Renovation in Binissalem
The wine buildings and manor houses here were built to store and to work in rather than to live in. Converting one is a different exercise from renovating a house, because almost nothing about it was arranged for daylight, warmth or privacy.
A working building was never meant to be a house
A building made for storage has few openings and small ones, because light and heat were the enemy of what was inside it. It has wide unobstructed spans, because the space had to be usable. It has walls of enormous thickness, because that is how it was built and because the mass kept the interior cool. Every one of those is an asset and an obstacle at the same time.
The thickness is the thing people underestimate. A wall a metre deep is not a wall with a window in it; it is a wall with a tunnel through it, and that changes how much light actually reaches the room, how a frame is fixed, and what a new opening costs to form. It also means the drawings, if any exist, are describing something thinner than what is standing.
What conversion buys is space of a quality nobody builds now. Wide, tall, calm rooms with real thermal mass, which stay cool through the summer without help. The successful conversions tend to accept that character and work with the few large openings rather than perforating the building until it behaves like an ordinary house.
What converting one of these involves
- Walls far thicker than any drawing shows, verified by measuring
- New openings cut through great depth, which is structural work
- Daylight, which is the central design problem in a storage building
- Wide spans overhead, and what is currently carrying them
- Floors laid for barrels and machinery rather than for rooms
- Insulation, where thermal mass already does part of the job
- Services installed from nothing, through walls that resist chasing
- Subdividing a large volume without losing why it is worth having
- Damp, in buildings that were never heated
- Ventilation, which the original use needed and the new one needs differently
Most asked for around Binissalem
Complete refurbishment
How your request reaches a company
Mallorca Renovation is a comparison service. A request for a conversion of a working building goes to the renovation and building companies on our list; they quote the work and carry it out, and any agreement is between you and the company you pick.
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Describe the job
Tell us the property, roughly what you want and where it is. Photographs and a rough plan help, though neither is required.
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We match it
The request goes to companies that work in your area and take on this kind of job at this size.
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They quote you
Each company contacts you directly with its own price, timing and approach. We do not set any of it.
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You compare and choose
Put the quotes side by side and take the one you want, or none of them. Using the site costs you nothing.
How hard is it to cut a window into a metre-thick wall?
Perfectly possible and firmly structural. The depth means more material to remove, a heavier lintel arrangement and a reveal deep enough to affect how much light gets through, so it is designed rather than simply ordered.
Should a big space be divided up?
Partly, usually. The mistake is dividing it until it becomes an ordinary house, which removes the reason to convert one at all. Keeping one large volume and taking the rooms out of the rest is the pattern that tends to work.
Do these buildings need insulating?
Less than a thin modern wall and not none. Mass evens out temperature rather than eliminating heat loss, so the roof usually matters more than the walls, and the walls have to keep breathing whatever is done to them.
Get quotes for a conversion
Describe the building and what you want it to become, and let several companies price it.