Decoration and finishing works in Dubai and Abu Dhabi

What is included

• Plaster, skim coats, paint and decorative wall finishes
• Tiling, stone and large-format slabs, on floors and walls
• Flooring: parquet, engineered timber, vinyl, skirtings and thresholds
• Gypsum ceilings, bulkheads, coves, cornices and partitions
• Wall panelling, fluting, mouldings and ornamental detail
• Wallpaper and other wall coverings
• Fitting doors, kitchens, wardrobes and the rest of our own joinery
• Sanitary ware, taps and light fittings installed, with the plumbing and electrical work they need
• Protection of the home, dust control, waste removal, making good and a clean handover

Where walls, wet areas or services have to move as well, the job becomes a turnkey renovation. Not included: a separate design service. We do not sell layouts, concepts or visualisations as a product, and we do not take on structural calculations, which an engineer signs.

What we check before we start

The survey comes first: real dimensions rather than the developer's brochure. Then the substrate, because a finish is only as good as what sits under it — the flatness and moisture of the screed, how straight the walls are, the state of the bathroom and balcony waterproofing, the void above the ceiling, where the air-conditioning ducts and sprinklers run, the level of the existing drainage. And the rules: the fit-out conditions of the building management, the hours when noisy work is allowed, the service lift, the dust screen at the door and the route out for waste.

How it runs

1. Free site visit with measurements, photographs and a conversation about what you want changed.
2. An itemised estimate: every work and every material on its own line.
3. Materials chosen for the works we are going to carry out, with samples seen in daylight in the room itself.
4. The look of those works agreed with you before anyone starts.
5. The trades in sequence: plaster and screeds, tiling and stone, ceilings, panelling, paint, then the fittings.
6. Snag list closed out together, and a clean home handed back.

Working to drawings from your designer

If you already have a designer, we build what they drew. We read the drawings the way a contractor has to: what is missing to be built, which junctions have to be resolved, what the materials really cost and what the building will not allow. Then we price the works line by line and carry them out. The designer stays yours and we do not redraw the concept. Where a detail is made in our own workshop, we draw that junction for our own fabrication, because the shop floor needs it anyway.

Agreeing the look before the trades arrive

Without a designer we still do not start blind. The appearance of our own work — panel layouts, mouldings, colours, the setting-out of tiles and stone — is agreed on 3D views first, and those views are part of the works rather than a line in the estimate. The apartment in Mamsha Al Saadiyat is shown at exactly that stage: the images on that page are views, not photographs of a finished flat.

Decorative detail and ornament

Fluted panels, mouldings, cornices, plaster relief and engraved surfaces are drawn, made and fitted by the same people, so a detail arrives on site in a form that can actually be built. That is how the walnut slats and brass went up in the Azure apartment on Saadiyat Island.

Preparing for the free visit

Bring the approved drawings of the unit, the handover report from the developer and the fit-out rules of the building management, plus any drawings you already have from a designer. Photographs of finishes you like — and a few you dislike, which is often more useful — say more than the name of a style. We come anywhere in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, measure, and leave you with an itemised estimate.