Renovations in New Cross

A great many New Cross houses have spent the last thirty years as shared lets, and the renovations we are asked for here are frequently about undoing that. Bedsit partitions, spare kitchenettes, mismatched fire doors and wiring layered up over several decades all have to come out before a sensible family plan can go back in. Add the streets climbing towards Telegraph Hill Park and the postwar infill dropped between older runs near New Cross Road, and no two houses within a hundred metres are the same. GS Renovation covers SE14 as a service area business and quotes free of charge.

Turning a shared let back into a house

Stripping out is the honest first phase, and it takes longer than people expect. Stud partitions come down, redundant kitchenettes and their unused pipe runs are removed, ceilings that were overboarded for fire separation come off, and the wiring is traced back to a board that has usually been extended more than once. What we will not do is assume a partition is non-structural because it looks flimsy. Original spine walls get boxed and skimmed until they resemble later work, so anything suspect is opened up and referred to the structural engineer we appoint before a single prop goes in.

With the house back to a shell the plan can be rebuilt properly rather than patched. That normally means a new consumer unit and a full rewire, replumbing, replastering and reinstating a coherent circulation route, then the ground floor opened up with steel designed by the engineer. Sequencing is everything on a job this size, and one named project manager keeps first fix ahead of plaster and plaster ahead of the kitchen. Electrical work is notifiable under Part P, and we coordinate the building control applications and inspections with Lewisham Council alongside the structural sign-off.

Victorian runs and postwar infill on the same street

Walk any length of street near Goldsmiths and you will pass solid brick Victorian terracing interrupted by houses rebuilt after the war on entirely different principles. Those infill properties often have cavity walls, concrete floors at ground level, standardised joist spans and sometimes a concrete lintel or beam already doing structural work. They are not harder to alter, but they are altered differently, and a method that suits nine inch solid brick will be wrong here. We identify the construction at survey and price it accordingly rather than discovering it once a wall has been opened.

The ground makes its own contribution around Telegraph Hill, where streets climb sharply and rear gardens step up or fall away behind the house. Levels between the existing floor and the garden have to be resolved at design stage, retaining structures may be needed at a boundary, and surface water needs somewhere deliberate to go. Foundation depth on these plots is determined by the structural engineer taking account of the slope, the subsoil and any nearby trees, and we excavate to that detail with building control inspecting the trench before concrete is poured.

Where most New Cross projects start: whole-house refurbishment in New Cross, everything we cover across Lewisham, renovations in Catford, renovations in Deptford and building regulations explained.