House Renovations & Refurbishment

• Layout changes — removing or moving walls, opening kitchens to dining rooms, adding a downstairs WC or utility, reconfiguring bathrooms and en suites.
• Structure and fabric — steels for openings, damp and timber repairs, roof repairs, replacement windows and doors, insulation upgrades to walls, floors and roof.
• Services — full rewiring with a new consumer unit, new plumbing and heating (boiler, radiators or under-floor heating), ventilation, data and lighting design.
• Kitchens and bathrooms — design, supply and installation, including tiling, joinery and sanitaryware.
• Finishes — plastering, flooring, joinery, decoration, external render or repointing.
• Compliance — Building Regulations approval for structural, electrical, drainage, glazing and thermal work; planning permission where the exterior changes in a conservation area.

Partial renovations — a ground floor, or kitchen-bathrooms-rewire — are common too, and we plan them so later phases do not undo earlier work.

Barnet, Haringey, Camden and Harrow are full of houses built between 1880 and 1939, and they share traits that shape a renovation: solid 9-inch walls without cavities, suspended timber ground floors, lime plaster and lath, original slate or clay-tile roofs, and lead or iron services. Good renovation respects the building's construction — breathable insulation on solid walls, repaired rather than replaced sash windows where planning requires it, and structural openings sized for the loads a Victorian wall actually carries. In conservation areas (Hampstead Garden Suburb, Totteridge, Mill Hill, Muswell Hill, Highgate) external changes need planning permission and Article 4 directions may control windows, doors, roofing and render. See our guide to the renovation challenges unique to period properties.

Internal alterations to a house do not need planning permission (listed buildings excepted), but Building Regulations apply to structural work, electrical work (Part P), new bathrooms and drainage, replacement windows (FENSA or building control), and thermal upgrades to more than 25% of any element. External changes — new windows to the front, render, a porch, roof alterations — may need permission in conservation areas or under Article 4. Flats have additional constraints: a licence to alter from the freeholder, and no permitted development rights.

A full renovation with rewiring, new plumbing and structural changes is faster, cheaper and far less stressful with the house empty: trades can work in every room, floors can come up, and there is no dust-management overhead. For partial renovations we phase the work so a bathroom and a kitchen are always usable. We tell clients honestly which applies at feasibility; the guide on living at home during construction covers what to expect.

Old houses hide things: rotten joist ends behind a bay, a chimney breast removed without support, wiring from three eras, a soakaway instead of a drain. We survey before pricing — lifting boards, opening ceilings where we can — and we carry a stated contingency in the contract (10–15% depending on age and condition) rather than pretending nothing will be found. Anything discovered is photographed, priced and agreed in writing before it is fixed.