Sarıyer Merkez, İstanbul

A full renovation was carried out on a second-floor flat in a thirty-year-old building in central Sarıyer, where every other apartment was occupied. Work began with a survey establishing which walls were load-bearing; the non-structural partitions were removed to open the kitchen into the living room, and an unnecessarily wide corridor was narrowed to make room for a second bathroom.

All electrical and plumbing services were replaced. The old galvanised pipes were stripped out and replaced with PPRC supply lines and new waste runs, with the riser connections rebuilt to suit the building's shared stack. The consumer unit was changed along with a residual current device, and the socket circuits were separated room by room. In the wet areas the build-up was taken down to below the screed for a liquid-applied membrane, and tiling began only after a twenty-four hour flood test came back clear. The worn parquet was lifted and new laminate laid over an acoustic underlay; the windows were replaced with insulated glazing in PVC frames.

Because the building was occupied, debris was carried down the stairs rather than by lift, within a fixed two-hour window each day, and removed from site the same day. Demolition work ran only between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon; the stairwell was screened off with plastic sheeting against dust and a dust-trapping mat was laid at the entrance. The common areas were cleaned by the team every evening and weekly progress was reported to the building management in writing. The flat was completed and handed over in nine weeks.