Restoring a facade starts long before the scaffolding
For communities of owners (comunidades de propietarios, the owners of the flats in a building acting together), for property managers (administradores de fincas) and for houses too, across the province of Málaga. A restoration is a job with paperwork, an owners’ meeting and a timetable, and almost everything that goes wrong goes wrong before anyone turns up with a brush. Here is the whole route: who decides what, in what order and which document comes out of each step.
Has the building inspection (the ITE, Inspección Técnica de Edificios) come round for your building? What the surveyor looks at and what an unfavourable report obliges you to do: we have written it up with the Málaga by-law in hand.
From the inspection to the finished facade
Six steps, always in this order. Skipping one does not save time: you pay it back later, with the work stopped or with a quote that cannot be compared with anything.
The diagnosis
An architect or a building surveyor (arquitecto técnico)
If the building has been through its ITE (the technical building inspection), the inspection report already is the diagnosis. If not, a report on the condition of the facade that says what is wrong, why and what needs doing. Without it, each company quotes for whatever it thinks it can see.
What comes out of it: The defects, their cause and what needs doing, measured.
The project or the specification
The same professional
If the work substantially changes the exterior composition of the building, its volume or its structure, the law requires a full architect’s project (proyecto). If it is a matter of repairing and painting without changing any of that, the town hall says which documents it wants. Either way, what is useful is the same: a list of measured items.
What comes out of it: The items with their measurements, the same for every company.
The owners’ meeting
The owners, called by the community president
Maintenance work is not put to a vote: it is compulsory. What the meeting decides is the practical side: which company, which quote, how much comes out of the reserve fund and how much is raised as a special levy (derrama), and on which dates.
What comes out of it: Minutes recording the company, how the cost is shared and the schedule.
The licence
The community, with the professional or the company
Permission for the works and, if the scaffolding takes up the pavement or the road, permission to occupy the public highway. If the work follows an unfavourable ITE in the city of Málaga, the licence has to be applied for within three months of the report being submitted.
What comes out of it: The permit, with the dates by which work has to start and finish.
The works, in phases
The company, under the professional’s direction
One side of the building at a time, with the access equipment put up in sections. Each phase starts with notice to the residents on that side and ends with the repairs already painted, so that no stretch is left half-done from one month to the next.
What comes out of it: Photos of each repair before it is covered up.
Closing it off
The professional and the community
With the work finished, the final certificate or the end-of-works report and, if it followed an ITE, notice to the Gerencia de Urbanismo (the city’s planning department) to close the file. All of it is kept: it is the first thing the next inspection will ask for.
What comes out of it: The papers that close the job and give the next ITE a head start.
What the meeting votes on, and what it does not
The question that holds up a restoration more than any other is whether the work needs a majority. If it is maintenance, it does not: the Horizontal Property Act (Ley de Propiedad Horizontal, LPH, the law that governs communities of owners) makes it compulsory.
Maintenance work waits for nobody. Under article 10 of the Act, the work needed to fulfil the duty to maintain the building, including its appearance, “shall be compulsory and shall not require the prior agreement of the Owners’ Meeting”, whether it is imposed by the authorities or requested by the owners themselves.
The reserve fund is there for this. The same Act earmarks it, among other things, for maintenance, repair and restoration works, and says it cannot fall below 10% of the community’s last ordinary budget. Whatever it does not cover is shared out as a special levy.
Calling the meeting has its own notice periods. An ordinary meeting is called at least six days in advance; an extraordinary one, with whatever notice makes it possible to reach everyone. If an ITE is pressing, an extraordinary meeting is the way to go.
The meeting’s calendar is not the work’s calendar
Outdoor work goes well in spring and autumn. In a building on the coast, summer is also high season: terraces full, flats let out and nobody keen to have scaffolding outside the window. So the work fits into two windows, and everything that comes before it has to be settled before they open.
Winter
Meeting, quotes and licence
Spring
Works
Summer
High season: better without scaffolding
Autumn
Works
Between the meeting and the first day on site there are quotes to get, a licence and, if the scaffolding stands on the street, another permit. None of those comes with a timescale anyone can promise, so the rule is simple: if you want the work done in spring, the decision belongs to winter; if you want it in autumn, to before the summer. Why those two seasons and not others, we explain in facade painting.
What to bear in mind before restoring the facade
Every quote on the same items
If each company measures the facade its own way, the meeting ends up comparing three different jobs at three different prices. With the professional’s measurements as the basis, the offers are talking about the same thing and can be set out in columns, item by item.
What hangs off the facade
Air-conditioning units, awnings, aerials, washing lines, window grilles: to work behind them, they have to be taken down or protected. They belong to each owner, so it is worth agreeing at the meeting who takes them down, who puts them back and who pays for it, before the scaffolding reaches that window.
One resident as the point of contact
Someone from the community who talks to the company, receives the notices about which side is being worked on each week and passes them on to everyone else: windows shut, terraces cleared, cars kept away from the scaffolding. A facade job is much easier to live with when everyone knows what is happening tomorrow.
What lies behind each crack, and which ones need an architect or surveyor before a contractor, is covered in facade repair.
Restoring the facade of your house
In a house there is no owners’ meeting and no levies, and the route is shorter: diagnosis, licence and works. What does not change is the line at which a project is needed. If the restoration is going to change substantially what the facade is like, the law requires a project; if it is repairing what is there and painting it, the town hall will tell you which papers it wants.
Restoring it without blocking its pores
An old brick or rubble-stone wall with lime render needs to go on letting moisture out. Covering it with cement mortars or with paints that do not breathe usually ends in stains and flaking. A restoration goes back to lime-based materials and respects what the building had; and if it is listed or in a historic centre, the town hall also sets what can be touched. The lime finishes declared suitable for exterior use are covered in the types of stucco.
What gets asked at owners’ meetings
Can an owner refuse to have the work done?
Can an owner refuse to have the work done?
Not if it is maintenance work. The Horizontal Property Act says that the work needed to fulfil the duty to maintain the building, including its appearance, “shall be compulsory and shall not require the prior agreement of the Owners’ Meeting”. An owner can argue about the quote, the company or the dates, but not about whether it is done.
Do we need an architect’s project?
Do we need an architect’s project?
It depends on what is being done. The Building Act (Ley de Ordenación de la Edificación) requires one when the work alters the architectural configuration of the building: complete interventions, and partial ones that produce “an essential variation of the overall exterior composition, the volume, or the structural system as a whole”. Repairing and painting without changing any of that does not normally need one, but the town hall may ask for other technical documents.
Can it be paid for out of the reserve fund?
Can it be paid for out of the reserve fund?
That is partly what the fund is for. The law earmarks it, among other things, for “the maintenance, repair and restoration works on the property”, and says it cannot be less than 10% of the community’s last ordinary budget. In a restoration it usually covers only part of the cost; the rest is shared out as a special levy.
Can it be done in phases to spread the cost?
Can it be done in phases to spread the cost?
Yes, and many communities do: one or two sides at a time. What you need to know is that each phase pays again for putting up and taking down the access equipment, so the total comes out dearer than doing it all in one go. If it is phased, do it by whole sides, so you do not end up with half a new facade next to half an old one.
Are there grants for restoring the facade?
Are there grants for restoring the facade?
In the city of Málaga there are municipal and regional schemes, each with its own requirements and application deadlines. What helps is asking about them at the restoration offices before the meeting, not after the contract has been signed.
Send us the facade report
The ITE or the surveyor’s report, if you already have it, and if not, photos of each side of the building. With the measurements in front of us we quote item by item, on the same items the meeting will see; without them, we tell you which part of the work needs an architect or surveyor first.