Overview
K&K Inwestycje – Mistrzowska sp. z o.o. sells semi-detached and detached houses in the 970k-2.95M PLN gross segment. The old website promised premium and delivered a generic real estate template (Houzez 4.1.1) with Elementor Pro layered on top.
In four days we replaced the whole stack with a custom child theme in an editorial chiaroscuro style: black panels for galleries and specs, cream for the standard finish, Bodoni Moda as the mega-display, Polylang for PL / DE / EN markets. Lighthouse Mobile and Desktop: 100/100/100/100, both devices, 62 passed audits, zero failed.
Brief
The client had an online presence that did not match the product. Baseline audit from 4 May 2026 surfaced:
- WP 6.9.1 + Houzez 4.1.1 + Elementor Pro 3.35.1 · 30 stylesheets, 23 scripts, 5 font families (Plus Jakarta Sans, Inter, Montserrat, Playfair, Lora) without a shared hierarchy.
- 4 P0 SEO failures · title with a typo („Mistrrzowska”), no meta description on home, the only H1 was the logo mark, zero JSON-LD structured data.
- Premium positioning broken · body background #f8f8f8 off-white, body text #222 on grey, nothing that signalled a 1.5M+ PLN segment.
Brief from the client: keep the full IA (housing types, map, finishing standard, contact), don’t lose Polylang multi-language, add premium aesthetics adequate to the price segment. No agency budget, no weeks of iteration.
Approach
Three architectural decisions set in the first two days.
1. Custom Astra child theme instead of Elementor
The client does not edit layout; the client edits content. A page builder adds 200KB+ CSS/JS, markup lock-in, and technical debt at every migration. An Astra child theme with Gutenberg blocks for content sections gives full control over performance and markup; the client still edits text and images in wp-admin without Hanse Studio as a gatekeeper.
2. Editorial chiaroscuro as design direction
After three mockup directions the client picked the one with the strongest light-and-shadow contrast: alternating black and cream panels, Bodoni Moda as the mega-display Volume I/II/III, Rosso bright #ED5947 as the single color accent, JetBrains Mono for label/number micro-typography. The generic real estate template (listing tiles + filter sidebar + carousel CTA) was replaced with an editorial magazine flow.
3. Self-hosted fonts + paramiko deploy
Bodoni Moda (5 weights × 2 subsets for PL/CS diacritics) and JetBrains Mono are self-hosted in the child theme instead of Google Fonts CDN: faster, no third-party request, GDPR-clean. Deployment via paramiko SFTP to cyber-folks with an 8-step pattern: sanity check, backup tarball, SCP put, syntax verify, filemtime cache-bust, wp cache flush, smoke verify HTTP 200 PL/DE/EN.
Build
The plan was split into 10 sub-plans for parallel execution.
- Phase 1 (hero proof, day 2): Bodoni Moda preload, 8 CGI renders, OHMD nav, preloader, page indicator, tokens as an additive layer on existing tokens.
- Phase 2 finish batch deploy (day 4): sub-plans 1-8 (marquee, § I Investment, § II Types 3 chapters, § III Map with 6 POI, § IV Standard 8 entries, § V Specs 8-cell grid, § VI Contact with Rosso accent form, Footer 4-col) as 14 files in a single deploy.
- Sub-plan 9 (final audit + Quick Wins): pre-LIVE Lighthouse audit score 9.0/10, 3 P1, 4 P2, 3 P3, zero BLOCKER. Three QW rounds: dlitem fix for the investment sidebar (12 a11y items), color-contrast Rosso bright for micro-fonts on black background (26 items round 1 + 13 round 2), basic og:image from hero photo.
Target stack: WP 6.9.4 + Astra 4.13.1 + custom child theme + Polylang PL/DE/EN, hosted on cyber-folks.
Results
Post-LIVE audit 8 May 2026. Lighthouse Mobile and Desktop, both devices:
| Metric | Mobile | Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 100 | 100 |
| Accessibility | 100 | 100 |
| Best Practices | 100 | 100 |
| SEO | 100 | 100 |
| Failed audits | 0 | 0 |
| Passed audits | 62 | 62 |
Lab metrics: LCP 1190ms, TTFB 989ms, CLS 0.00.
SEO and compliance
- JSON-LD
@graphwith 5 items: Organization (K&K Inwestycje), LocalBusiness (Mistrzowska Park, Żydowce/Szczecin, geo coords), 3× RealEstateListing (Hinc 303.6m² 2.95M, Twin 154.56m² 1.5M, 4-unit 100.67m² from 970k gross). - hreflang ×7 cross-language alternates, OG image, Twitter Card, canonical URLs per language.
- 5 security headers: HSTS preload-ready, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy.
- 9 legal pages PL + DE + EN (privacy / cookies / GDPR / DSGVO terminology with
Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f, Bauträgervertrag, Treuhandkonto for DE).
Network footprint delta
| Before (Houzez + Elementor) | After (custom child) | |
|---|---|---|
| Stylesheets | 30 | child + Astra core only |
| Scripts | 23 | minimal (Polylang + child) |
| Fonts | 5 families from Google Fonts CDN | 2 families self-hosted (Bodoni Moda + JetBrains Mono) |
| Page weight estimate | 3-5 MB | well under perf budget |
| LCP | unmeasured (Lighthouse timed out) | 1190ms lab |
Timeline
- 4 May 2026 (Monday) · baseline audit + 3 mockup directions built.
- 6 May 2026 (Wednesday) · client confirmed the mockup design 1:1 as target.
- 8 May 2026 02:00-03:05 · Phase 2 finish batch deploy, 14 files.
- 8 May 2026 03:36-03:42 · three rounds of Quick Wins (dlitem, color-contrast, og:image).
- 8 May 2026 · LIVE, Lighthouse 100/100/100/100.
Testimonial
Client testimonial will be added after the first 30-day milestone (June 2026), once form submission count and Search Console data are collected.