Home Renovation Amersham

Amersham is two towns of different ages, and a whole house renovation runs differently in each. Amersham-on-the-Hill did not exist as a settlement before its railway station opened in 1892. Across the two areas covering the town, the Valuation Office Agency counts 7,670 dwellings, 2,430 of them built before 1945.

For Amersham, on London-derived ranges a full house refurbishment typically costs £40,000 to £150,000 or more; Buckinghamshire work generally runs below that. GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Amersham: we carry the structure, services and finishes as one contract.

The two rooms that cost the most have their own pages, with prices: kitchen renovation in Amersham and bathroom renovation in Amersham. In the 78% of homes here that are houses, moving the kitchen usually means opening up the back of the ground floor, which is structural work.

Two towns of different ages

Amersham-on-the-Hill did not exist as a settlement before the opening of its railway station in 1892, and the council records that it began to grow in earnest after the First World War. The Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Company bought 78 acres at Amersham in 1929 and began building the Weller Estate in 1931 or 1932, the last of the Metroland estates and the furthest from London.

The numbers follow the history. Across the two areas covering Amersham the Valuation Office Agency counts 7,670 dwellings, of which 2,430 were built before 1945. Whether you are planning a residential refurbishment of an Old Town house or a room by room house renovation on the Weller Estate, the programme has to be written around what the fabric actually is, so we survey before we price.

Housing in Amersham

Take the 7,670 or so homes the valuation list gives Amersham: 22% flats, 78% houses, 11% from before 1919, 21% interwar and 68% post-war. 31% of homes here are detached; a detached house in Amersham is usually scaffolded from its own land.

Renovating inside the Old Town conservation area

The designation is long standing and heavily listed. Amersham Old Town Conservation Area was designated in 1969 and its boundary was amended in 1992, and the council's own leaflet records 151 listed buildings within it. Listed building consent is a separate application from planning permission and from building regulations.

Roof lines there are part of the character. The council's appraisal notes that the height of the eaves above the pavement varies considerably, creating undulating roof lines punctuated by an assortment of dormer windows which give some buildings a third storey. That is the context the council applies to any external change you propose.

Roof alterations in the interwar conservation areas

Both appraisals say what is acceptable. On the Weller Estate the council asks that any windows put into visible roofslopes are rooflights or small dormers with hipped and tiled roofs. Large or flat roofed dormers, it says, would disrupt the sweeping lines of the roof. In Elm Close it says large or flat roofed dormer windows and large rooflights should not be constructed in front roofslopes.

Adopted Policy H18 backs that up across the former Chiltern district, which includes Amersham. It states that any dormer window which is flat roofed and excessively large in width or height in relation to the roof it sits in will be refused.

Materials have to match

Adopted Policy H15 requires that the external materials, windows and doors of an extension match or harmonise with those of the existing dwelling. In Elm Close the existing is unusual. The council describes houses two storeys high, built of pale grey and brown concrete blocks with brown tiled roofs, virtually all unpainted with exposed blockwork. Matching that is a sourcing exercise, and it belongs at the start of a renovation rather than the end.

• Loft, floor and wall insulation upgrades
• Project management from first survey to final handover
• Central heating upgrades, new radiators and pipework

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for Old Amersham and Amersham-on-the-Hill & Chesham Bois. Counts rounded by the VOA.

If you are weighing up home renovation in Amersham, it may help to read load-bearing wall removal in Amersham, home renovation in Chesham, builders in London, how we run a London renovation, how we handle home renovation across London and How Long a Renovation Takes.

The GS Renovation Difference in Amersham

A renovation needs one contractor holding the whole programme, and we travel for that work. Amersham is around 18 miles from our base in Potters Bar, so we plan the job in continuous phases rather than scattered visits. One point of contact runs the engineer, the trades and the Buckinghamshire Council inspections. We are fully insured, quotations are free and carry no obligation, and we are rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder.

• First fix and second fix planned around a realistic decorating date
• A snagging list agreed and worked through before handover
• Clean, tidy and reliable tradespeople

Checked by Abdelaaziz Saaid, founder and director of GS Renovation Ltd (Companies House no. 14611254). Structural design is by the consulting engineer appointed to your project.