General contractor for a complete apartment renovation in Budapest
One contract, one price, one person answerable.
A general contractor is not one of the trades. They are the one who carries the sequence, the deadline and the mistakes, so that you do not have to.
- One contract, one person to call.
- A fixed price and a schedule.
- Our own crew does the building work.
- Whole, empty apartments only.
What does a general contractor actually do?
Organises and carries out the whole job, from strip-out to handover. Not simply working in the apartment: being answerable for the trades following each other in the right order and at the right time.
Hiring trades separately
- You call everyone, and you work out the order.
- If the tiler slips, the painter stands idle, and the lost time is yours.
- When something goes wrong, each one points at the other.
- Five invoices, five deadlines, five phone numbers.
With a general contractor
- One contract, one price, one schedule.
- The sequence and the coordination are ours to handle.
- When something goes wrong, one company answers for it.
- One invoice and one person to call.
What order does the work run in?
Strip-out.
Everything that goes, goes, and removing it is our job too. This is when you find out what is behind the walls.
First fix.
Electrics, water, gas and heating, chased into the walls and the floor. This is the stage that cannot be changed cheaply later.
Screed and plaster.
Flat, true surfaces. Get this wrong and everything after it is wrong too, however expensive the tiles are.
Tiling.
Bathroom and kitchen. This is where the finished apartment starts to become visible.
Paint and flooring.
In that order, so a finished floor never has to be covered up and risked.
Second fix and handover.
Kitchen, sanitaryware, switches, cleaning. At the end we walk through the apartment with you.
Who does the work?
Our own crew does the building work: strip-out, plastering, plasterboard, tiling and painting. We do not pass the job to another company.
Electrical, gas and plumbing work is done by specialists licensed for it, because Hungarian law requires that licence. They work under our contract too. You are dealing with one company even when six people are in the apartment.
One contract. One price. One schedule. One person to call. One company answerable.
If something slips, it is not yours to chase.
The point of a general contractor is not that you make fewer phone calls. It is that the risk moves from you to us. The sequence, the waiting between trades and the cost of putting mistakes right are ours, not yours.
Common questions about general contracting
Is a general contractor more expensive than hiring trades separately?
Added up on paper, separate day rates often look lower. The difference shows up in what you cannot see in advance: waiting between trades, work done twice, and your own time. With a general contractor those are our costs, and they are already in the quote.
Do you use subcontractors?
Our own crew does the building work. For electrical, gas and plumbing we bring in specialists licensed for it, because Hungarian law requires it. All of them work under our contract, and your contract is with us.
Will you contract for a single room or a single bathroom?
No. We only take on complete renovations of whole, empty apartments, from strip-out to handover.
Who do I deal with during the work?
One person, the same one throughout. You never have to work out who to ask.
When do I get the schedule?
With the quote, in writing, before the contract. The schedule forms part of the contract.
Let us see the apartment.
The survey is free, and afterwards you get a fixed price and a schedule in writing.