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BCN YARD guides: Turnkey renovation. 129 articles to help plan your project in Barcelona. Page 1.
How to tell termites from woodworm, what to check in the beams and doors of an old house before buying and renovating, how to treat it, and who pays in a building with an owners' community.
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A glossary of forty terms found in a Spanish renovation quote, project and contract: who does what, what makes up the price, and which documents are needed before, during and after the works.
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A battery covers short outages silently and without a gap, a generator handles long outages and heavy loads, a UPS protects networks and controllers. What to connect, how to tie it to solar panels and what to register.
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In a community building a charger on your own garage space needs prior notice to the community; at a villa it comes down to supply capacity and the panel. Rules, ITC-BT-52 power levels, paperwork and what to pre-wire during a renovation.
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Barcelona's bylaw allows works from Monday to Friday; weekends and nights only with municipal authorisation. Building rules can be stricter. Hours, machinery, complaints and how to plan the noisy phases.
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Each town sorts works into minor and major in its own way, charges the ICIO tax and fees under its own bylaws and takes applications differently. What to check before filing and where people most often go wrong.
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Inside the house the owner decides; outside, the estate statutes and the planning rules do. Facade, extensions, the party wall and the documents to collect before design.
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What Catalan law lets you do with a masía on non-developable land, how to check the catalogue, whether you can extend and change use, which permits are needed and how to bring in services.
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How to protect a Maresme seafront house from railway noise, what the first line restricts and how to run a build on a narrow plot between neighbours.
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A terraced house is renovated differently from a villa or a flat: the shared wall, the courtyard, the stairs and the narrow street shape both the estimate and the order of work. What to check first and how to keep the neighbours on side.
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Converting a unit into a home in Barcelona starts with checking planning rules and housing density, not with a quote. Area, ceiling height, daylight, the courtyard rule, the owners' community and the order of steps before and after the works.
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Separate trades make individual line items cheaper, but coordination, idle time and responsibility for the joints between trades fall on the owner. What is really saved, what comes back as cost, and when hiring individual craftsmen makes sense.
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A guide without a visit, a preliminary quote after measurements, a final one after the working design: each has its own accuracy. How not to mistake a guide price for a commitment.
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Phasing makes sense when the house is lived in or seasonal, but services, waterproofing and roof are done at once. A three-phase plan and the hidden costs of splitting the work.
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Which language to sign a renovation contract in Spain, which version prevails in a dispute, when a sworn translation is needed and how to sign remotely or by power of attorney.
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How to judge a contractor's standard in an hour on site: what to look at on finished and ongoing jobs, how to tell a careful site from a staged one, and what to ask.
View detailsTime benchmarks for a full 300 m² villa renovation, phase by phase, from design and licence to garden and pool. What can run in parallel, what causes delay and how to live next to the works.
View detailsFive roles on a site that are easy to confuse: promoter, designer, contractor with its site manager, works director and execution director. Who signs what, who is liable and who to contact if you are not in Spain.
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A provisional sum is for when a material is not chosen yet and the quote is needed now. How to set the allowance for stone, lighting and sanitaryware, how the wording looks and who pays the difference.
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A quote without a visit and measurements is only an estimate. What gets checked on site, which documents you should receive, whether a survey is charged and how long the quote takes.
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A checklist of 25 questions for the first meeting with a luxury renovation contractor. For each one: which answer is normal and which should raise a flag.
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Reference prices for a full renovation of a 200, 300 and 400 m² villa at Luxury and Signature tiers, where it costs more than an apartment, where less, and what the per-m² price leaves out.
View detailsHow to rework the entrance and shopfront of a historic building: protection, materials, light, accessibility and town hall approval.
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What lies beneath an elegant salon: water and drainage, power, extraction for colour and lacquer and moisture-resistant materials.
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