House Refurbishment Kensington and Chelsea

House refurbishment in Kensington and Chelsea is a job for a small share of the stock: the VOA list puts houses at 16% of homes, with terraces at 14% and semis or detached houses at 2%. Across all homes in the borough, 65% were built before 1919. The work is renewing a whole stucco-fronted townhouse, mews house or red-brick terrace from the roof down: wiring, pipework, heating, plaster, floors, joinery and windows, without re-planning the rooms.

For Kensington and Chelsea, 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 Kensington and Chelsea: 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 Kensington and Chelsea house hides behind its plaster

The first job is finding out what the walls and ceilings are made of. With 65% of Kensington and Chelsea homes built before 1919, expect to open up lime plaster and lath in a house of that age, and deciding room by room what to keep. Where old plaster is sound, we patch it with compatible materials, since hard cement repairs on a lime wall tend to crack away and trap damp. Cornices and ceiling roses are recorded before anything comes down. If the house is listed, listed building consent covers works inside as well as out, so these repairs are agreed first.

A tall townhouse adds its own list. Stone or timber stairs have worn treads and loose balusters, floors over five or six levels have been lifted by every trade since they were laid, and the chimney stacks and parapet gutters are hard to see from the pavement. Where the survey finds rot in joist ends or wall plates, we splice or replace those timbers first, so the new services are fixed to sound structure rather than to something that will need opening again. Roof and gutter repairs are booked while the scaffold is up. A chimney stack shared with next door is party wall work: you serve the notice, and repairs start on written consent or an award.

Housing in Kensington and Chelsea

Kensington and Chelsea counts roughly 89,280 homes for Council Tax; 65% are older than 1919, 8% interwar and 26% post-war, with 84% flats and 16% houses. Most homes here are flats, and where most homes in Kensington and Chelsea are flats, a whole house is refurbished as one building, with a single intake for the services and one roof to keep sound.

Sash windows, listing and conservation areas in Kensington and Chelsea

Windows need checking against two regimes before you order them. The Royal Borough has consulted on a Windows Local Development Order to remove the need for separate planning permission to change existing windows in non-listed homes, and its Householders' Guide states that building regulations apply to all replacement windows. In Kensington and Chelsea that means thermal performance, safety glazing and escape openings still have to be met. We check the window schedule against both documents before ordering.

For Grade II buildings in the Queen's Gate, Pembridge and Holland Park conservation areas, a draft Local Listed Building Consent Order would allow double-glazed sealed units within the existing frames. It is still a draft. Similar work to buildings listed at the two higher grades would still need an application for listed building consent. We refurbish sashes, fit new units into retained frames or install new windows, strictly to whatever consent your address has. Your designer or agent confirms which applies and makes any application.

Scaffold, van bays and noisy hours outside a Kensington and Chelsea house

Plan the site day around the council's Final Draft Code of Construction Practice. It sets permitted hours for noisy works audible at the site boundary of 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday, with none at weekends or on public holidays. Demolition and concrete-breaking are high impact activities limited to 9am to noon and 2pm to 5:30pm. In Kensington and Chelsea we build the strip-out of a whole house around those windows, which stretches it over more calendar days.

A house front usually means scaffold on the pavement. Scaffolding, hoarding, gantries and mobile towers on the public highway each need a temporary structure licence from the council, and no highway work may start until it gives written approval. The council suspends parking bays for works where tradespeople use vans, not cars, and on a site with an agreed Construction Traffic Management Plan its Construction Management Team issues only the suspensions that plan allows. We book skips, bays and deliveries against the licence dates.

Rewire, replumb and heating across a whole Kensington and Chelsea house

Services are renewed as one job so floors come up once. Old lead or iron pipework, rubber-insulated cable and circuits added piecemeal over decades are common finds in a house of this age once boards are lifted. We plan the rewire and replumb together, keep notches in joists within safe limits, and have a registered electrician test and certify the new installation before the ceilings close. Gas work on the boiler and heating is done by a registered gas engineer.

The order of works depends on whether you are living in the house. An empty Kensington and Chelsea house can be stripped floor by floor in one pass: strip-out, first fix, plaster, second fix, then decoration. An occupied one is phased, usually leaving a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom running while the rest is done, which adds time and dust screens. Where walls, floors or the roof are renewed, insulation and Part L are addressed at that point.

• Consumer unit replacement, with earthing and bonding brought up to standard
• Pre-sale and probate refurbishments of empty houses
• Whole-house replumbing, including old lead and galvanised supply pipes

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 21 statistical areas in Kensington and Chelsea. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Once the house refurbishment work in Kensington and Chelsea is scoped, people usually go on to read home renovation in Kensington and Chelsea, our Kensington and Chelsea area guide, a building contractor for a whole-house refurbishment, a snagging list before a refurbished house is handed back, house refurbishment anywhere in London and Renovating a 1930s Semi.

Why Choose GS Renovation in Kensington and Chelsea

A whole house is many trades in one building, and we run them as one sequence with one point of contact. You get a written quotation after a site visit and a written programme that allows for the highway licence, bay suspensions and the borough's working hours. The firm is founder-led, so the person who prices the job knows old fabric at first hand. A registered electrician certifies the wiring, a registered gas engineer does the gas work, and your structural engineer advises where timbers need repair.

• First fix cabling on each floor inspected by the electrician before the walls are closed
• Free, no-obligation quotations
• A top-floor-first programme when your family stays in the house

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