One-bedroom apartment renovation in Batumi: a 1+1 layout

One-bedroom apartment renovation in Batumi almost always means renovating a 1+1: local listings count rooms by bedrooms, and “1+1” means one bedroom plus a kitchen-living room. The 45 m² of such an apartment has to hold what a larger apartment spreads across separate rooms: the kitchen, a dining table, a sleeping place for guests, a work corner and wardrobes for every season. If you haven't bought the apartment yet, compare how a 1+1 differs from a studio for letting and resale.

The kitchen-living room does the job of three rooms

In the kitchen-living room of a 1+1 people cook, eat, watch TV and work, and in summer they sleep there too: a sofa bed gives guests a third and fourth sleeping place. So we arrange the furniture on the plan first and only then mark out the chases. The sofa bed needs sockets and wall lights on both sides, and the dining table, which becomes a desk in winter, needs two sockets and a network socket.

Whether to open the kitchen up to the living room or close it off, we decide before the rough work: a partition built straight away goes up with its own sockets, while one added later runs into wiring that is already in place. With an open kitchen we vent the cooker hood into the ventilation duct, if the building's rules allow it; otherwise steam and smells drift to where the guests sleep.

Bedroom: we check the dimensions before the partitions go up

The bedroom in a 1+1 is often narrower than it looks in the developer's render. We work it out like this: a bed for a 200 cm mattress takes about 210 cm with its frame, the foot of the bed needs a walkway of about 70 cm, a wardrobe needs a depth of 60 cm, and from the headboard to the opposite wall that comes to about 3.4 m. If there is less space, the wardrobe moves to the hallway or becomes a sliding-door wardrobe about 45 cm deep with a pull-out hanging rail.

The bedroom door must not hit the bed or the wardrobe doors. When both walls get in the way of a hinged door, we fit a pocket sliding door, but that stretch of partition can no longer have sockets or switches, because the door leaf slides into it. When the wall can be moved to make the bedroom wider, and when that needs approval, is covered on the page about moving walls in an apartment.

One bathroom for the whole apartment

A 1+1 usually has a single bathroom with the toilet in the same room, and in summer three or four guests use it after the beach. We choose a fan with a humidity sensor so that it dries the bathroom out by itself after every shower. Where possible we move the washing machine to a recess in the hallway or under the kitchen worktop, which frees space in the bathroom for a towel cupboard.

If the bathroom is 4–6 m² and will have a bath, a turnkey bathroom renovation costs 5,880–8,400 ₾: that is labour with rough-work materials, without tiles or sanitary ware. The order of work in the wet area is described on the page about bathroom renovation from the walls to the sanitary ware.

Electrics and air conditioners in 45 m²

A 1+1 of about 45 m² usually ends up with 40–55 electrical points in our work, and each costs from 42 to 66 ₾. How to count the points room by room is covered on the page about apartment electrics. We fit a 36-module consumer unit so that each air conditioner, the hob, the oven and the water heater has its own circuit breaker.

There are usually two air conditioners, one in the kitchen-living room and one in the bedroom, and each gets its own circuit from the consumer unit. An installed air conditioner costs from 1,440 to 1,920 ₾ per unit. If the building has given the apartment a single spot on the facade, both indoor units are connected to one outdoor unit, and we run the pipework to the bedroom before plastering.

A 1+1 for letting: guests in summer, a tenant in winter

One-bedroom apartments in Batumi are often let “short-term in summer, by the month in winter”. In summer two couples or a family with children sleep there, so we place the sofa where, unfolded, it doesn't block the night-time route from the bedroom to the bathroom. The shoe shelf and coat hooks by the entrance are planned for four people, otherwise the beach bags end up on the kitchen floor.

In winter the same apartment is rented by a tenant for several months, and they need a wardrobe for warm clothes. Hard-wearing finishes, a lock for check-in without meeting the guest and leak protection are collected on the page about an apartment for short-term guests, and what changes if you only let by the month is on the page about renovating for long-term rental.

What gets redone most often in a 1+1

Almost all the redoing grows out of decisions that weren't made before the rough work:

• there are no sockets by the sofa bed, and guests charge their phones from an extension lead on the floor;
• the kitchen was opened up to the living room with a recirculating hood, and cooking smells stay in the sofa and the curtains;
• the bedroom wardrobe was ordered without measuring the walkways, and its door hits the bed;
• the second air conditioner was left for later, and its pipe run goes in boxing over a finished wall.

How much one-bedroom apartment renovation in Batumi costs

One-bedroom apartment renovation costs from 545 to 780 ₾ per m². The price includes labour and rough-work materials: mixes, cable, pipes, waterproofing, while the finishing, furniture and appliances are priced separately. A square metre of a 1+1 costs more than a square metre of a 2+1: in 45 m² the kitchen and the bathroom take up a bigger share of the floor area than in a larger apartment.

A turnkey 1+1 of about 45 m² with finishing materials, without furniture and appliances, comes to 40,500–54,000 ₾. The price goes up with a new partition by the kitchen, a bath instead of a shower and built-in furniture up to the ceiling. It comes down if the kitchen and bathroom stay where the developer put them and a single floor covering runs through without thresholds. The final cost is set after the site measurement and once the estimate is agreed, and the price of each stage is written into the contract.