Renovations in Golders Green

Edwardian builders in NW11 had more room and more money to work with than their Victorian predecessors, and it shows. Houses off Golders Green Road tend to have wider frontages, deeper halls, heavier joinery, larger bay windows and more generous rear plots than a comparable house a generation older. They are also large enough that many have been extended, divided or both. GS Renovation refurbishes these houses in full and works on the flats within the converted ones, appointing structural engineers where a design is required and coordinating building control from application through to completion certificate.

Doing Justice To An Edwardian House

The joinery is usually the first thing worth saving. Wide staircases with turned balusters, panelled doors, picture rails and window frames of slow-grown timber will outlast anything that would replace them, and repairing them is generally quicker and less disruptive than a full swap. Coloured and leaded glass in a front door or a stair window is repairable too, and the tiled path and porch can be relaid rather than concreted over. A renovation that keeps these elements and modernises everything behind them is the version that still looks right in twenty years.

The awkward feature of a deep Edwardian plan is the middle of the house, which can be dark all day. Rooflights over a rear extension, a well-placed opening in a non-critical wall and glazing at the back all help, and so does not filling the side return so completely that the original rear windows lose their light. Heating a house of this size needs the system sized to the actual heat loss rather than to the number of radiators already on the wall, and that calculation is worth doing before a boiler is chosen.

Roofs, Lofts And What Sits On The Boundary

There is real volume in these roofs. Steep pitches, purlins carried on struts down to loadbearing walls, and enough height at the ridge that a conversion often produces a proper storey rather than a token room. The structural work is not trivial: a new floor has to span between suitable supports independently of the existing ceiling joists, dormer construction has to be tied in properly, and the stair position is usually decided by head height rather than by preference. The engineer we appoint designs the steelwork and the floor, and we construct to it under building control inspection.

Where the house is semi-detached or terraced, a loft conversion involves the shared wall, so party wall notice goes to the neighbour before beams bear into it or a dormer is built up to it. Designations vary considerably across NW11, and addresses near the boundary with Hampstead Garden Suburb sit under additional controls, so we check with Barnet Council what applies to your specific address before any design money is spent. That check takes very little time and occasionally saves an entire scheme from being drawn twice, which is a considerably better outcome than learning about a restriction once the drawings are already with the planning department.

Where most Golders Green projects start: whole-house refurbishment in Golders Green, everything we cover across Barnet, renovations in Finchley, renovations in Hendon and full house renovation cost.