Service
Renovations
Remodels of existing houses and small buildings in Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan, including work while people are still living there.
A renovation is work on a building that already has a life in it. Someone’s furniture is there, or a tenant, or a shop that cannot close for six months. The craft is not only new tiles. It is knowing which walls are holding the floor up, which damp is a plumbing leak, and which crack has been painted over since the last rainy season.
In Lagos that building might be a 1970s house in Surulere, a flat in a Yaba compound, a tired duplex in Magodo, or a ground floor in Festac that floods when the estate drain is blocked. In Abuja it might be a house in Garki or Wuse whose flat roof ponds, or an estate house in Lokogoma whose first owner finished only the rooms they needed. In Ibadan it is often older still: a compound in Mokola, a house off Ring Road, a Bodija place that has grown an extra room every few years without a drawing that matches the whole.
Separate the decoration from the structure
The expensive mistake is to fund a new ceiling while the lintel above the window is failing, or to tile a floor that slopes because the ground under one corner has moved. Plaster cracks at the corner of a door are sometimes the paint. A diagonal crack that widens, a door that suddenly will not close, or a column with concrete falling off the steel is not a decorating item. Those belong on the structural repair page, and they should be opened up before a quote for finishes is treated as the whole job.
Lagos humidity makes a second class of problem. The air stays moist for most of the year, and rooms with no cross-breeze grow mould on the back of wardrobes and on the soffit of a badly ventilated bathroom. A renovation that only repaints will meet the same stain after the next June. The useful work is often dull: falls to a floor drain, a bathroom that actually discharges outside the foundation, and a window that can stay open behind a secure screen.
Abuja’s version is dust and sun. During harmattan, fine Sahara dust settles into wet paint and into open bagged cement. A redecoration programmed for December without covering the work will look tired before the client moves back in. Flat concrete roofs, common on some newer houses, need a honest look at ponding. If water sits on the deck after an ordinary October storm, the renovation is a drainage and waterproofing job before it is a new pop ceiling.
Ibadan’s older houses often carry layers of patching. A sheet roof has been nailed over another sheet. A veranda has become a room. A boys’ quarters shares a wall with a kitchen that was never damp-proofed. The renovation question is whether those layers can be sorted, or whether the useful life of the shell is over. The guide on renovation or rebuild is the decision page. This service is what happens when the decision is to keep the building and change it properly.
Living on site
Say, in the quote, who sleeps there. A family in two rooms while a wing is stripped needs a different programme from an empty house in Guzape. Materials have to be stored where children and rain cannot reach cement. Power and water for the household have to survive the week the electrician is in the ceiling. In a compound with more than one household, the neighbour’s wall is part of the job even when it is not on your title.
Noise and access matter as much as drawings. A Surulere street and a Lekki close do not accept the same delivery lorry. An Abuja district with a controlled frontage may not want blocks stacked on the verge. An Ibadan hillside lane may not take a concrete truck at all, which changes whether you cast in place or look for another method. Those are cost drivers. They are not a rate you can copy from a different city.
Papers, even for “just a remodel”
Lagos building-control language treats renovation as improvement that does not add floor area: redecorating, roof restoration, replacing floor coverings. Adding floor area is an extension, and it is a different approval. If your “renovation” pushes a new room into the setback or adds a floor, do not describe it as paint. Oyo State’s permit notes cover remodelling as well as new work, and Abuja development control has been plain that people sometimes change a residential approval into a commercial use without saying so. A quote that ignores that will be priced for a job the authority can stop.
You do not need to arrive with every form filled. You do need to know whether drawings exist, whether a previous approval was for the building you actually have, and whether the work adds space. Photos of the outside, the roof, the wet rooms, and any crack you worry about are the right attachments. Three is enough.
Micheletti Construction Limited reviews renovation requests sent through this site. There is no published price per room, because a room in a flooded Lagos ground floor is not a room in a dry Abuja estate. Describe the building, the city, and what you want to be different when the work is finished.