Renovations in East Barnet

East Barnet mixes interwar semis with older terraces, and your useful space is nearly always at the back. Houses around Oak Hill Park and East Barnet Village tend to have generous rooms at the front and a cramped kitchen behind, with a garden that is long enough to give something up. The structure behind the plaster differs between the two stocks, so the survey comes before the design rather than after it. We appoint the structural engineer and coordinate the Barnet Council building control application and inspections.

Where the Space Actually Is

In most East Barnet houses the answer is a rear extension, sometimes with a side infill where the plot has a gap to one boundary. That adds usable floor area where the plan is weakest without consuming the whole garden, and it puts the kitchen alongside the outside space instead of looking away from it.

How far out you build is settled by daylight rather than by the maximum footprint. Extending deeply pushes the original rear rooms further from any window, and the space in the middle can become a corridor. Rooflights over the junction between old and new are usually what stops that.

Levels and Drainage Behind the House

The relationship between the internal floor and the garden governs more than people expect. Where the ground outside sits higher than the floor inside, the threshold detail, the damp proof course and where surface water goes all have to be designed rather than discovered. Levels are surveyed before the foundations are set out.

Rainwater from a new roof has to reach a surface water drain or a soakaway sized for the volume and positioned far enough from the building that it does not saturate the new foundations. Connecting it into a foul drain is not acceptable. Where a shared drain crosses the site, the water authority's agreement comes before anything is built over it.

Living in the House While It Happens

A rear extension is largely built outside the existing walls, so the house stays usable until the point where the two are joined and the back wall comes out. That stage is the disruptive one, and it is kept short by having everything prepared before the opening is formed.

The kitchen is the exception, because it is usually out of use for weeks rather than days. Where you cook and wash during that period is worth settling at the outset. Screens, protected routes and daily clearing make the rest of the programme workable with the family in place.

Where most East Barnet projects start: whole-house refurbishment in East Barnet, everything we cover across Barnet, renovations in Finchley, renovations in Hadley Wood and full house renovation cost.