House Refurbishment Brixton

In Brixton a whole house to refurbish is the less common job. Houses make up 20% of the homes here, almost all of them terraced, and 47% of all homes predate 1919. So the house in question is usually a Victorian terrace in SW2 or SW9. For a house like that we renew the wiring, pipes, heating, plaster, floors and joinery room by room, repair the sashes, roof and chimneys the survey flags, and leave the plan of the house as it is.

For Brixton, published UK figures put a three-bed house refurbishment at £43,530 to £110,350, and London houses usually cost more, with a London architect allowing £1,800 to £2,200 per square metre before VAT (Checkatrade and Bradley Van Der Straeten Architects, 2026). GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Brixton: we renew the wiring, pipework, heating, plaster, floors and joinery of the whole house under one contract, and a registered electrician certifies the rewire.

What a pre-1919 Brixton house hides behind its plaster

Nearly half the Brixton stock is older than 1919, and that age decides what you find when the finishes come off. Ceilings and stud partitions are often lath and plaster, and the solid brick walls are bedded and plastered in lime, which needs to breathe. Past repairs in gypsum or cement can trap damp behind them. We open up a sample area early, so you decide between repair and replacement with the facts in front of you rather than halfway through the plastering.

Services in a house of that age have often been patched rather than renewed. Expect a mix of old cable runs, lead or iron pipe stubs under the floor and flues that no longer serve anything. A registered electrician tests and certifies the rewiring, and a registered gas engineer does any gas work. We sequence the first fix so floors come up once, joists get checked while they are exposed, and the plaster goes back over services that are already tested.

Housing in Brixton

For Brixton the Council Tax list gives about 21,700 homes; by type 80% flats and 20% houses, by age 44% post-war, 8% interwar and 47% older than 1919. Where most homes are flats, where most homes in Brixton are flats, a whole house is refurbished as one building, with a single intake for the services and one roof to keep sound.

Phasing a Brixton house you live in or leave empty

An empty Brixton terrace is the quicker refurbishment, because the whole house can be stripped at once. We take it back to bare walls and boards, run the first fix of cables and pipes through every floor, bring the plasterers in, then return for the second fix of sockets, radiators and sanitaryware before joinery and decoration. Where controlled work such as a new bathroom or a structural repair is part of it, Lambeth accepts either a building notice or a full plans application, and a building notice lets work start 48 hours after Lambeth receives it.

Living in the house while it is done changes the order. We work floor by floor, keep one bathroom and a basic kitchen running, and seal off dusty rooms with sheeting and zip doors. The heating is the hard part in winter, so a new boiler and pipework are usually planned for the warmer months or split into a short planned outage. Lambeth asks for its surveyor's first inspection to be arranged at least two days ahead, and we put that date on the programme you pin up in the kitchen.

Lambeth working hours, skips and parking on Brixton streets

Building work in Brixton runs to Lambeth's hours: Monday to Friday 8.00am to 6.00pm, Saturday 8.00am to 1.00pm, and not on Sundays or bank holidays. We plan the stripping out, cutting and chasing well inside those windows and keep quieter tasks, such as decorating and snagging, for the start and end of the working day. On a Saturday that leaves a short morning, so we do not schedule a demolition day there. Bank holiday weeks lose a day as well, and we show that on the programme.

Getting waste off a Brixton street takes planning. Only a skip company can hold a skip licence in Lambeth, and the skip company makes the application; a skip inside your own front boundary needs no highway licence. A skip or a delivery vehicle in a parking bay needs a standard suspension with 10 or more working days' notice, and scaffolding, hoarding or materials stored on the road need a highways licence. We line up the skip firm, the bay suspension and the scaffolder's licence before the start date, because a missing licence stops the strip-out on day one.

Sashes, front doors and roofs in Brixton's conservation areas

The outside of a Brixton house is where the refurbishment meets heritage rules. Lambeth has 62 conservation areas covering approximately 30% of the borough, and the Brixton conservation area (CA 26) was first designated on 20 October 1980, with its latest boundary change in January 2024. Inside a designation, repairing timber sashes, the panelled front door, slate roofs and chimney stacks like for like keeps you clear of most questions. Swapping them for uPVC, a new door pattern or concrete tiles is a different matter, and your designer should check it before anything is ordered.

Lambeth also lists Article 4 Directions on external alterations in all or parts of nine conservation areas. The Brixton conservation area is not named on that list, so check your address against it rather than assume either way. On a house covered by one, changes to windows, doors and roofs that would otherwise be permitted need planning permission, which you or your designer apply for. We price the sash overhaul, draught stripping and slim secondary glazing as an alternative to replacement, and fit the roof and gutter repairs the survey calls for once the scaffold is up. Rebuilding a chimney stack shared with next door is work that needs a party wall notice, and the building owner serves that notice first.

• Pre-sale and probate refurbishments of empty houses
• Floorboard lifting, joist repairs and relaying on every floor
• Timber repairs where rot or beetle turns up at strip-out

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 5 statistical areas in Brixton. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Useful next reading for a house refurbishment project in Brixton: home renovation in Brixton, house refurbishment across Lambeth, builders in London for house refurbishment, building control on a house refurbishment, our London house refurbishment page and The Order of Works.

Why Choose GS Renovation in Brixton

A house refurbishment runs through a dozen trades in a fixed order, and the risk is in the gaps between them. The founder, with more than thirty years of hands-on work, walks the house with you, lifts a board and looks behind a patch of plaster before pricing it. You get a written programme showing strip-out, first fix, plaster, second fix and decoration, with the inspections marked. A registered electrician certifies the wiring, a registered gas engineer does the gas work, and one team carries the house from bare boards to the final clean.

• Radiators, sockets and switches positioned at first fix, never after decorating
• Itemised pricing, so you can see what every stage costs
• First fix cabling on each floor inspected by the electrician before the walls are closed

Checked by Abdelaaziz Saaid, founder and director of GS Renovation Ltd (Companies House no. 14611254).