A full renovation of the kitchen and bathroom of an apartment in Palermo, Buenos Aires: selective demolition, new services and a checkerboard ceramic floor designed for the project. Seven milestones of the work and the project documentation.
A full renovation of the kitchen and bathroom of an apartment in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires, where I was the architect. It included selective demolition of partitions, renewal of the electrical and plumbing services, a new ceiling, a checkerboard ceramic floor (beige, yellow and gray) developed specially for the project, and the restoration of the herringbone pine floor in the rest of the apartment.
The kitchen was solved with a central island and a continuous countertop over the niche of the existing water heater. On this page I follow the work milestone by milestone and show the documentation that went with it: existing conditions and demolition, plan with reflected ceiling, elevations, services and the floor layout.
The photos are in chronological order according to the date recorded inside each image, not the file name; the few without one go at the end of each milestone. The milestones overlap because several tasks ran in parallel. Each one opens a gallery with all of its photos. Faces of workers in the photos have been blurred.
Where it started: the kitchen with its gray countertop and red wall cabinets, the bathroom with a tub and white tiles, and the existing water heater in its niche. The last photos show the rooms emptied and ready to work on.
Partitions and plaster were demolished to open the entrance up to the kitchen, following the existing-conditions and demolition plan (see the documentation), and the rubble was carried out in bags. Brick and a chased-in pipe were left exposed. Two of the last photos are from site visits.
The general ceiling of the entrance and kitchen was built at 2.50 m with a metal frame and 12 mm gypsum board, with recessed fixtures, following the reflected ceiling plan. In the last photos a molding is fitted where the wall meets the ceiling.
A beige and yellow checkerboard with a gray border, designed specially for the project. Before installing it, the layout was tried out dry on the subfloor, tile by tile, from a central crossing point marked with a laser; it was then laid with spacers up to the border.
The bathroom was renovated completely: a floor of white octagonal tiles with black insets, laid out dry before being fixed with spacers, and white ceramic wall tiles set vertically.
With the floor finished, the cabinets went in: dark base units, wall cabinets and a wood-look tall unit, and the central island, with pendant lights. The floor stayed covered with cardboard until the end of the work.
The result: the kitchen open to the entrance, with a central island, continuous countertop, vertical ceramic wall tiles and the checkerboard floor; the bathroom with an octagonal floor and yellow walls; and the restored herringbone pine floor in the rest of the apartment.
Existing conditions and demolition, kitchen plan with reflected ceiling, interior elevations, a ceiling detail and the layout drawing for the checkerboard floor. Sheets drawn in Revit; the client's name was left out of them.
Lighting and outlet plans (a new circuit with its own breaker and a panel with a dedicated breaker for the outlets), a plan of water, drains and gas, and interior views with the heights of boxes and outlets. Sheets drawn in Revit.
The perspectives of the initial kitchen design, with veined-stone finishes, and the quantity-takeoff perspective for the wall finish. The design evolved during the work: the built kitchen used other materials, with wood-look cabinet fronts and glazed ceramic wall tiles. Made in Revit.
Conceptual diagrams of plumbing and electrical services and an integrated axonometric, generated from the Revit model of the kitchen after the work was finished. They do not replace the project's services drawings shown above and they are not an executive design: calculations and verification belong to licensed specialists.
How I approach existing buildings is described in BIM for Renovation.
Sheets labeled in Spanish.
Photos are from the project archive and the finished apartment. On the choice to keep what is built rather than demolish, see sustainable architecture and reuse.
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