Small apartment DIY repair

In detail: small-sized apartment do-it-yourself repair from a real master for the site my.housecope.com.

Everything for coziness and comfort in the house

Our reader and participant of the competition, Aziz, kindly let us visit him, and not just into the kitchen, but hospitably opened the doors of the whole apartment in front of us!) After talking with Aziz and looking at the photos BEFORE and AFTER the renovation, I concluded that he was just the hero together with his mother, who also lives in this apartment! Indeed, in order to carry out their plans, they had to rent a house for the duration of the renovation!

Apartment plan BEFORE alteration

Apartment plan AFTER alteration

What has been done - let's look in order:

In the bedroom, the doorway has shifted to the left;
The door between the bathroom and the kitchen was blocked and a combined bathroom was made;
The former toilet turned into a closet;
The kitchen wall has also been enlarged due to the blocked doorway;
The loggia was attached to the living room.

I draw your attention to the fact that during the alteration, not a single supporting structure was damaged!)

All load-bearing beams remained in place.

This is what the apartment looked like in the process of being remodeled:

Here is what Aziz writes about his apartment:

"Good day. I am writing to you, because I decided to share my experience in repairing the "pig" apartment, which I own. It is a pity that I have already made repairs, and did not know about the existence of your site. Since I learned a lot from your site.

Photos are attached below. I think all owners of small-sized vehicles will be interested to know how I solved the problems of visual expansion. I just insulated the balcony and connected it to the living room. And I connected the living room with the kitchen. And I learned one large room, but zoned by the top of the wall (beam).

Video (click to play).

In the forums, they often write about the problematicity of combining the kitchen with the living room (smells, sounds, etc.) I live with my mother in a 2-room apartment. And it seems that my mother cooks every day, but we did not have any problems with smells, since a good hood of the company, Goodwell, was installed in advance.

Thanks to your site for interesting ideas, and for the opportunity to have complete kitchens!

Well, now Aziz invites us to visit the "new" apartment!

The suspended ceiling is made of plastic panels with recessed lights. The walls are painted with water-based paint. The floor in the entire apartment is made of polished planks with locks on the joists... The floor looks gorgeous! However, the owner realized his weakness only after the start of operation. Furniture dents appear on the floor.

The proximity of the sink and the hob is very close! BUT! Firstly, this is how communications are arranged in our small apartments. Aziz did not move them to new places. Secondly, look at this Huge work area - isn't that the dream of every housewife in a small kitchen!

Now let's go to the living room:

Well, that's all, good people! It's time and honor to know!

Many thanks to the owner for the hospitality!)

It remains to note that everything to the smallest detail, the whole design was invented by Aziz himself, the builders, under the keen eye of the owner, embodied, and the owners themselves will not get enough of this beauty and purity now!

A well-equipped small-sized apartment is a convenient and comfortable place to live

The design of a small one-room apartment is a search for a compromise between functionality and comfort, improvement of the ergonomics of premises, an attempt to transform the original inconvenient layout into a more acceptable one. The space shortage sets its own uncompromising conditions, when every centimeter counts.At the same time, one must remain realistic - it is better to design small-sized studio apartments in the Scandinavian style, minimalism, loft or fusion, but there is simply not enough space for decorating in the Baroque style.

Techniques for expanding space can be roughly divided into two types:

radical (redevelopment)
visual

Furniture is positioned radially opposite the kitchen

Delicate pink color is perfect for small apartments

Among the radical redevelopment options, the most popular is the combination of the kitchen and the adjoining room into a common space. The demolition of the wall in a separate bathroom will give an additional couple of square meters of area, and the abandonment of the bath in favor of a shower cabin will give the opportunity to place a washing machine. Additional area for a bathroom can be allocated due to corridor (hallway). The meters obtained by joining the loggia to the room will not be superfluous.

Open hanger - as a means of saving and zoning space

Small bright kitchen-studio and sofa in the kitchen

But all these radical methods have several significant disadvantages:

redevelopment possibilities are limited by the presence and location of load-bearing walls
the need to coordinate all ongoing redevelopment with the relevant regulatory authorities

A decorative brick wall enhances the perception of the interior. This wall design helps to add flavor to the interior.

