Building work in Fulham: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Fulham (SW6, Hammersmith and Fulham): the housing, the council rules that apply (Hammersmith and Fulham Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Fulham.

Fulham houses hold more original fabric than people expect. Under later carpets and boxing in the SW6 streets between Bishops Park, Fulham Palace and Fulham Broadway there are usually pine floors worth saving, cast iron fireplaces still in their openings and shutter boxes plastered over decades ago. On VOA figures, most addresses here are flats, where anything structural waits on the freeholder's licence. In the whole terraces, deciding what stays matters as much as what changes. We appoint a structural engineer wherever anything load bearing is involved and build strictly to the design issued, pricing after a proper look, not over the phone.

Fulham counts roughly 24,310 homes for Council Tax; 58% are older than 1919, 4% interwar and 39% post-war, with 76% flats and 24% houses. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 6 statistical areas in Fulham. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Chimney breasts and structural alterations in SW6 are separate jobs

A Fulham terrace can carry four or more breasts, and they take real floor area out of rooms that were never generous. Removing them one at a time is the usual approach, and each is a chimney breast removal job with structure in it. Whatever is left above has to be carried, usually on a steel beam an engineer has sized, or on gallows brackets only where the engineer and building control accept them. The flue is capped and ventilated so the remaining stack does not sweat, and the roof must be sound where a stack comes out entirely. Stacks are commonly shared, so notices under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 are part of the process, not an optional courtesy.

The other openings are structural alterations. Widening the opening between reception rooms, forming a new one into the closet wing, or taking out a wall to relocate a bathroom all move load somewhere it was not before. The engineer sizes the beam and specifies the bearings, we form the padstones, prop while the masonry comes down, and check for movement before releasing anything. Building control inspects at the stages that matter and signs off at completion. That certificate is what a buyer's solicitor will look for in ten years.

Roofs, valley gutters and water getting in come before any plastering

A lot of what presents as an internal problem in a Fulham house begins on the roof. Many of these terraces have a valley behind the front parapet, and the gutter down that valley is the single most common source of damp we trace in SW6. It silts up, the lead or felt beneath it fails at a joint, and water tracks along a joist for months before it appears on a bedroom ceiling. Renewing that lining properly, with outlets cleared and falls right, resolves what repeated redecoration never will.

The back of the house is the second culprit. Closet wing roofs are often low pitch or flat, patched several times, with rainwater goods discharging against a wall rather than into a hopper. Once water gets into solid brickwork it stays. So in a home renovation, roof, gutters, downpipes and any rendered elevation come before internal finishes: there is no sense plastering a wall still being fed. With scaffolding up for the roof, it is the cheapest moment to sort the windows and the pointing too.

Where to go next for work in Fulham: kitchen renovation in Fulham, house extensions in Fulham, the Hammersmith and Fulham area guide, building work in Parsons Green, building work in Putney and Renovation Order of Works.