Renovations in Holloway

Holloway holds an unusually mixed set of homes for one N7 postcode. Long Victorian terraces off Holloway Road and around Caledonian Park, a great many of them cut into flats and bedsits decades ago, plus upper floors sitting directly above shops on the main road itself. Renovation here very often begins by undoing somebody else's work rather than adding anything new. GS Renovation takes on that kind of project as a single package, appointing the structural engineer where openings need designing, coordinating the building control inspections, and running the site with one named project manager.

Undoing An Old Conversion

Houses subdivided in the sixties and seventies were carved up quickly and cheaply. The evidence is familiar: partitions landing in the middle of a joist span, a kitchen and a bathroom duplicated on every floor, waste pipes clipped down an outside wall to reach whatever stack was nearest, and a wiring installation extended in loops with no coherent circuit design. Putting a sensible plan back means removing what was added, resolving drainage to a single arrangement, and rewiring properly rather than patching. That work is unglamorous, disappears behind the plaster, and is the part that actually determines whether the finished flat performs.

Where a wall in one of these houses turns out to be doing structural work, or where an opening needs forming to make the new layout function, an engineer we appoint produces the design and we build to it with the propping specified. Fire safety is the other consideration nobody expects. In a converted house the escape route, the doors onto it and the detection system are all governed by the building regulations, and the specification is agreed with Islington Council building control at the outset. Sound insulation between flats is worth doing while the floor is open, because retrofitting it later means opening the floor again.

Flats Above Shops And The Practical Side

A flat over a shop on Holloway Road is a self-contained logistics problem. There is usually one street door, a narrow stair, no lift, no yard and nowhere at all to stand materials. The business below trades to fixed hours and structural noise directly above a shop floor is not something you can improvise your way around. We agree hours with the occupier before the first delivery, carry materials up in quantities that fit the stair, and bag waste as it is produced so it can go out at the end of the day rather than piling up on a landing.

Parking on the main road is restricted and unloading time is short, so deliveries are timed and, where a skip is unavoidable, the permit is applied for well ahead on a side street rather than the frontage. Extraction is the other recurring issue, since a commercial kitchen below can push heat and smells into a flat whose ventilation was never designed with that neighbour in mind, and it is worth resolving during a refurbishment while walls are open. GS Renovation is fully insured and provides the certificates before access is granted, which most landlords now ask for as a matter of course.

Where most Holloway projects start: whole-house refurbishment in Holloway, everything we cover across Islington, renovations in Angel, renovations in Highbury and how to plan a renovation.