Finishing a Shell Home: What Still Needs Doing and What Does It Cost?

What do you get with a shell handover, and what not?

“Casco” means the structure is complete: the load-bearing walls, floors, façade and roof are in place, and the home is wind- and watertight. What still has to be done inside differs from project to project. As a rule of thumb, a shell home usually has no finished floors, no kitchen and no bathroom, and often no non-load-bearing internal walls either.

This is how the work in a shell home is divided if you hand it over to us:

Fixed prices from our 2026/2027 price list, valid from 1 September 2026; market indications are typical prices in Belgium in 2026. Prices exclude VAT; for new builds and homes under 10 years old, 21% VAT usually applies.

Read the specification line by line. Sometimes the internal walls are there but not finished, and sometimes a screed has already been laid. What is already there does not need to be in your quote.

If walls still need to be built, having a partition wall installed is the first step. Only once the walls are up and the pipes are in can the plasterer begin.

In what order do you finish a shell home?

From rough to fine, and from top to bottom. Everything that disappears into a wall or ceiling goes in first. The floor comes last, so that it does not have to endure plaster, paint or ladders.

The biggest difference in turnaround time lies in step 3. A gypsum plaster layer can only be painted once it is dry, and according to Knauf that takes about four weeks. A skim coat in a new build dries in 3 to 5 days with us. If it needs to be faster, we set up heaters and fans.

That is why in a shell home we choose the route wall by wall. If you want a completely smooth, plastered wall, we schedule in the drying time. If speed matters, a skim coat with lining paper is the faster route.

This route also suits a new home. A new-build house settles and shrinks over the first few years, and shrinkage cracks in a new build show through in a hard plaster layer. Lining paper bridges those hairline cracks.

What does finishing the walls and ceilings of a shell home cost?

A worked example: a shell home with 230 m² of wall and 85 m² of ceiling, where the internal walls are already up. All walls and ceilings are still bare. These measurements are an assumption, not an average.

We calculate two routes for the walls. In both cases the ceilings are plastered, primed and painted.

Prices from our 2026/2027 price list, valid from 1 September 2026. Prices exclude VAT; for new builds, 21% VAT usually applies.

Route 2 is €2,415.00 cheaper in this example: €31.48 per m² of wall against €41.98. For many buyers, time weighs even more. With route 2 you do not wait four weeks for a plaster layer, but 3 to 5 days for the skim coat.

You can also choose room by room, for example a plastered living room and lining paper in the bedrooms and on the landing. If you want a colour instead of white, that adds €1.50 per m².

The structural part, such as the partition walls, electrics, floor and kitchen, is not in this calculation. We put that in the quote after the consultation, because it differs for every shell home.

If your home is not a shell but is handed over ready for wallpapering, most of the plastering falls away. You then arrive at the amounts for finishing a complete new-build home.

Don’t you have to arrange five tradespeople yourself for a shell home?

That is the biggest objection to buying a shell home, and it is true if you outsource everything separately. You then look for someone for the walls, an electrician, a plasterer, a wallpaper hanger or painter, and someone for the floor and the kitchen. And you make sure yourself that one has finished before the next begins.

In a shell home, everything depends on everything else. The plasterer can only start once the walls are up and the pipes are in. The floor can only go down once the plaster is dry. If one party overruns, the rest slides along, and so does your moving date.

With us, that sits with one party. Our four in-house building teams of four people each do the structural work, and our 97 in-house tradespeople do the finishing: 40 wallpaper hangers, 32 plasterers and 25 painters. You have one point of contact, and we schedule the trades one after the other.

It also saves money. We charge the call-out fee of €99.99 once per job, and a job smaller than 50 m² carries a surcharge of €249.99. If you have the finishing done room by room separately, you pay those items again and again.

How do you have your shell home finished with us?

Request a quote or call us on weekdays between 9:00 and 17:00. Send the specification and the floor plan, and tell us when the handover is. In a free consultation we go through what still needs doing and which finish you want in each room.

You then receive a plan and a quote for the whole job, with the finishing at the fixed prices from our price list. If you agree, we measure up and check the walls. For a new-build home, we can come and measure up even before the handover.

The final price and schedule are then fixed, and we start on the day we agree together. You pay 50% on the first working day, once all materials are on site and we have started, and 50% on completion.

We are active across Belgium: Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. Every year we finish more than 600 new-build homes. Whether you outsource everything or only the walls and ceilings, with us you can have your new-build home finished from bare wall to move-in ready.