House Refurbishment Hammersmith and Fulham

House refurbishment in Hammersmith and Fulham is the smaller part of the local market, and we say so plainly. The VOA count puts houses at 23% of the borough's homes, with 21% terraced and 2% semi-detached or detached, and dates 56% of all homes to before 1919. So the usual brief is a Victorian or Edwardian terrace whose wiring, pipework, heating, plaster, floors and joinery need renewing together, without moving a single wall.

For Hammersmith and Fulham, 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 Hammersmith and Fulham: we renew the wiring, pipework, heating, plaster, floors and joinery of the whole house under one contract, and a registered electrician certifies the rewire.

Which Hammersmith and Fulham houses need a whole-house refurbishment

A whole-house refurbishment in Hammersmith and Fulham is nearly always a terrace, because terraced houses are 21% of the borough's homes and semi-detached or detached houses only 2%. The VOA dates 56% of all homes here to before 1919, 9% to between 1919 and 1939 and 34% to after 1945. For a freehold house, the age matters more than the style, because it decides what sits behind the plaster and how much of it can be kept.

The buyers vary more than the houses. Someone who has just bought a dated terrace wants the services renewed before moving in. An executor preparing a family home for sale wants the items a buyer's surveyor would list dealt with first. A landlord re-letting a whole house wants durable finishes and a certified installation. In Hammersmith and Fulham each of those briefs follows the same strip and renew order, with a different finish level and deadline, and we agree which one applies before we price.

Housing in Hammersmith and Fulham

Count the homes in Hammersmith and Fulham and you get about 95,080: 34% built since 1945, 9% between the wars and 56% before 1919, with flats at 77% and houses at 23%. Since most homes here are flats, where most homes in Hammersmith and Fulham are flats, a whole house is refurbished as one building, with a single intake for the services and one roof to keep sound.

Opening up the fabric of a pre-1919 Hammersmith and Fulham terrace

Older houses in Hammersmith and Fulham open up in a predictable order, and the surprises are in the same places. With 56% of the borough's homes built before 1919, the walls behind the wallpaper are often lath and plaster or lime on brick, the ceilings hang on laths nailed to the joists, and the floors are softwood boards over a ventilated void. Modern gypsum patched straight onto lime traps damp, so the repair method has to follow what the wall is made of.

Services are the second layer. Rewiring usually means lifting boards and chasing old brick, and the circuits are tested and certified by a registered electrician at the end. Lead or galvanised supply pipe, if found, is replaced, and a Gas Safe engineer carries out any change to the boiler or gas runs. We sequence the strip out, first fix, plastering and second fix so each trade finds the room ready, and we report anything hidden, such as a cut joist, before it is covered again.

Windows, doors and roofs under Hammersmith and Fulham designations

Check the designations before the outside of a Hammersmith and Fulham house is touched. The borough has 44 conservation areas covering about half of it. The council's list of property-specific Article 4 Directions includes Parsons Green (1), (2) and (3) and Central Fulham (1) and (2), and directions restricting some permitted development rights have been made on some properties in Hammersmith Grove. Where one covers your house, repairing sash windows, front doors and roof slopes like for like is the safer route, and any change of material or pattern goes to your designer first.

Listed and locally listed houses need more care again. Almost 500 buildings in Hammersmith and Fulham are on the statutory list, and it is a criminal offence to carry out internal or external alterations to one without Listed Building Consent, which can reach plaster, joinery and windows. The council also keeps a Local Register of Buildings of Merit, adopted in 2000. On a house on either list we record the fabric before stripping, set original joinery aside for repair, and work to the approved drawings once the owner holds any consent needed.

Scaffold, skips and working hours on a Hammersmith and Fulham street

Roof, gutter and chimney-stack repairs on a Hammersmith and Fulham terrace normally need a scaffold, and a scaffold on the pavement needs a licence that only scaffolding companies can apply for. We book the roof work the survey calls for so the scaffold goes up once and covers the stack, the gutters and the rear slope together. A skip in the road is the same: only skip companies can apply for the skip licence, with a minimum period of 14 days. A parking bay suspension for up to six bays for up to three days needs 8 days notice.

Noise is timed around the street. Hammersmith and Fulham Council tries to limit noisy building work to 8am to 6pm on weekdays and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays, with none on Sundays or bank holidays, and prosecution can follow a breach. We put breaking out, cutting and chasing inside that window and leave decorating for the quieter edges of the day. Where you stay in the house during the work, we phase it so one bathroom and a kitchen point stay in use, and screen off the rooms being stripped.

• Sash boxes overhauled with new cords, parting beads and brush seals
• Roof, gutter and chimney-stack repairs coordinated as the survey requires
• Consumer unit replacement, with earthing and bonding brought up to standard

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 25 statistical areas in Hammersmith and Fulham. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Next steps that tend to follow house refurbishment in Hammersmith and Fulham: home renovation in Hammersmith and Fulham, our Hammersmith and Fulham area guide, a building contractor for a whole-house refurbishment, building control on a house refurbishment, house refurbishment anywhere in London and Renovating a Victorian Terrace.

The GS Renovation Difference in Hammersmith and Fulham

A house refurbishment is a long chain of trades, and the risk sits in the hand-offs between them. We visit, open up where it helps, and give a written quotation with a programme that shows strip, first fix, plastering, second fix and decoration in order. The founder, Abdelaaziz Saaid, has more than thirty years of hands-on building experience. A registered electrician certifies the rewire, a Gas Safe engineer carries out the gas work, and the certificates come to you in one file for a sale or letting.

• A written scope and programme agreed before work starts
• Every wall of the house tapped and every circuit tested before the refurbishment is priced
• 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).