Sofa as a means of zoning the space of a small apartment

Visual methods do not give a physical (measurable) addition of space, but due to optical illusions they create a visual effect of increasing space. First of all, due to the correct chosen color scheme: all warm and light shades help to optically expand the space, while this rule applies to both walls and furniture.

Bright decorative elements help to diversify the color scheme of the interior

And colored accents and dark inserts will help prevent the room from turning into an expressionless monolithic light spot. The prevailing dark colors will absorb the interior of the room - because of this, it will visually shrink.

A bright picture in a white interior of a small apartment

Advice! The wallpaper pattern will allow you to optically adjust the volume of the room - the horizontal pattern will make it longer, the vertical pattern will "raise" the ceilings.

A few more tricks that allow you to "play" with space:

mirrors are a win-win, a must-have for a small apartment. Mirrored doors from ceiling to floor of the wardrobe will add "half" of the room. And a mirror placed opposite the window will add light to the room.

High floor mirror

rejection of massive dark wood - oak furniture will absorb the entire space
replace chandeliers, even not very impressive ones, with built-in lamps

Multiple rows of recessed ceiling lights

no blank facades - doors, racks, shelves should have transparent glass doors, this will relieve space

Open shelving ladder for the hallway of a small apartment

light, more light - do not immerse the room in twilight, a well-lit room looks more spacious

An unglazed balcony and wide window will help you gain extra light

Rational use of a room is a fairly broad concept, often depending on the habits of its owners, lifestyle, taste preferences, mentality and even national characteristics. There are often too many things in our apartments that are absolutely not used. They just take up space, transforming the apartment into some kind of a junk warehouse - the habit of not throwing things away with the expectation of “what if it will come in handy later” leads to elementary littering of the apartment.It is enough just to remove the trash - and the space will become much more:

Let's start small - photo albums that occupy, at best, one shelf in a bookcase. But the photo can be digitized (scanned) - in this form, they practically do not take up space

Blue furniture in a light interior of a small apartment

a larger object - a balcony, which is often turned into a warehouse of unnecessary things, from children's sleds to furniture awaiting repair. You just need to get rid of the trash, insulate the balcony and combine it with the living room - and get additional living space. And the area of the balcony is quite enough to arrange a fairly isolated and secluded workplace on it, where you can do homework during the day (which is very important - in natural daylight), and in the evening - for parents to go about their business.

The balcony can increase the area of the apartment

another trick is to replace the old cast-iron batteries with more modern and compact radiators. And in order to increase the efficiency of their heat transfer, a heat-reflecting screen made of foil should be installed in the place of their installation (more precisely, a wall). This will free up an additional 6-10 cm of space along the wall.

Bright yellow table and coffee table - a stack of suitcases

White cabinet and small high efficiency radiator

When planning the interior decoration of a small apartment, it is worth considering the dismantling of old windows and their replacement with a metal-plastic analogue. This will not only increase the thermal efficiency of the room, but also make it possible to effectively use the window sill.

Replacing windows is a good opportunity to re-plan a window opening

Traditionally, the window sill, due to its modest size, was used either to accommodate flower pots, or was simply empty. Replacing a window allows you to transform a window sill into a functional element:

in the kitchen, a wide window sill can become a working area, and for a small family it can be turned into an analogue of a dining table

The windowsill is equipped as a working area

the free space under the wide window sill can be used for storing various things, placing shelves, etc.

Several drawers under the windowsill

in apartments with wide and high windows reaching almost to the floor, a wide window sill can turn into a recreation (relaxation) area

The windowsill is arranged as a resting place

Any restrictions make you look for non-standard ones, and from this - very interesting solutions. In a small apartment, preference should be given to multifunctional furniture - technological, functional and at the same time comfortable. Transforming tables, wardrobes, loft beds, transforming bunk beds, sofa beds - all of them successfully solve the problem of minimizing the space occupied. If you think outside the box, you can find enough unused space in a small apartment:

modular hanging cabinet will solve the problem with storage of things and fill the empty space above the sofa

Suspended shelves, like modular wardrobes - a great option for small apartments

instead of a bedside table, it is better to install a rack - occupying the same area, the latter is much more spacious

do not leave empty space around the doors - a shelf can be placed on top, and two narrow shelves on the sides.

