Drywall and partition walls in Berlin

Adding a wall is how a two-room Berlin flat becomes a three-room one, and how a high-ceilinged room with no storage gets a wardrobe run. Taking one out is how a warren of small rooms turns into somewhere you’d want to live. Both are routine — as long as somebody has worked out which walls are holding the building up.

What’s included

Metal and timber stud partitions, plasterboard both sides, insulation, boarding and taping, drop and suspended ceilings, boxing in pipework and services, forming openings and closing them up, taking out non-structural walls, and making good afterwards ready for decorating.

If the wall carries load, I don’t touch the structural side. An engineer specifies it and I build to what they’ve specified.

How the job actually runs

1. Work out what the wall is doing. On removals this comes first and it isn’t negotiable. Any doubt at all and an engineer looks at it before anyone picks up a hammer.
2. Set out. Line marked on floor and ceiling, allowing for the finished thickness rather than the frame, and checked against how you’ll actually use and furnish the room.
3. Frame. Track and studs at the right centres, fixed into whatever the floor and ceiling actually are — in an Altbau that might be timber, might be fill, and probably isn’t level.
4. Services first. Electrics run and back boxes set while the frame is open. Noggins in wherever anything’s going to be hung later.
5. Insulate, where sound or heat matters.
6. Board, staggered, and the right board for the room — moisture-resistant in a wet area, denser board where sound is the point.
7. Tape and fill, in stages, sanding between them.
8. Make good and hand it over ready for decorating.

Berlin realities

High ceilings change this work more than anything else. A three-and-a-half metre partition isn’t the same build as a standard 2.4 metre one: heavier studs or closer centres to keep it stiff, boards that won’t reach in one length so the joints have to be planned, and everything done off a tower rather than a stepladder.

Second is what the floor and ceiling actually are. Fixing track into a solid concrete slab is easy. Fixing into a timber floor with fill between the joists, under hundred-year-old parquet you don’t want to damage, is a much more careful job.

Third is Stuck. Plenty of Altbau rooms have decorative cornice, and running a new partition into it is a decision you have to make deliberately: either the wall stops short and the cornice stays intact and readable, or you cut it and it’s gone for good. Worth thinking about, because it’s the sort of thing that shows up in what the flat is worth.

In Plattenbau it’s different again. Panel construction limits what you can cut and where, and internal walls are often structural in ways that aren’t obvious from looking.

One more: dividing a room can leave part of it without a window or decent light. That’s not just an aesthetic problem — it can decide whether the new space counts as a habitable room at all.

How long it takes

A straightforward partition in a normal room is two to four days including taping and sanding, spread over more calendar days than that because filler has to dry between coats. A drop ceiling in one room is two to three days. Taking out a non-structural wall is often a day for the removal and considerably longer for the making good to the floor, ceiling and adjoining walls where it used to be. People underestimate that part every time.

What moves the price

• Whether it’s structural. Changes the job completely and brings an engineer into it.
• Ceiling height. Anything over about three metres costs more in materials, access and time.
• Sound. A partition built to actually stop sound is a different specification from one built to divide space.
• Services in the wall. Electrics, and boxing in any existing pipework, add work.
• What the fixings go into. Solid slab is quick. Awkward timber and fill isn’t.
• Making good. On removals especially, the scar left across the floor and ceiling is the real cost.

Send a photo of the room and tell me what you want it to be — I’ll tell you what’s possible and where an engineer has to be involved.