Renovations in Bexleyheath

Almost every renovation we quote in DA6 begins with a 1930s semi. The streets spreading out from the Broadway shopping centre towards Danson Park and the Red House were built to a handful of repeating designs, all with a cavity wall, a hipped roof, a front bay, a side path and a long garden behind. Consistency is the advantage. Spans, roof timbers and drain runs turn up where you expect them, which makes surveying accurate and programmes realistic. GS Renovation works across Bexleyheath on structural alterations, extensions, lofts and full house renovations, fully insured and rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder.

Getting a Usable Room Out of a Hipped Roof

The roof over a Bexleyheath semi slopes in on the side elevation, which is exactly where a staircase wants head height, so a straightforward conversion rarely works as it stands. Squaring that hip off into a vertical gable, then adding a rear dormer, is the usual answer. That is a structural exercise: the roof has to be supported while the hip is rebuilt, the existing purlins and struts that were bracing the rafters come out or get replaced, and a new floor is formed to carry the room, because the ceiling joists below were only ever holding plaster.

The engineer designs all of that and we build to the design, with building control inspecting the structure before it disappears behind plasterboard. What people underestimate is the effect on the floor below. The new staircase has to start somewhere, and in these houses that normally costs part of the landing or a slice of the small third bedroom. Working the stair out on paper before anything else is agreed avoids the situation where a lovely loft room arrives at the top of a flight that has ruined the floor beneath it.

Through Rooms, Old Steel and Chimney Breasts

A great many of these houses were opened up between the front and back reception rooms decades ago, and the quality of that earlier work varies enormously. We regularly find beams with almost no bearing at one end, steel sitting straight on brickwork with no padstone, and in damp positions, corrosion that has expanded and cracked the masonry around it. If you are renovating a ground floor that already has a through opening, it is worth having what is above it inspected rather than assuming that because it has stood for forty years it is adequate for another forty.

Chimney breasts are the other common gain. Taking one out returns useful floor area in rooms that were planned around open fires nobody now uses, but the masonry above still has to be carried, on brackets or a lintel that the engineer sizes, and the remaining stack needs capping and ventilating so it does not sweat. In a semi the stack is usually shared with the attached neighbour, which brings notice duties under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996. We prepare those notices and explain the works to the adjoining owner before anything starts.

Where most Bexleyheath projects start: whole-house refurbishment in Bexleyheath, everything we cover across Bexley, renovations in Sidcup, renovations in Welling and how to plan a renovation.