Opening up a Totteridge house is a different job from opening up a semi. The plan is wider, the spans are longer and the depth from front to back leaves the middle of the ground floor short of daylight. GS Renovation handles the steel, the sequencing and the rear glazing, working to an engineer's design throughout.
Open plan across a wide N20 ground floor
A typical Totteridge scheme joins a kitchen, a breakfast room and a rear reception into one space running the full width of the house. That can mean two openings rather than one, sometimes with a column or a downstand where a single flush beam would be uneconomic. The engineer decides that, and it is worth knowing early, because a flush beam sitting up between the joists costs more in labour and steel but leaves a flat ceiling, while a downstand is cheaper and reads as a deliberate division between the zones.
Depth is the second issue. These houses are often ten or twelve metres front to back, so once the internal walls go the middle of the plan has no window near it. Rooflights over the new opening are the usual fix, and on a rear projection they are rarely contentious. Broken plan works well here too: a half height wall, a run of tall units or a steel framed glazed screen keeps a sense of separate rooms in a house that was designed to have them, without shutting the light back out.
Glazing the back of a house in the conservation area
Most people who open up the ground floor also want the back wall replaced with glass. Inside the Totteridge Village conservation area that is the part that needs permission thinking, not the steel. Conservation area status controls external alterations, materials and window design, so a wide aluminium slider on a visible elevation is judged differently from the same unit on a rear elevation hidden behind mature planting. Frame material, sightlines and whether the opening matches the original masonry proportions all matter to the case officer.
There is also the fabric question. Taking out the rear wall of a large detached house removes a load path, so the engineer sizes the beam over the new opening and checks what the ends bear onto, which on a corner can mean a post down to a new pad foundation. Barnet Council building control inspects the steel, the thermal performance of the new glazing under the relevant Approved Document and the structural connections before they are covered. We coordinate all of it as one programme.
- Lighting, heating and electrical reconfiguration
- Radiator relocation and underfloor heating in the new layout
- Ventilation and extraction planned for an open kitchen
- Utility and boot room space carved out of the new layout
- Rooflights and glazed roofs to bring light deep into the plan
The GS Renovation Difference in Totteridge
The steel is only half of an open plan job in N20. The other half is the daylight strategy across a deep plan and the consent position on the rear elevation inside the conservation area. GS Renovation runs both: engineer appointed and built to, rooflights and glazing detailed properly, Barnet building control managed through to certificate, and one team on site rather than a chain of subcontractors.
- Beam depth checked against ceiling heights before you commit
- Registered in England, Companies House no. 14611254
- Structure and finishes delivered by one team on one programme
- Photographs kept at each stage for your records
- Free, no-obligation quotations
- The layout planned around how you actually use the ground floor