A full refurbishment in Oakwood usually means taking a house that has absorbed ninety years of small alterations and making the whole thing consistent again. GS Renovation runs those projects with one team and one programme: structure first, then services, then finishes, in an order that means nothing good is destroyed to reach something behind it.
What a 1930s Oakwood house hides behind the plaster
These were among the first houses built with cavity walls, and what is in the cavity now is anyone's guess: nothing at all, blown fibre from a 1980s grant scheme that has slumped and left a cold band at the top, or foam. Wall ties of that era corrode, and the symptom is regular horizontal cracking every few courses on the most exposed elevation. Under the ground floor you usually find ash and clinker heaped against the sleeper walls, quietly blocking the airbricks that floor depends on to stay dry.
The other thing to plan for is asbestos. Textured ceiling coatings, some floor tiles and their bitumen adhesive, cement soffits and old flue pipes were all common in the decades after these houses went up, so a refurbishment and demolition survey by a qualified specialist is arranged before a wall comes down, not after somebody has sanded a ceiling. It is a small cost against the price of the project and it settles the question for good. Where anything is found, licensed removal happens before the strip out starts.
Sequencing a whole house in N14
Order is what makes a refurbishment run. Structure first, so beams and any underpinning are done while the house is stripped of finishes and building control can see everything. Then strip out, first fix wiring and pipework, insulation, boarding and plaster, then screeds and floors, then kitchen and bathrooms, then second fix, then decoration. Bringing a kitchen forward because a supplier happened to have a convenient delivery slot is how a brand new worktop ends up living under a plasterer's boots for the best part of three weeks.
We also settle early which rooms stay habitable if you are living through it, and where the dust barrier goes. Most Oakwood houses have a rear garden long enough to take a materials store and a welfare unit, which keeps the house itself considerably cleaner than a project run out of the front bedroom. Electrics and any structural work are notified and certified under the Building Regulations as we go, with Enfield Council or an approved inspector signing the whole thing off at completion and issuing the certificate.
- Staircase repair, replacement and balustrade work
- Roof repairs, gutters, fascias and rainwater goods
- Waste clearance, dust protection and daily site tidying
- Loft, floor and wall insulation upgrades
- Sash window overhaul, draught proofing and secondary glazing
The GS Renovation Difference in Oakwood
A whole house refurbishment fails on sequence far more often than on workmanship. We hold one programme, run the trades in an order that does not force rework, survey for asbestos before the strip out rather than during it, and hand over the certificates at the end. The founder's 30+ years of hands on experience, one point of contact, and no chain of subcontractors for you to chase.
- Waste cleared as we go, not left piled in the garden
- Protected routes through the house so you can keep living in it
- Room by room handover so you can move back in stages
- Itemised pricing, so you can see what every stage costs
- Materials priced at options, so you choose the finish
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