A villa renovation checklist for Abu Dhabi

A villa renovation is not one project. It is a sequence of trades that each need the previous one finished, and it goes wrong in the joins. The work itself is rarely the problem. What causes the slip is a decision nobody made, an approval nobody started, or a long-lead item nobody ordered until it was needed.

This is the order to think about it in, and what to settle before anyone lifts a tool.

Before you appoint anyone

Know what you actually want to change. Not in detail, but in category. Are you replacing finishes, or moving walls? Is the kitchen staying where it is? Is the cooling system being touched? These decide which approvals you need and roughly what the job costs, and they are the questions a contractor will ask first.

Get the property surveyed properly. Not a walk-through. Measured, with levels taken and the services traced. Almost every unpleasant surprise on a renovation was visible to somebody who looked properly at the start: a floor two centimetres out over five metres, a wall that will not take a fixing, drainage that runs the wrong way for the kitchen you want.

Find the drawings if they exist. Original construction drawings, any previous renovation drawings, service routes. If they exist, they save money. If they do not, say so early so the survey can be scoped to compensate.

Establish the approval position. Which authority, which community rules, what your title or lease permits. This is the item most likely to move your completion date and the one least under a contractor’s control. Start it before anything else.

Before work starts on site

Fix the layout. Every wall in its final position, on a drawing you have signed. Layout changes after strip-out are the single most expensive category of variation, because they invalidate the services design that was drawn around them.

Settle the kitchen and the bathrooms. These carry the longest lead times and the most services coordination. A kitchen decided late holds up plumbing, electrical and the ceiling above it.

Choose the flooring. Not the exact shade, but the material and the build-up, because it sets the finished floor level and therefore every door, threshold and skirting in the property. The flooring page covers why the substrate decides most of this.

Order the long-lead items. Anything imported, anything made to measure, anything stone. These should be ordered while the site is being stripped, not when the trade that installs them is due.

Agree the payment stages. Tied to milestones you can see, not to calendar dates. And agree in writing what happens on a variation, including who can approve one, because on a live site somebody will always be asked to make a decision quickly.

The sequence on site

Roughly, and every project bends it somewhere:

1. Strip out. Everything coming out, comes out. This is also when the property tells you the truth about itself, so leave room in the programme for what it says.
2. Structure. Anything load-bearing, any new opening, any repair the strip-out revealed.
3. First fix services. Electrical, plumbing, cooling, drainage. Everything that will be buried.
4. Plaster and screed. The surfaces the finishes will sit on. This stage needs drying time and it cannot be hurried.
5. Joinery installation. Fitted work goes in before the finished floor, not after.
6. Flooring.
7. Second fix and painting. Switches, sanitaryware, doors, then paint. The painting page explains why preparation is most of that job.
8. Furniture and styling. Last, into a clean property.

The two most common expensive reorderings are laying the floor before the joinery, and painting before second fix. Both feel like progress at the time.

What to expect to go wrong

Something behind a wall will not be as expected. That is not pessimism, it is the nature of working on a building somebody else finished, possibly twice. The question is not whether it happens but whether there is contingency and a decision-making process ready when it does.

The second thing that goes wrong is decision latency. A site waits on an answer, and the answer takes four days, and that is four days on the programme that no one can recover. Agree at the start who decides, how fast, and what happens if they are travelling.

What to ask a contractor before signing

• What did your survey find that I did not know about?
• What is excluded from this price?
• What are the long-lead items and when do they need ordering?
• Which approvals are you handling and which am I?
• Who is on site every day, and who do I call?
• What happens to the programme if something behind a wall is wrong?

The answers are more informative than the total. A contractor who has surveyed properly will already have opinions about your property, and a contractor who has not will answer in generalities.

We take villa renovations on one contract, with the joinery made in our own workshop rather than sublet, which is the argument for a turnkey approach: when the programme slips, there is nobody else to blame it on.