Mahogany panelling, a bookcase that organises the living room and deep greens in the kitchen and upholstery, with the sea in front of it all. Casa Caoba is a detailed renovation with interior design in Torremolinos: a beachfront home inside a residential building dating from 1968. The brief given to Klic Arquitectos came with a constraint that shapes everything else: to redistribute 247.85 m² of built area without touching the structure, without increasing the buildable floor area and without entering the building’s communal areas. In the end, the layout is set by two rather unphotogenic things: the existing soil stacks and the administrative route chosen.
The brief: what was there before and the approvals route
The home was divided up the way homes were divided up in the sixties: four bedrooms, a dressing room, a study, a utility room, a pantry, two bathrooms and a guest WC. The kitchen was a closed room of 19.32 m². The living-dining room took up another 43.56 m² on its own, with the sea in front of it and no connection whatsoever with the kitchen. There was no shortage of space; what was missing was order.
The works went through Torremolinos Town Hall by way of a Declaración Responsable (a sworn statement filed in place of a full building permit). It is a quicker route than a permit, but it comes with a signed declaration of what will not be done: no change of use, no increase in buildable floor area, no alteration to the structure of the existing volume and no works in the communal areas. It is worth knowing that this route is not a mere formality either: in Torremolinos it still carries fees and ICIO (construction tax), plus a waste management deposit.
The proposal: a single space and a service area
The first decision was to bring together what had been kept apart: kitchen, living room and dining room become a single space open to the seafront. The second was to move the work out of it, with a service kitchen that takes on the messy jobs and leaves the main area uncluttered. The third was a matter of numbers: four bedrooms come down to two, with two bathrooms and a guest WC, and an area for domestic staff is added, with its own living-dining room, integrated kitchen, bedroom and bathroom.
None of this can go just anywhere. The wet areas rely on the soil stacks that were already there, because moving a stack in a 1968 building means going into the shared service shafts, and that was ruled out from day one. Everything else is drawn over that invisible skeleton. The preliminary design was signed off in March 2025, after comparing layout options. It is the same starting point as in Casa Al Mar · Beachfront · Benalmádena.
Materials and construction
Mahogany gives the project its name and sets the palette: panelling, interior joinery and the living room bookcase, with deep greens in the kitchen and upholstery. Underneath lies a less glamorous specification. All the window and door frames and all the interior doors are replaced. The bathrooms are clad in porcelain tile – Bottega Caliza by Porcelanosa – and the rest of the walls are finished in emulsion paint. Brushed steel taps, with switches and recessed downlights in black: small decisions that are made early and save twenty arguments on site.
The ceiling is a continuous technical plane of plasterboard throughout almost the entire home, moisture-resistant in the bathroom and guest WC. Above it runs what nobody photographs: new electrical and lighting installations, plumbing and drainage adapted to the retained soil stacks, adapted ventilation, and aerothermal heat pump air conditioning with split-type indoor units in the living-dining-kitchen area and in the bedrooms. The building services are not subcontracted: they are designed within the project itself.
The interior design was delivered in July 2025 as a document in its own right, separate from the renovation project, with an illustrated, editable checklist – in Spanish and in English – so that the client could sign off item by item: taps, lighting, wardrobes. It means interior design decisions are not made on site and in a rush. This is how we understand renovation architecture with interior design, and it is also how we worked on Casa Caliza · Benalmádena Pueblo: one commission with two documents, not two commissions.
The process: from three quotes to the building site
With the design finalised came the bill of quantities, in September 2025, closed so that any building contractor would quote on exactly the same items. Three firms were invited to tender on that document between December 2025 and February 2026. Comparing three quotes against your own bill of quantities is the only way to know whether a quote is properly priced; without it, you are comparing different sheets of paper.
The Declaración Responsable was filed in April 2026 and work began at the end of May. It is still under way. Site management is carried out by the studio itself, with numbered site visit reports issued in both languages, like the rest of the documentation for the commission; the first is dated 9 June 2026. To be clear: Casa Caoba is not a finished project today, and the images accompanying this page are design visualisations, not photographs of the result.
The same end-to-end service – preliminary design, project, interior design, bill of quantities, tendering and construction – is behind Casa Brisas · Marbella, Casa Posh · Altos del Rodeo · Marbella and Casa Duquesa de Parcent · Soho · Málaga. If you own a beachfront home in Torremolinos, tell us about your project: the first things we look at are the soil stacks and the paperwork, in that order.
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Project data
- Typology: Detailed renovation with interior design of an existing home, within a residential building dating from 1968
- Use: Residential (home)
- Location: Beachfront · Torremolinos · Málaga · Costa del Sol
- Design year: 2024-2025 (preliminary design in March 2025; renovation project and interior design project in July 2025)
- Construction year: 2026 (started in May)
- Status: Under construction
- Built area: 247.85 m² (as renovated)
- Units: 1 home
- Client: Private client (individual)
- Structure: No structural work, expressly stated in the Declaración Responsable
- MEP engineering: Klic Arquitectos (electrical and lighting, plumbing and drainage, ventilation and aerothermal heat pump)
- Interior design: Klic Arquitectos (separate interior design project, July 2025)
- Materials: Mahogany, deep greens, natural stone, marble and warm textiles; Bottega Caliza porcelain tile by Porcelanosa in the bathrooms; brushed steel taps and black switches
- Site management: Klic Arquitectos (construction supervision, with numbered site visit reports in Spanish and English)
- Renders and 3D modelling: Klic Arquitectos
- Studio: Klic Arquitectos · architecture studio in Málaga
- Klic services: Design, site management and full interior design: preliminary design with compared options, renovation project, interior design project, bill of quantities, competitive tendering to three building contractors, handling of the Declaración Responsable and construction supervision
- Team: Klicstudio Arquitectura y Diseño SLP · Juan A. Goñi Uriarte (COA Málaga reg. no. 1206) and Ruth Buján Varela (COA Málaga reg. no. 1333)
