Renovations in Edgware

Plots in Edgware are generous by London standards, and the semis and detached houses spreading out from Edgware station and towards Canons Park were built to regular spans with straightforward geometry. That makes the structural side of an HA8 renovation more predictable than it would be in an inner London terrace. What is less predictable is what previous decades left inside the fabric, which is where an experienced eye earns its keep. GS Renovation surveys properly before quoting, appoints the structural engineer where a design is needed, and coordinates the building control applications and inspections throughout.

Opening Up The Ground Floor Of A Suburban House

The change most Edgware owners want is the same one: lose the wall between the back rooms, bring the kitchen and the dining space together, and get glazing across the rear. The spine wall in these houses carries first floor joists and often a chimney breast above, so the opening is designed by a structural engineer who specifies the section, the bearing lengths, the padstones underneath and the temporary support used while the masonry comes out. We build to that drawing and nothing else. Regular spans mean the answer is usually clean, but it is still an answer that has to be calculated.

Two-leaf construction demands care that solid brickwork never asks for. The condition of the wall ties has to be checked wherever masonry is disturbed, any debris bridging the void at the base of a wall wants clearing while it is accessible, and the moisture path around every new opening has to be resolved properly so the outer leaf keeps doing its job. Barnet Council building control sees the steelwork, the bearings and that weathering detail while they are still exposed, so those inspections are scheduled into the programme rather than squeezed around it.

What Older Suburban Houses Tend To Hide

Textured decorative coatings on ceilings, cement sheet roofing on a garage or outbuilding, old flue components and some floor tiles and bitumen adhesives from the middle of the last century may all contain asbestos. None of it is a reason to panic and most of it is harmless while undisturbed, but a renovation disturbs things by definition. The correct order is to identify suspect materials at survey stage, have them tested where there is doubt, and arrange properly licensed removal where it is required, before demolition begins rather than in the middle of it.

The other recurring find is a rear addition or conservatory built cheaply somewhere between the sixties and the nineties, on foundations that would not be accepted today, with a flat roof that has been patched more than once. Building on top of that structure is rarely possible without addressing what is underneath, and it is far better to know that before a first floor extension is designed over it. We open up and look, then tell you plainly what the structure will and will not support, so the decision gets made on evidence rather than optimism and the engineer has something real to design against.

Where most Edgware projects start: whole-house refurbishment in Edgware, everything we cover across Barnet, renovations in Finchley, renovations in Hendon and building regulations explained.