Recipe for Successful Renovation in a Standard Apartment

There is a lot of information about renovations, including visual — a lot. The web is full of photos of beautiful interiors from all over the world. However, the practice of transferring ideas from large apartments and houses into standard housing is at best not very successful. What to pay attention to when renovating a standard apartment, what to borrow from the 'larger' ones and what to give up, we discuss with a professional in renovation issues, Andrey Lyamin-Borodin.

Andrey Lyamin-Borodin Expert
General Director of the online service for ordering renovation Rewedo
Personal Experience

Don't try to reproduce the seen idea literally. You can do almost anything, it's just a matter of cost. Often, chasing special solutions doesn't pay off. It's better and more appropriate to adapt with regard to your lifestyle and habits. Critically assess — do you really need a standalone bathtub or a combined kitchen-living room, or do you want it because others do?

Design: Anna Shvetz
Thoughtful Approach to Style Choice

Style should be dictated by space. In modest apartments in apartment buildings, a palace-style interior is inappropriate. The other extreme — complete demolition in old buildings, where historical moldings, oak doors, and historical parquet are thrown into the garbage containers.

Design: Natalia Yashuzakova
Relocation is not luxury

Generally, it's required in standard buildings. In old buildings, small kitchens and bathrooms hinder living, while in new ones — disproportionately large rooms with only one window. Of course, a lot depends on family composition and lifestyle, but it's necessary to set aside space for a wardrobe or storage room or laundry area in all cases. During renovation, there's an illusion that it's better to maximize the area of all main rooms — living room, kitchen, bathroom. But when life begins in an apartment, that one-meter storage space is sorely missed.

Design: We Create Studio The Law is Harsh

Sometimes, implementing seen examples is hindered by Russian legislation. Unfortunately, it's not possible to implement a combined kitchen-living room with a gas stove that we see in European interiors in large quantities in Russia — there must be doors between the gasified kitchen and living room. It's not allowed to set up a 'wet' zone in a 'dry' area. Exception — apartments, which are legally not residential premises and don't fall under the norms of residential housing. In them, you can do without a partition between the kitchen, even if it's gasified, and the room (if there are no load-bearing walls in the way), and install a bathtub in the bedroom (if the distance to the pipe allows).

Design: Elena Uranova
Choose Simple Solutions

Premium materials can be destroyed in careless hands. Your master may not be bad at all, but if he has no experience working with the material you bring him or the necessary tools, he will learn from you. Then there is a choice — either find masters with the appropriate experience and be prepared to pay slightly higher rates than average market prices, or choose simpler materials. A popular option — showers with a drain in the floor, i.e., without a tray. But in most apartment buildings, this option is impossible to implement, as the access to the sewer is higher than the floor level. You'll have to raise the floor in the shower area using construction materials.

Design: We Create Studio
Be Careful with Rare Materials

Bathroom renovation is no longer an obligatory creation of a stone bag with tiling from floor to ceiling, but wallpapers, for example, may not suit every standard housing. The possibility of their application depends on the quality of ventilation in the bathroom, which in apartment buildings often suffers due to illegal re-planning with air duct removal. The same applies to wooden flooring in the bathroom. While its use in standard buildings is not impossible, again — even the most moisture-loving wood needs good ventilation system work.

Stop the Creativity

It's better to give up any volumetric constructions on the ceiling. It's not the most expensive idea if you use gypsum board instead of moldings or wood, but it rarely looks appropriate in standard-sized rooms with ceiling heights up to three meters.

Adapt Ideas to Your Space

Any idea should be understood, not copied literally. For example, if the ceiling height in your apartment is not 2.8 meters but 2.50 — don't worsen the situation with trendy high-contrast skirting boards. The ceiling cornice can partly extend onto the wall or onto the ceiling — choose the second option. You can do without cornices altogether, which also "raises" the ceiling.

Design: Denis and Anton Yurovs
Evaluate Operating Conditions

When choosing materials, you need to evaluate the conditions in which they will be used. Wood needs stable temperature and humidity. If for six months in the apartment, central heating radiators are running without thermostats, air conditioning and supply-exhaust ventilation are absent, the floor will warp, and expensive doors will crack. Is it worth investing in them?

Design: Marina Sarkisyan
What Can Be Borrowed from Expensive Interiors

Invisible but important things: properly installed ventilation, copper wiring with a separate circuit breaker for each line, perfectly flat screed, different coverings leveled to the same level, beautiful finishing of all joints, quality cuts on tiles, skirting boards, cornices. Plus, things aimed at daily comfort and convenience: passage switches, door closers. Even a minimalist interior can be elevated to a new level with wooden double-glazed windows instead of plastic ones, quality radiators, and designer switches.

Design: TS Design Studio

On the cover: design project by Svetlana Starceva.