Oakwood gardens are long, and the best thing about opening up these houses is what happens at the back of them. GS Renovation removes the internal walls, frames the rear opening and installs the steel to an engineer's design across N14, then deals with the less glamorous consequences of one large room: heat, sound and cooking smells.
Opening the back of an Oakwood house to the garden
Take out the wall between the two rear rooms and most people immediately want the back wall opened as well, which turns one beam into a portal frame: a beam over the opening carried on posts, with those posts holding the wall above and often the floor too. Deflection is the detail that decides whether it works. A steel sized only for strength can still sag several millimetres, and sliding door manufacturers routinely demand far tighter limits than the structural minimum before they will stand behind the glass.
So the engineer we appoint is told what glazing is going in before the beam is sized, not afterwards. Large sliding or bifold sets also want a level threshold that still drains, which on a long Oakwood garden usually means a channel drain across the opening and a fall running away from the house. We fix the finished floor levels at the start of the job for that reason. A threshold detail decided late is the one that ends up with rainwater standing against a door.
Living in one open room in N14
A 1930s house was designed with doors that kept the heat where you were sitting. Knock the ground floor into a single space and the heating has to be reconsidered, because radiators sized for two small rooms rarely cope with one volume that now includes a large area of glass. We check the emitters against the new room, and where the floor is coming up anyway, underfloor heating over an insulated build up is worth a conversation, particularly if you are laying stone or a large format tile.
Sound and smell are the other two. In one room the extractor stops being a nicety: a properly ducted hood taken through the wall at a decent diameter, with as few bends in the run as possible, is what stops the sofa smelling of last night's cooking. Hard floors, fresh plaster and a wall of glass make an open Oakwood ground floor lively to sit in, so acoustic underlay under the flooring, an insulated stud wall somewhere in the plan and deliberately placed soft furnishings are all a great deal better planned in than discovered later.
- Broken-plan layouts and Crittall-style glazed dividers
- Knock-throughs between front and rear reception rooms
- Rooflights and glazed roofs to bring light deep into the plan
- Ventilation and extraction planned for an open kitchen
- Bi-fold and sliding door openings onto the garden
The GS Renovation Difference in Oakwood
We plan an open plan ground floor as a whole rather than as a hole in a wall. The engineer is briefed on the glazing before the steel is sized, the threshold and its drainage are set out at the beginning, and the heating and extraction are dealt with rather than left as somebody else's problem. Enfield building control certifies the structure, and one team stays accountable throughout.
- Paperwork and certificates handed over for when you sell
- The house kept usable while the opening is formed in stages
- Building control applications and inspections coordinated for you
- Materials priced at options, so you choose the finish
- Lighting circuits zoned rather than one pendant in the middle
- Site left safe and secure at the end of every day