Shelves can be installed both around doorways and around window openings

The design of the hallway in a small apartment, in which the elderly or children live, must necessarily include ottomans-boxes - it is comfortable to sit on it, and it is spacious enough to store useful little things.

Poufs - a pleasant and practical addition to the hallway in a small apartment

Advice! In a small bedroom, sometimes you have to make a choice between a full double bed or a roomy wardrobe. Everything should be given preference to a normal rest, and the solution may be bed with podium, in which you can arrange a spacious storage system. and over bed place shelves

Nowadays, even a small-sized apartment with the help of modern equipment and materials can be turned into a very comfortable and cozy one. So where do we start DIY small apartment repair?

First you need to understand that an excellent renovation is not so scary as it might seem at first.

First of all, the compositions plan for the upcoming renovation, in the future it will save time, money and our nerves. Let's think about what we want to see a small-sized apartment after renovation, for this you can either hire a specialist designer, or spy on ideas for repairing a small-sized apartment on our Photo.

So, we have finally found what we have been looking for all our lives, and that will turn our little apartment into a dream apartment. Now we need to think about the tools and materials that we will need during the repair. You don't have to buy everything at once, it is better to do everything in stages.

Well the first step would be dismantling of everything old and unnecessary... We will get rid of old wallpaper, whitewash, doors, baseboards, unnecessary furniture and, of course, the floor covering, if we decide to change it too. And all that remains is better to cover well, as there will be plenty of dust. This is probably all, we move on to the next stage.

Replacement of water supply, sewerage and distribution of communications. Here it all starts with wall slashing and wiring (television, Internet, electrics, acoustics, etc.) and installation of plumbing and heating equipment. It will be the dirtiest and dustiest stage of our renovation, where we clearly represent and know where we will have equipment that needs electricity and plumbing.

The next stage is rough work on preparation of ceilings... This includes all work on plastering, installation of suspended ceiling systems, plastering, sanding and cleaning. As a result, the ceiling should be ready for pasting or painting, with the exception of stretch ceilings, it is recommended to do them last.

Go ahead, it's time for replacement of windows and rough wall decoration... If the replacement of windows is not included in our repair plan, it is best to cover them tightly, since there will be a lot of dust during leveling, plastering, puttying and cleaning the walls.

Further, according to the plan, we go to sex, it all depends on what we have chosen - it can be either laminate or parquet or floor tiles. In any case, the first thing to do is to level and install sound insulation. After the completion of all the floor work, it is best to cover all this with a layer of thick cardboard, since the finishing of the walls and ceiling awaits us ahead.

So it fits small apartment renovation by the end, everything becomes easier here, we prime the ceiling and walls, followed by grinding and cleaning from dust. At this stage, along with pasting and painting, you can think about transparent or translucent partitions, stained-glass windows. If several people live in the apartment, this will give more comfort, since everyone will have personal space. It is best to purchase built-in appliances and furniture, this will greatly save space in a small apartment. It is better to make ceilings and walls in light colors, provided that the ceiling is lighter than the walls, all this will bring coziness and volume to our apartment. You should also pay attention to the light, you do not need to hang bulky chandeliers and lamps, it is best to do with chandeliers with several petals, shades or spot lighting.

As you can see, repairing a one-room small apartment with your own hands is quite real. All you need is a little bit of diligence and patience, and everything will definitely work out!

Dear readers, for a long time we have not had such extensive posts-tutorials on apartment renovation. I am pleased to offer one of the manuals for reading.

This summer we did a phased decoration of a two-room apartment. First, all the furniture and things were dragged into one room, locked and sealed. After the renovation of the adjacent room and kitchen, everything was moved to the finished premises and the remaining room, corridor, bathroom and toilet were completed. In general, it is not the most convenient repair option. Task: to make good-quality inexpensive repairs from budget materials. Terms: June 10-July 24 - the first stage, August 4-September 10 - the second stage. Estimate: 295800r (only work + stretch ceilings) All work, except for the installation of interior doors and the installation of two of the three windows, was done on our own. There are a lot of photos, so I will post as much as I can and free time appears. So, this is how the “object” appeared before us

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the parquet fell off by itself, dismantling consisted of collecting it from the floor and folding it into bags.

