Designer apartment renovation in Batumi to working drawings

What a design project needs before we can build from it

We carry out designer renovation of apartments in Batumi to a finished design project, and for that the crew needs drawings with dimensions. A 3D render shows how a room will look, but you can't mark out a socket from it. So before the estimate we open the project folder and check which sheets it contains.

• a measured plan and a partition plan, dimensioned from the grid lines and corners;
• electrics and lighting: socket heights from the finished floor level, lighting circuits, switches;
• plumbing: water and drain outlets, the models of mixers and installation frames;
• wall elevations for the bathroom and kitchen, tile layouts, floor and ceiling plans;
• details: concealed doors, niches, junctions between different materials;
• a materials schedule with product codes and quantities.

If some sheets are missing, we say exactly which ones and ask for them before work starts: a detail drawn after the wall is already up usually means rebuilding that wall. You can also order the design project from us, and then the designer and the foreman go through it together before the estimate.

Checking the drawings against the apartment before the estimate

A project is drawn from a measured survey or from the developer's plan, and the real apartment almost always differs a little from the paper. The foreman and an engineer go through the sheets on site with a tape measure and a laser level, looking for what a picture doesn't show.

First come the floor levels. The screed, adhesive, porcelain tiles and underfloor heating together add up to a thickness that has to match the threshold of the front door and of the balcony door. Then the fall of the drains: if the bathroom or the sink is moved away from the riser, the pipe needs a fall, and sometimes the floor is raised to make room for it. And finally the services: whether the power allocated to the apartment is enough for the appliances on the schedule, and where the air conditioning lines and their condensate drains will run.

We read the materials schedule with the climate in mind. Gypsum-based decorative plaster in a shower, veneered panels by the balcony door and wallpaper on a cold external wall by the sea don't last long, and it is better to find replacements for them before the estimate. We gather all the questions into one list for the designer and price the job from the answers.

The details a designer renovation depends on

The details are built the same way as in a careful Euro renovation with concealed doors and shadow gaps: door frames go in before the skim coat, walls are finished to look flat in side light, large-format tiles follow the layout. The difference is that the designer sets the dimensions and junctions. Before work starts, we check that each sheet has enough information to build the detail without guesswork.

• For a concealed door, the drawing needs the leaf height, the opening side and the finish. If the leaf is clad with a panel or tiles to match the wall next to it, the frame and hinges are chosen for that weight and thickness before the door is ordered.
• Dark matt paint next to a floor-to-ceiling window needs a high-grade skim coat. We use the plan to see which walls will get light from the side and price them as a separate line in the estimate.
• We check the large-format porcelain layout against the wall elevation: which slab the mixer lands on, where the cut by the niche will fall. A 120×240 cm slab also has to get up to the apartment, so we check the lift and the stairwells in advance.
• A ceiling plan with lighting recesses must show the levels of the recesses, the air conditioning runs and the access hatches to the LED strip drivers. If there are no hatches on the sheet, we agree their positions with the designer, otherwise the driver can't be reached later.
• Where microcement meets wood, or a panel sits flush with a skimmed wall, we need a section through the detail: what separates the materials and what gap is left for sealant or a profile.

If you are still deciding what to use in the shower, see the comparison of microcement and tiles on cleaning, joints and how easily each can be repaired.

How much a designer apartment renovation costs in Batumi

A designer renovation costs from 930 ₾ per m² of apartment floor area, and the usual range goes up to 1,320 ₾. The price covers labour, rough-work materials and the complex finishes in the project. Finishing materials from the schedule and the project itself are priced separately: a full design project with a layout, 3D and drawings costs from 145 ₾ per m².

Within that range, the price is moved by the details from the previous section. Microcement on walls costs from 170 ₾ per m², and a concealed door from 390 ₾ each. An apartment where every interior door is concealed and both bathrooms are finished in microcement will be closer to the upper end. Projects come out cheaper when the complex finishes are concentrated in the living room and bathroom, while the bedrooms get ordinary paint and standard-size tiles.

We price the estimate from the schedule, item by item, so it contains few assumptions. 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.

Materials schedule, purchasing and substitutions

We buy materials from the schedule by product code, and you see each item in the estimate with its price. Made-to-order items, such as large porcelain slabs, concealed doors or sanitary ware from European collections, are ordered as early as the rough stage: they take weeks to arrive, and without them work in that part of the apartment stops.

If an item isn't available in Georgia or its delivery time would break the schedule, we suggest an alternative with the same dimensions and properties and agree it with you and the project's designer. We don't make a substitution without that approval, even if it is cheaper. Where colours have to match, for example microcement next to tiles or paint matched to the door veneer, we make a test patch on site and show it to the designer before the main work.

You don't have to hunt down the furniture, lighting and textiles from the same schedule yourself: we can take on furnishing the apartment to the project list and fit the deliveries into the renovation schedule.

If the project was done by another designer

We work from another designer's project the same way as from our own. The foreman collects the crew's questions and sends them to the designer as one list in a shared chat, so the answers don't get lost in phone calls. A corrected sheet arrives with a new date, and on site we build only from the latest version.

If the designer changes a decision after a detail has been built, we put the rework into a contract addendum with its price and timing. A detail built to anything other than the latest version of the sheet counts as a defect in our work, and we fix it at our own expense, like any defect under the warranty. An error in the drawing itself is corrected by the project's designer, so we raise any doubts about the sheets before work starts on that part of the apartment.

Designer supervision, sometimes called author's supervision, and the foreman's checks don't get in each other's way: the designer watches over the concept, and the foreman over how it is built. If you haven't yet decided whether the apartment needs a full project, start with our look at renovating with or without a designer.

Sign-off against the drawings, and as-built diagrams

We sign off each stage against the same sheets we built from. When the electrics are signed off, the foreman measures the height of every socket from the finished floor level and checks it against the plan. On the tiling, the foreman checks whether the joints match the elevation and where the cut tiles ended up. You can sign off on site or by video: the foreman shows the sheet and then the same spot on the wall.

On site, a run sometimes departs from the drawing: a cable goes round a beam, a pipe shifts a few centimetres. We mark these places on the sheet, photograph them before they are closed up and put them in the handover file as an as-built diagram. Years later, the wall will be drilled using that diagram, not the project, where the run is drawn differently.