Question: What makes condo renovation different from renovating a landed house?
Answer: The building management. A condo unit sits inside a shared structure, so almost every meaningful interior work — hacking, drilling, tiling, rewiring — requires renovation approval from the management office before work begins. There are work-hour restrictions (no noisy work outside permitted hours), lift bookings for materials, mandatory lift and corridor protection, contractor deposits that are forfeited if common areas are damaged, and rules about wet areas. A condo refurbishment that ignores these gets stopped mid-project; one planned around them runs on schedule.
This article covers the condo interior refurbishment sub-service under house renovation services, starting from RM 30,000. Related scopes: the full house renovation package, the kitchen & bathroom makeover and commercial shoplot renovation. If your unit is an older condo needing a full refresh, see the old condo full refurbishment guide. For cost planning, use the renovation budget calculator and read the cost of full house renovation in KL.
What a Condo Interior Refurbishment Covers
A full interior rebuild typically combines some or all of:
- Kitchen — cabinets, countertops, sink, tiling and appliance points.
- Bathrooms — retiling or no-hack waterproofing refresh, sanitaryware, shower screen.
- Flooring — SPC/laminate overlay or tile replacement throughout.
- Ceilings — plaster ceiling repairs, L-box and lighting integration.
- Painting — full unit repaint after repairs.
- Electrical — additional power points, lighting points, DB review.
- Doors and carpentry — bedroom doors, built-in wardrobes, TV console.
Demolition comes first where layouts or finishes are changing; debris disposal runs through the booked lift with proper protection, not through common corridors.
The Condo Approval Sequence
- Obtain management requirements — forms, drawings needed, deposit amount, permitted working hours.
- Draw up the scope — layout changes, wet areas affected, and any item touching common property (windows, grille, facade — usually restricted or uniform-spec).
- Submit and get approval — works cannot start before this; approvals typically take days to a few weeks depending on the building.
- Pay the renovation deposit — refundable, held against corridor lift damage and waste rules.
- Book the lift and protect common areas — lift padding, corridor floor protection, designated waste route.
Work-Hour Compliance in Practice
Management rules usually restrict hacking, drilling and heavy work to defined weekday hours, with lighter work sometimes allowed on Saturdays and no work on Sundays or public holidays. This changes scheduling fundamentally:
- Noisy stages (hacking, tile cutting, drilling) are batched into permitted hours.
- Quiet stages (painting, carpentry assembly, silicone work) fill the remaining time.
- Material deliveries must align with lift bookings, not with when the lorry happens to arrive.
- The published condo refurbishment scope explicitly includes management work-hour compliance and lift protection — non-compliance risks stop-work orders and lost deposits.
Wet Areas: The Untouchable Rule
Bathroom and wet-area positions in a condo almost never move, because waterproofing continuity and shared drainage runs belong to the building system. A sensible plan refreshes within the existing wet footprint: new tiles, waterproofing refresh, sanitaryware and screens — without hacking that disturbs the unit below's ceiling. Any leak from your renovation into the unit below becomes your liability, which is why wet-area works are sequenced with pond testing before retiling.
Cost Factors
Refurbishment starts at RM 30,000 published for condo interiors; house renovation services start at RM 22,000 overall, and a kitchen & bathroom makeover starts at RM 10,000 for smaller scopes. Final cost depends on:
- Unit size and the trades included.
- Extent of hacking vs overlay solutions (SPC over tiles saves hacking entirely).
- Cabinetry and countertop material levels.
- New electrical points and any DB work.
- Whether bathrooms are full-hack or refreshed.
- Management compliance costs — protection, longer staged schedule, waste disposal route.
- Material delivery constraints — upper floors with shared lifts take longer per load.
Renovation work carries a published 12-Month Structural & Workmanship Warranty within its terms.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does a condo refurbishment usually take?
Timing depends on scope and work-hour limits rather than size alone. Painting-and-flooring refreshes move quickly; full kitchen-and-bathroom rebuilds under 5-hour work windows take proportionally longer than the same job in a landed house. A staged schedule is agreed before work begins.
Can I change the windows, grille or front door?
Usually with restrictions. Facade-facing elements tend to be governed by uniform building specifications — the management has the final word, and approvals must be in writing before ordering anything.
What if my renovation causes a leak to the unit below?
You are liable for the damage. This is why wet-area work includes pond testing before finishes, and why a contractor who sequences waterproofing properly matters more in a condo than anywhere else. Report any wet-area work to the management as required.
Plan Around the Rules, Not Against Them
A condo refurbishment succeeds on compliance, staging and protection as much as on craft. KL Servis Rumah refurbishes condo interiors across Kuala Lumpur and Selangor with management processes built into the schedule.
Send your floor plan, unit floor level and the works you want done — WhatsApp the renovation team.