This pipe leads to the coil in the bathroom.

Here is such a horror object, we dismantle everything that is possible

First of all, the windows are installed, this window was installed by another company with which the customer agreed earlier

a cold cupboard can be seen under the window, and a radiator hangs behind a door leaning against the wall. The logical solution was to insulate the cabinet and install a new radiator in its place.

on the Perlfix assembly glue we glue the extruded polystyrene foam, then the gypsum board on the same glue

Getting started plastering

first of all, we put our branded beacons

in some places we use the combined technology of leveling the walls, from above the gypsum board is glued to Perlfix, and from below the layer is plastered less

Waste plasterboard can be embedded in a thick layer of plaster

we change the hot water and cold water pipes, the piping to the coil, fill the grooves with plaster

When plastering corners, do not forget about 90 degrees, and of course, verticality

we form the entrance opening using a plank box

We install the window sill and slopes

We bought a special grinder for sanding the walls, it connects to a vacuum cleaner, a great thing

before leveling the floors, we fill in all large defects of the DSP floor

We level large differences without beacons with a semi-dry screed

In the corridor we break part of the old screed with a large crusher

vacuuming, priming, making a rough leveling, vacuuming priming.

we divide the corridor into parts using scrap materials.

slippers for “walking on water” are made of OSB, self-tapping screws and a glamorous strap with rhinestones

And this happened due to the fact that a thick layer of soft seal was laid between the gypsum wall and the ceiling

the cracks were repaired with pearlfix, putty and the ceiling was put on. That is why it is better to stretch ceilings before wallpapering. Another reason why you should stretch the ceilings before finishing the walls is a possible hit during the installation of the baguette into the electrical wiring (for example, as in this video) And finally, even with the most careful installation of the ceiling, there is a risk of damage to the wallpaper, therefore, we glue the wallpaper only after the stretch ceiling, and we lay the floor coverings after them too.
This miracle of technology is called construction stilts, with their help, all work at a height, including stretch ceilings, is done many times faster. In Russia, these are practically not sold, and if they are sold, they are expensive. We bought it via e-bay. We want to buy something else later, but more on that later.

a mandatory attribute for finishing, this is a vacuum cleaner. As they say, cleanliness is a guarantee of quality

At this stage, stage 1 ends, we open the sealed room, we give the customer time to transfer things. Since the customer has little time and can only do this on weekends, we leave for another facility for 10 days. The object is a kitchen in the old fund, where we made cosmetic repairs, later I will also post a photo report.
So, we are back, the middle room is empty, again dismantling (((

Renovation in a small apartment is a reason to find new ideas for expanding space and compact organization of storage.Not sure what to look out for? We give 12 practical tips for owners of small sizes.

The light color of the walls visually pushes the boundaries of the room, making it more airy. At the same time, it is not necessary to limit yourself to exclusively white: you can choose light gray, beige, pastel colors, milky shades.

By adding accents to the interior, you can divert attention from the modest area of the room. Bright colors, designer furniture and accessories, unusual design techniques will do the job perfectly.

Mirrors will help to visually enlarge the room, correct the geometry of rooms and increase the light - they are irreplaceable allies in arranging a small size. Pay attention to mirrored facades, mirrored tiles and furniture.

The most difficult thing when renovating a small apartment is finding a place to accommodate everything you need, and at the same time not burdening the situation with bulky storage systems. A dressing room will be a good solution for a small size, it will help unload the interior.

In a limited space, it is reasonable to pay attention to furniture, appliances, plumbing, created specifically for small sizes. In the bathroom, for example, a miniature washing machine will help out, and in the kitchen - a two-burner hob.

Wall niches are a great way to get some extra space when renovating a small apartment. Can be used for additional storage or decorative shelving. Niches in a miniature kitchen and in a small bathroom will be especially useful.

