Renovations in Dulwich

Very little in Dulwich was built tight. The villas and larger Victorian houses around Dulwich Village, the park and the roads towards Dulwich College were laid out with wide frontages, deep plans, half landings and roof spaces big enough to stand up in, which is a different renovation proposition from the compact terraces of Peckham and Camberwell further down the hill. Bigger rooms mean longer spans and heavier steel, and original joinery worth keeping rather than replacing. GS Renovation works across SE21 on structural alterations, extensions, lofts and whole house refurbishments, with Southwark Council building control coordinated as part of the job.

Long spans and heavier steel in SE21 houses

The structural question in a Dulwich house is rarely whether a wall can come out. It is what size of beam the span demands and where the ends of it will land. Reception rooms here are frequently five metres or more across, and once you remove a spine wall carrying floor joists and possibly a stack, the beam gets deep and heavy quickly. That in turn drives the padstone specification, the condition of the masonry taking the bearing, and sometimes a column or a second beam picking the load up at a different point.

So the engineer's site visit happens early, before a layout is settled rather than after. We open up the bearing positions so the wall can be inspected for real, not assumed from a drawing, and we needle through to sound brickwork where the existing is soft. Detached and semi detached houses spread their loads differently from a terrace, which occasionally means a foundation pit is dug and inspected before the steel is ordered. Getting that sequence right is the difference between an opening that goes in cleanly and one that cracks the landing above.

Renewing the services without stripping the character

Houses of this age near Dulwich Park still carry their original shutters, deep skirtings, moulded architraves, ceiling roses and boxed sash windows, and a renovation that removes all of it to make wiring easier has taken value out of the property. We plan first fix routes around what is staying: lifting a defined run of floorboards rather than the whole floor, using existing service voids and redundant flues, and dropping cables from above where a lath and plaster ceiling would otherwise be destroyed to feed a socket. The result is a house that is easier to live in without looking altered.

Sash windows are usually repairable. Splicing new timber into a decayed cill, renewing the parting bead, replacing cords and reweighting the box gives a window that works properly and looks correct from the road, which matters on streets where the frontages are seen together. Behind the scenes we upgrade the consumer unit and circuits, replace ageing pipework, improve loft and underfloor insulation and rebalance the heating. The house ends up quiet, warm and serviceable while still reading as the period building it is. Notifiable electrical work is certified as part of the project.

Where most Dulwich projects start: whole-house refurbishment in Dulwich, everything we cover across Southwark, renovations in Peckham, renovations in Camberwell and full house renovation cost.