Residential Refurbishments
Whole-house and single-room refurbishment run by one team: structure, services, plastering, joinery and finishes sequenced properly so the house comes back together in one programme rather than a queue of trades.
Free consultation and site visit. JCT contract with a 12-month defects period on every project.
The Service
Refurbishment covers everything from a full strip-back and rewire to reconfiguring a floor, replacing bathrooms and kitchens, or renewing finishes throughout. We plan the sequence, run the trades and hand back a finished house.
It suits owners of tired period property, buyers renovating before moving in, landlords upgrading a rental between tenancies, and anyone whose house works structurally but not practically.
The best time is before you move in or while the property is empty. Working around an occupied house adds weeks and makes dusty work harder for everyone, though we do it regularly where there is no alternative.
Professional help matters because refurbishment is mostly sequencing. Strip-out, structure, first fix, plaster, second fix and decoration have to happen in order, and a single trade arriving out of turn costs a fortnight.
From full renovations to kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, plastering, joinery and decoration.
Wall removals, new openings and layout changes designed with our partner structural engineer and building control where notifiable.
Rewiring, plumbing, heating and ventilation planned at first fix, with certification on completion.
Including conservation areas and listed buildings: a Grade II listed scheme in Notting Hill among recent work.
What It Costs To Get Wrong
Renovations rarely fail dramatically. They drift: weeks lost between trades, budget absorbed by rework, and a finish that never quite lands.
Each trade optimises their own week, not your programme. Gaps between them are where months and money disappear.
New finishes laid over ageing wiring or pipework means pulling them apart again within a few years to do the job properly.
Removing walls without calculations or building control risks the structure and creates a problem at survey when you sell.
Plastering over damp, movement or rot hides the symptom and lets the cause keep working behind the finish.
Without a defined scope and valued payments, small additions accumulate into an unrecognisable budget.
Our Process
We walk the property, note structural, damp and service conditions, and agree what genuinely needs doing against what you want doing.
Layouts, specifications and finishes are set out, with our ARB registered architect involved where the work changes the plan or the structure.
Building control, structural calculations and any listed or conservation consents arranged, then the trade sequence and programme fixed.
Strip-out, structure, first fix services, plastering, joinery, second fix and decoration, run by our own staff under a JCT contract.
Snagging, certification for electrical and gas work, handover and a 12-month defects period as standard.
What You Get
We coordinate the trades so each arrives when the previous one has finished, which is where the time saving actually comes from.
Damp, movement and dead services are identified at survey rather than becoming variations halfway through.
An ARB registered architect on hand means layout changes are properly considered instead of improvised on site.
Electrical and gas work certified, and structural alterations signed off by building control.
Valuation-based staged payments under a JCT contract, assessed against completed work.
£5m public liability, £10m employers' liability and a 12-month defects period on every project.
In Detail
Refurbishment scope varies enormously. What stays constant is the order of work and the parts of it you cannot see once it is finished.
Scope is agreed against condition and budget rather than assumed: some houses need everything, most need three or four of these.
The order is strip-out, structure, first fix, plaster, second fix, decoration. Reversing any two of those means undoing work: chasing a new socket into fresh plaster, or lifting a finished floor to reach a pipe.
Long-lead items, glazing, bespoke joinery, stone worktops, specialist tiles, are ordered against that programme rather than when the space is ready for them.
Older houses need breathable finishes, sympathetic materials and care with original features. Modern impermeable materials applied to solid walls frequently create the damp they were meant to cure.
Listed buildings and conservation areas need consent for work that would be routine elsewhere. Our architectural side handles those applications alongside the build.
Rising damp, penetrating damp and condensation have different causes and different remedies. Diagnosing correctly matters more than the product used to treat it.
Historic movement, undersized joists and previous unrecorded alterations are common in period stock. Where structure is involved we bring in our partner structural engineer rather than guess.
Where you stay in the property we phase the work, protect finished areas, and keep at least one bathroom and a cooking space live throughout. Site hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.
For landlords, refurbishment between tenancies runs against a fixed handover date, prioritising compliance items, electrical certification, heating, ventilation and fire safety, alongside the visible upgrades that drive rent.
Refurbishment is often best paired with an extension or loft conversion. Running them under one contract shares the strip-out, scaffolding, first fix and decoration rather than paying for them twice.
Because architecture and construction are both in-house, a combined scheme is designed as one project rather than stitched together from two.
Refurbishment is the cheapest moment to improve how a house performs, because the walls, floors and ceilings are already open. Loft and floor insulation, draught sealing, glazing replacement and heating controls all cost a fraction of what they cost as standalone jobs later.
Ventilation has to move in step with insulation. Sealing a period house tightly without providing controlled ventilation is the most common route to condensation and mould in a newly finished property, so extract, trickle ventilation and, where appropriate, mechanical ventilation are specified alongside the insulation rather than after it.
Where a property is being upgraded for letting, energy performance also carries a compliance dimension, and the work is prioritised so the certificate reflects the money spent.
Bathrooms and kitchens absorb a disproportionate share of a refurbishment budget and of the risk. Tanking, falls to waste, waterproof substrates behind tiling and correctly sized extraction are what separate a bathroom that lasts fifteen years from one that fails in three.
We set out sanitaryware, drainage runs and services before first fix so pipework is concealed properly rather than boxed in as an afterthought, and we agree tile, stone and sanitaryware selections early because they are frequent sources of delay.
Common Questions
Related Services
Single and double storey, side return and wrap-around extensions, designed and built by the same team.
Residential Extensions in Surrey & LondonAdditional bedrooms and bathrooms carved out of existing roof space, taken through planning and building regulations for you.
Loft Conversions in Surrey & LondonOpen-plan kitchen and dining spaces, with help selecting materials and access to our trade discounts.
Kitchen Extensions in Surrey & LondonOffice fit-outs, restaurants, retail units and schools, delivered with the same single point of contact.
Commercial Refurbishments in Surrey & London
A free consultation and survey, an agreed scope, and one team running the programme under a JCT contract with a 12-month defects period.
