La Main d'Or

The project in brief.

A stone's throw from the Passage de la Main d'Or, in the heart of the 11th arrondissement of Paris, W.A.R.D is carrying out the complete renovation of this 90 m² apartment. The works, currently under way, bring together 8 craftsmen over a planned duration of 3 months.

At this size, the main challenge is pace: a complete renovation in 3 months leaves no room for improvisation. Upstream preparation — studies, orders, scheduling of interventions — directly determines whether the deadline holds. The 11th arrondissement, dense and lively, also imposes constraints of its own: access, parking, rubble removal and consideration for neighbours are as much part of the project as the works themselves.

The craftsmanship involved.

A complete renovation of this kind typically calls on the full range of fit-out trades: demolition and strip-out, renewal of the electrical and plumbing services, plastering, interior joinery, floor coverings and painting. The daily coordination of the craftsmen — who intervenes, when, in what order — is what separates a smooth-running site from one that bogs down. It is the heart of our work as general contractor. Across 90 m², layout choices carry all the more weight: every partition moved, every built-in storage unit changes the perception of the space. That is the whole point of a complete renovation — starting again from the floor plan so that the apartment matches how its occupants actually live.

How the works unfold.

A complete 90 m² renovation in three months is planned backwards from the handover date. The first phase — setting up the site, protecting the common areas, demolition and strip-out — clears the floor and reveals the real condition of the substrates, the floors and the existing services. Then come the invisible works, the ones that determine what follows: running the electrical and plumbing connections, building the partitions, then closing the linings once the checks have been carried out. Nothing is closed up before verification, because a service that has been wrongly identified always costs more to reopen than to check.

The order of the trades then follows a simple logic: what makes a mess comes before what finishes. Screeds and levelling compounds, then tiling and floors, then interior joinery, then painting — the reverse order would mean doing the same work twice. Electrical accessories, taps and fittings and light fixtures come only at the very end, once the paintwork is dry. Eight craftsmen on a floor plate of this size never means eight people at the same time: our role is to sequence their presence so that each trade finds a substrate ready to receive its work. It is this all-trades coordination that absorbs the contingencies without moving the completion date.

A site in an occupied building.

Renovating an apartment in an occupied Parisian building imposes a precise framework: informing the managing agent, complying with the co-ownership rules, working hours governed by municipal regulations, systematic protection of the stairwell, the lift and the landings. These obligations are not administrative formalities: they determine how peacefully the site runs. Neighbours told in advance about the noisiest phases become people you can talk to, not a source of dispute. In an older building, party walls also mean taking acoustics seriously, particularly when floors are reworked and wet rooms are moved.

The 11th arrondissement adds constraints of its own: narrow streets, scarce parking, deliveries to be booked into a slot. A temporary permit to occupy the public highway, removal of rubble by skip or by bag depending on the layout of the building, material dimensions compatible with the stairwell — all of this is prepared before the site opens, never during. On budget, a complete renovation of this kind generally falls in the €1,800–2,500/m² range (average around €2,000/m²); the spread depends on the level of specification chosen, the condition of the existing fabric and the extent of the technical works, which only a visit can measure.

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