quote itemised line by line. Indicative prices per m² and a worked calculation with our table are in the related articles.