Comprehensive reform in Vitoria, Gazalbide neighborhood. Basque Country.

See explanation of the project

We face a large apartment in the center of Vitoria, close to the Plaza de América Latina, the new bus station and the Hospital de Txagorritxu. It is a house of 115 m² distributed in a long corridor in the shape of an "L", kitchen, living room, four bedrooms, bathroom, toilet and a laundry / laundry room.

The elderly clients, who have been living on the same apartment for more than forty years, were looking for a comprehensive reform "that be as little noticeable as possible". With a very conservative profile, we are chosen for recommendations from their friends, former clients to who we have previously made works.

We analyze what we can/should change without undermining the customer's customs.

Demolition.

First of all, and after obtaining the work license granted by the cityhall, we take care of obtaining permission to place a container in front of the entrance hall, which in this case is a public parking.

We protect the entrance hall, elevator and common areas to avoid damaging walls, chafing, etc. And to stain as little as possible. Every day we sweep the hallways and stairs to avoid causing inconvenience and reveiving complaints from neighbors.

Demolition includes all plumbing, electricity, tiles, doors and oak parquet, etc.

Masonry.

Subsequently, the construction stage itself begins: first, we must apply self-leveling paste in some rooms because the floor is not properly leveled. We discovered it by measuring with the laser level.

We continue with the division walls. By removing the gotelé we discovered that it was concealing numerous waves and irregularities or faults in some walls, especially the wider ones. For this reason, we plaster and polish the walls to leave them perfectly smooth.

In the bathrooms it has been decided to install sliding doors in order to gain space. Therefore, we have installed inside the wall the metallic structure that support the guide rail for the sliding door.

Once the distribution of the kitchen and bathrooms is defined, we focus on plumbing and electricity.

Carpentry.

The customer has decided to install laminated wooden floor AC-5 that settles down directly on the concrete plate (but really it doesn't go directly, because in the middle is placed what is known as "blanket", which is a material that provides thermo-acoustic insulation and settles to the platform) and without intermediate strips of wood.

We also have installed new doors, lacquered in white, on new pre-frames.

Plumbering.

We make the plumbing installation completely new. In homes of this age it is very common for the sanitary supply pipes to be made of steel rusty and completely corrupted and that the drains are lead and/or fibrocement (contained in asbestos) made. We replace everything with modern multilayer or copper pipes for sanitary supply and PVC for drains.

We installed a new gas heater, with the pipes embedded in the walls and their respective aluminum radiators by modules in each room.

In bathrooms and kitchen, we gave the customer freedom (as we always do) to buy the tile and bathroom équipment (shower tray, screen, toilet, bidet, sink, etc.) at the distributor or warehouse center of his choice. We take care of the haul (transportation to the house).

Electriity.

The existing electrical installation is obsolete and dangerous because it does not comply with current regulations.

Regarding the new electrical installation, We start with the installation of new corrugated tube throughout the apartment (an independent and direct line for each service, be it this lighting, general plugs, oven, washing machine, etc.), embedded by the walls and hidden in the false ceiling.

We never use old conductions (sometimes in lead material) because we have neither guarantees of their condition or thickness, nor that the electrical wire can be torn, ripped or damaged when inserted through the old tubes.

Subsequently we introduce the new electrical wire, with different sections depending on its destination (lighting, oven, etc.).

Regarding the electrical panel, we install a new one with a differential circuit breaker (to protect people’s life) and its independent magneto-thermic circuit breakers(to protect electrical installation and household appliances) for each service, according to regulations.

Telecommunications box.

In addition, we installed a telecommunications box. We install an Internet or fiber optic plug in each room and these are centralized in that box. The TV antenna is also centralized in this box. This facilitates possible telecommunications operator's change and prevents the installation of loose or overlapping cables by the plinth, etc.

False ceiling.

It is our recommendation in all works of total or partial refurbishing (provided the height of the house allows us) to install a false ceiling of plasterboard for two reasons: first, it gives us absolute freedom when designing the lighting with embedded spotlights (combining or not with hanging lamps wall lamps); Secondly, in addition to the aesthetic factor, there are the thermal and acoustic factors: under the plasterboard is placed "rock wool" or other materials as a thermal and acoustic insulator, which gives the house a plus of comfort.

In this case, we respect and repair the original false plasterboard ceiling of the hall and the living room. It is a composition of vintage squares and circles that the owners love.

Windows.

The windows, aluminum made and originals of the apartment(without termal bridge break or doublé glazing), had a deplorable state. We changed them by modern PVC windows (white inside and grey on the outside), with five insulation chambers, double glazing with butiral and argon gas chamber of the SHÜCO leading brand with 5 insulating chambers, galvanized steel reinforcements and double-glazed. Turn and Tilt wigwag system, hinges, ironworks and fittings Roto Frank of the highest quality that guarantee its perfect functioning for decades with a very comfortable degree of comfort.

Most of them are angular, from ground-to-ceiling zero-level assemblies that require high precision in measurement, manufacturing and installation to make the sealing perfect.

To reduce the heat input from the outside we have installed glass with low emissivity treatment (glass treated with silver oxide) that reduce up to 80% the amount of heat (infrared rays) that enters the house. This treatment blocks the infrared radiations that are the ones that transport the energy of sunlight without limiting the amount or tonality of light that enters.

In addition we have used double-glazed with ARGON gas, instead of air in the sealed chamber among the two glass sheets, in order to achieve a noticeable lowering of the coefficient μ. The explanation is simple physics: the transmission of cold - heat from one glass sheet to another is produced by the internal currents that exist in the sealed chamber among glazings. Argon is a heavier gas than air and therefore, taking longer to heat up or cool down, currents and thermal transmittance will be lower. The result is that we get a coefficient μ significantly lower.

Painting.

The apartment featured a mixture of gotelé, wallpaper in several layers, paint on wallpaper. In addition, the walls were curved, with concavities and convexities, and misaligned.

For decades the gotelé has been used to conceal termination imperfections. But the current style of clean walls and straight lines requires a perfect finition.

We decided to plaster and polish the walls in order to make they look homogeneous and to leave them perfectly smooth. We cover cracks, apply a primer and three layers of paint.

When choosing the paint color we offer the customer a table of colors - of which two or three colors are chosen - and a sample is applied to the wall so that the customer gets a plausible idea of the colors and makes the final choice.

Thus we reach the end point of the work, which we deliver completely clean.