What a full renovation includes, room by room

Why is it worth defining the scope room by room?

Because “full renovation” means different things to different builders. To one it means new bathroom, new kitchen and paint. To another it means taking the property back to bare walls and rebuilding every service. Both may call it a reforma integral, and both quotes can look reasonable until you discover that the second one included new wiring and the first did not.

The most reliable way to compare is to list, room by room, what will be removed, what will be renewed and what will be kept. The sections below follow that approach. Use them as a checklist when you read a quote — ours or anyone else’s. If you are still deciding whether you need the whole property done, see who a full renovation is for.

What happens across the whole property?

Some work is not tied to any single room, and it is often where the biggest differences between quotes hide.

• Electrical installation: a new consumer unit, new circuits and cabling, new sockets and switches. Carried out by authorised partner installers, who issue the paperwork the installation requires.
• Water supply and waste: new supply pipes from the meter or stopcock and new waste runs to the building’s main stack. In an apartment block, the shared stack itself belongs to the community.
• Floors: removing old tiles or laying over them, levelling, then the new floor throughout so there are no awkward thresholds.
• Walls and ceilings: removing textured gotelé, skimming, repairing, and painting everything at the end.
• Interior doors and frames, skirting boards and built-in wardrobes.
• Protection, debris removal and a final clean.

What is included in the kitchen?

The kitchen is the room where scope most often stays vague. A complete renovation normally includes stripping out the old units and tiles, new water and waste connections in the right positions for the new layout, dedicated electrical circuits for the oven, hob and other appliances, an extractor outlet, wall preparation, the floor, any splashback tiling, and fitting the new units and worktop.

Points to confirm in writing: whether the units and worktop are supplied by the contractor or by a separate kitchen company; who connects the appliances; and whether the extractor vents outside or recirculates, since venting through a façade can involve the owners’ community. Opening the kitchen to the living room is a layout change covered below. Our sister site has a dedicated page on kitchen and bathroom renovation.

What is included in bathrooms?

A bathroom in a full renovation is stripped to the structure: tiles, sanitaryware, bath or shower tray, and the supply and waste pipes inside the walls and floor. It is then rebuilt with new pipework, waterproofing in the wet zones, new tiling or a seamless finish, new sanitaryware and taps, a mirror and lighting, and an extractor fan where there is no window.

The detail that separates a good quote from a weak one is waterproofing. It should appear as its own line, especially for level-access showers. Also check whether the quote includes the shower screen, the towel rail and accessories, which some builders leave out. For bath-to-shower conversions and small bathrooms, reformabanosmalaga.eu goes into more depth.

What about living areas, bedrooms and terraces?

Living rooms and bedrooms are mostly about surfaces and services: new sockets in sensible places, lighting points, data points if you want them, floors, walls and ceilings. This is where suspended plasterboard ceilings with indirect lighting are often added, and where built-in wardrobes are formed.

Terraces are a grey area. The floor of a private terrace is often part of the renovation, but in an apartment block the waterproofing beneath it and the railings may be community elements. Outdoor paving and garden areas are outside our interior scope; for paving, our network site adoquinadomalaga.eu covers that work. Windows and façade work on houses are handled by reformavillascostadelsol.eu.

When does a layout change need more than a builder?

Moving non-structural partitions is a normal part of a full renovation. But Spain’s building law, the Ley de Ordenación de la Edificación, requires a technical project for interventions on existing buildings that alter their architectural configuration — for example changes that substantially affect the structural system, the overall exterior composition or the volume, or that change the building’s characteristic use. In practice, that means an architect or aparejador.

So if your plans involve removing a load-bearing wall, adding a floor, enclosing a terrace or converting a commercial unit into a home, the scope goes beyond a builder’s quote. We do not prepare technical projects, and we will say so at the first visit if your plans point that way. Our guide on permits in Andalusia explains how this links to the town hall process.

What normally sits outside a full renovation contract?

Listing exclusions is as important as listing inclusions. In our quotes, the following are excluded unless stated otherwise:

• Technical projects, licence applications and energy certificates.
• Structural alterations that need an architect.
• Asbestos removal, which must be done by a registered specialist (see retiradauralitamalaga.eu).
• Swimming pools, new-build work and air-conditioning installation.
• Furniture, curtains and appliances.
• Financing.

We set these out because silence on exclusions is where disputes begin. If you want to see how all of this comes together in one job, read our full renovation page or the turnkey renovation overview.

Official sources

• Ley 38/1999 de Ordenación de la Edificación (LOE) – Congreso de los Diputados
• Ley 7/2021 (LISTA), consolidated text – BOE