Renovation in Emirates Hills — Sector P

Renovating out here isn't the same job as a standard villa. On a Sector P mansion, the walls you want to move are usually load-bearing, and the MEP runs through slab — so a partition removal means an engineer, a DEWA load check and 3D scanning before anyone swings a hammer. Strip out a Lakeshore Mansions bathroom and you'll find underfloor heating loops, a separate chilled-water circuit and a waterproofing membrane that's 12mm thick. You can't just tile over that. The three water tanks per property — domestic, irrigation, pool — all have to be isolated at different points, and the auto-fill on the irrigation side keeps running if you don't shut it manually.

Kitchens are where the real money sits. A full fit-out here starts around AED 80,000 and climbs fast once joinery goes custom and stone has to match a book-matched slab. Delivery is slow because every finish is signed off, and I'll be honest — that's the part that frustrates owners who want momentum. We don't rush it. In these homes the mistakes are expensive to undo, and in August heat the gate automation and boundary gear gets tested hard anyway. Better to get the sequence right the first time.

A full renovation in Sector P starts around AED 80,000 for a bathroom strip-out and refresh, but realistically you're looking at AED 165,000 to AED 480,000 once you touch the kitchen, flooring and partitions. A Lakeshore Mansions full fit-out with custom joinery runs well past that. The reason isn't the labour — it's the coordination. These villas have separate domestic, irrigation and pool tanks, so any wet works mean shutting down and recommissioning the right lines. Large-format electric gates and boundary automation need a safety inspection before we touch the boundary wall, because the control gear is often buried in a plant room off the garage.

Timeline-wise, a bathroom refresh takes about 3 weeks. A kitchen fit-out with joinery is 6 to 8 weeks. Full villa renovation is 4 to 7 months, and summer slows everything — plaster and screed don't cure the way you want above 45°C, so we schedule pours early morning.

Here's the honest part: the original build quality in some of these plots varies more than the price tag suggests. We've opened walls to find services run where the drawings say they aren't, and that adds days, not hours, to the programme. Budget a 15% contingency and don't lock your move-in date until we've done the strip-out.