Even the smallest apartment needs a functional kitchen. You should not skimp on ergonomic solutions and technologies that make life easier.

Hanging shelves, shelving and wall organizers can help you take advantage of wall space and get extra space to house your essentials.

A modest area dictates its own terms. Give up everything you can do without: from large-sized furniture, bulky pedestals and armchairs, non-functional massive decor.

A large number of decorative accessories create visual noise. When arranging a small apartment, it is better to give preference to a laconic decor.

Thanks to textures and textures, the interior becomes more interesting and voluminous. Combine different materials to create a cozy atmosphere.

The darkened corners are the "eaten" space. When renovating a small apartment, it is worthwhile to provide for sufficient artificial lighting and try to maximize natural light.

Apartment renovation is stress for everyone. For you, your relatives, pets, even colleagues and friends, who will constantly hear about your problems with the lack of sockets or the wrong arrangement of modules in the kitchen.

So that you can do everything right, we have prepared a list of seven important things that you should not forget about when renovating a small apartment.

Spend more on finishes and less on furniture

When renovating a small apartment, it is important to consider that if you use inexpensive materials, it will immediately be noticeable. Better to spend 50% more on parquet flooring, tiles, but get an apartment that looks like an American studio or a Scandinavian apartment, than make the renovation almost useless.

Don't try to do everything at once

It is better to make the finishing and layout perfect, and wait a little with furniture. Choose a kitchen, decorate a bathroom, put a bed and start living and looking closely at the interior. As a result, you will learn from experience what size and type of wardrobe you need and which sofa will look best.

Please note that you will spend twice as much time on repairs than you planned

Remember that when renovating an apartment, you will have to live somewhere - in a rented apartment, with relatives or friends.Repair always takes twice as long as you plan, do not forget about this and take into account when various agreements are made.

Redevelopment is a necessary waste

When renovating a small apartment, redevelopment is almost always necessary. Many people order a combination of a kitchen with a living room, a bathroom with a toilet, a loggia, new built-in wardrobes in the hallway and bedroom. It is often simply impossible to add all this without demolishing the partitions.

Buy a professional design project

The design project of an apartment is always based on SNIPs and GOSTs, which must be followed. Without them, you will not receive permission for redevelopment, it will simply be illegal. But a professional designer will always be able to offer an alternative way to get what you want and follow all the rules 100%.

Choose a specific style for your decor

Surprisingly, the decor also has its own styles. However, they can overlap with completely different styles in decoration or furniture design. For example, subject to certain conditions, you can mix Scandinavian and Provence styles, classics and Art Deco, and so on. For decor, it is worth choosing the style that you like in the decor, then you will not spend extra money.

If you immediately decorate the bedroom, you will no longer like it in a year. Alas, this is the rule of the first year of living in a renovated apartment. If you arrange a bedroom in a hurry, without understanding your preferences and the characteristics of a new apartment, many mistakes will be made. Leave the bedroom almost empty for a year and buy decor and accessories, mirrors and textiles in it only after decorating the rest of the rooms. Then the bedroom will be perfect.

The realities of modern life are such that not everyone succeeds in acquiring a spacious apartment or a country house, and not all at once. But the modest size of your own home is not a reason to deny yourself comfort. Repair of small apartments, made in accordance with the latest trends in interior fashion and photo recommendations of designers, can turn a nondescript one-room apartment into a cozy island of harmony, beauty and serenity.
If you are the owner of a small one-room apartment with a total area of up to 30 sq.m. or studio apartments, where the only room is combined with the kitchen space, then the ideas for renovation design with photos of ready-made solutions will become a guideline for choosing and implementing a comfortable and unique interior.

All design ideas for small apartments are aimed at solving one, the most important task: how to make the room visually more spacious, but at the same time extremely functional and comfortable, meeting the requirements of all the inhabitants of the home.
This will be possible if:

In terms of renovation, 30 sq.m. - this is an immense field for the implementation of the most daring ideas. This area is quite enough to reflect your individuality and all the nuances of the chosen style in the interior. But how to carry out repairs so that aesthetics do not damage functionality? Here are some ideas for the right small apartment renovation.