Renovations in El Serrallo, Tarragona
The fisherman’s house is narrow, deep, and short on light. Our job is to bring light in — with courtyards and skylights — and take the damp out, without erasing its seafaring soul.
How many hours of real sunlight actually reach your house in El Serrallo? In most cases, very few. And that, almost always, is the renovation that matters.
El Serrallo is Tarragona’s fishing quarter, right by the fishing port, with its seafood restaurants, the fish market and those low, traditional houses. Two-storey houses, narrow-fronted and deep, packed tight against each other along short streets. They have a charm that can’t be manufactured. And they also share a problem that repeats from door to door: the light stays in the front rooms while the back lives in darkness, with the damp off the sea always lurking.
The layout of a seafaring house, top to bottom
Before we draw anything, we work out why the house is in the dark. It’s almost always the same reasons.
- A four- or five-metre-wide façade and a long, deep footprint: light gets in at the front and back, but never reaches the middle.
- Cold ground floors with rising damp, made worse by how close the house is to the port and the water table.
- Narrow, solid staircases that split the house in two and cut off the light between floors.
- Small rear courtyards, sometimes bricked up or turned into a storeroom, which are actually an untapped source of light.
- Constant salt air that punishes joinery, ironwork and wall finishes if they’re not chosen with it in mind.
Bringing the sky down to the ground floor
Even the deepest room can be lit — you just need to bring the light in from above and from the sides. In an El Serrallo house that usually means a skylight over the staircase, a recovered interior courtyard, and an open stairwell that acts as a light shaft. We add light colours, insulation and waterproofing against the sea damp, and ventilation designed for this neighbourhood. The result isn’t a new house bolted onto the port: it’s your same old house, now bright, dry and comfortable. If you want a thorough job, we treat it as a full renovation, and when damp is the main issue, the bathroom is usually one of the first things we sort out.
We want to see inside your house before we talk about anything else. The first visit is on us.
Frequently asked questions
Can you add a skylight or open up a courtyard to bring in more light?
There’s almost always a way, and that’s the key to renovating in El Serrallo. Depending on the state of the floor structure and the roof, we open up a skylight that bathes the staircase from above, recover an interior courtyard that was bricked up years ago, or open out the stairwell so light falls all the way down to the ground floor. We look at it house by house: no two fishermen’s houses are the same, even if they look it from the street.
How do you deal with damp from being so close to the sea and the port?
At the source, not with a coat of paint that lasts one winter. We ventilate and air out the walls, waterproof where water is genuinely getting in, treat the ground floors, and choose materials that let the wall breathe rather than sealing it shut. The salt air in El Serrallo is constant, so the renovation is designed to live alongside it for years, not just to cover it up for a season.
Can I modernise it without it losing its seafaring feel?
That’s exactly what we’re aiming for. We keep the house’s proportions and a few details that tie it to the neighbourhood — a beam, a dado rail, an old tile, the joinery on a balcony — and build in modern comfort from there: insulation, good services, a bathroom and kitchen that actually work. The house gains a century on the inside and still smells of the port and the fish market next door.
Let’s talk about your renovation.
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Or call us 977 27 92 72