Northiam Road

The brief

The clients owned a plot on a quiet residential street in Woodside Park and wanted a new house that would be unmistakably a family home: generous ground-floor living that opened onto the garden, four bedrooms above, a garage, and a street elevation that sat comfortably beside its 1930s neighbours rather than shouting.

Design approach

Our design team developed the scheme from feasibility through to the planning application and the technical drawings the site team built from. The front elevation borrows the proportions of the inter-war houses on the street — a hipped roof, deep eaves and a two-storey bow — while the rear is deliberately simpler: a single wide opening under a flush brick lintel, so the kitchen, dining and living space read as one room that continues out onto the terrace.

Construction

Milkov & Son carried out the whole build: foundations and groundworks, the masonry superstructure, roof, windows and doors, first- and second-fix trades, kitchen and bathrooms, decoration and the hard landscaping to the front and rear. Because design and construction sat with one team, details such as the porch brickwork, the door reveals and the terrace levels were resolved on the drawings rather than improvised on site.

Notable features

• Two-storey bow window and projecting brick porch to the street
• Full-width three-panel sliding doors to the garden
• Open-plan kitchen, dining and living space with curved island
• Detached garage and block-paved driveway
• Raised sandstone terrace with steps down to the lawn

Also reported by the project team: Underfloor heating to the ground floor; High-performance glazing and upgraded insulation; Feature staircase and rooflights (not photographed). These items are not shown in the photographs.

The outcome

The result is a house that looks as though it has always been on the street, with a plan that works for modern family life: one long, bright living space at the back, a proper entrance at the front, and a garden that is used because it is a step, not a journey, from the kitchen.