Güzeloba Partial Home Renovation

Güzeloba Partial Home Renovation: About the Project

No walls were removed in this apartment, and the wet rooms and kitchen cabinetry were left untouched. The scope was deliberately limited to five items: suspended plasterboard ceilings, recessed lighting and rewiring, painting, flooring and tile repair. Because everything requiring demolition stayed out of scope, the flat was handed back quickly and with very little debris.

The decision that changed the character of the space most was the ceiling. Stepped plasterboard ceilings were built in the living room and bedrooms, with recessed spotlights and a concealed cove for indirect lighting set into the step. Lighting that had previously depended on a single pendant became a layered scheme spread across the room. In the living room the ceiling step also draws an invisible boundary between the seating area and the kitchen side.

The plasterboard decision brought the electrical work with it. Lighting, socket and switch circuits were re-run through the ceiling void; since the existing buried wiring was left alone, no wall chasing was needed. This is an opportunity often missed in partial renovations: if the ceiling is going to be closed anyway, a new lighting circuit costs little more than cable and labour.

The paint palette was chosen around what was being kept. Because the apartment's dark timber window frames and doors were staying, the walls were held in a cool, light range: pale blue-grey in the living room and bedrooms, and a lilac tone in one room. This reads the dark joinery as the contrast element of the space rather than as a shortcoming. The previous cream-and-beige palette sat in the same warm range as the joinery, which made the rooms look flat.

On the floor, the existing covering was lifted and a light wood-effect laminate was laid; thresholds at the wet rooms and damaged tile surfaces were repaired without being taken up. Pairing a light floor with light walls makes the living room of this two-bedroom plan read considerably larger than it is.