Renovations in Old Street

The residential blocks that went up around the Old Street roundabout over the last two decades are a different proposition to the older EC1 conversions near Bunhill Fields and Whitecross Street Market. They are framed in concrete, partitioned in plasterboard on metal studs, served by risers, and wired into building-wide detection and access systems. Renovating one is less about structure and more about working correctly inside a managed environment. GS Renovation handles that end of the market with the paperwork front-loaded: insurance certificates, method of working, and one named project manager the building manager can actually reach.

Renovating Inside A Managed Building

Before any tool arrives, the building has requirements of its own. Most managed blocks want to see the contractor's public liability cover, an outline of the works, agreed working hours, a booked service lift, a nominated waste route and confirmation that nothing touches fire compartmentation, sprinkler heads or detection without formal approval. We supply that pack up front rather than assembling it under pressure on the first morning, because a refused access request costs a week. Lobbies, lift cars and corridors are protected before materials move through them, and they are inspected with the building manager at the start and again at handover.

Inside the flat, the framing tells you what is possible. Partitions on metal studs come out readily, core walls and anything enclosing a riser do not, and the position of the soil stack effectively fixes where wet rooms can sit. Where an alteration does approach anything structural, the freeholder's consent and a structural engineer's design both come first and we build only to that drawing. Notifiable work is registered with Islington Council building control or an approved inspector, and we arrange the inspections and hand over the certification with the rest of the completion file.

Where The Real Gains Are In A Framed Flat

When the walls, risers and drainage are largely fixed, the difference between a flat that works and one that irritates you daily comes down to what is built into it. Developer-standard kitchens and bathrooms in these blocks were specified to a schedule, not to how you cook or how many people share a bathroom at eight in the morning. Replacing them, and building joinery to the millimetre into every awkward recess, a wardrobe wall, a utility cupboard housing the appliances, a hallway that finally holds coats and a hoover, changes the daily experience of the flat far more than the floor plan would.

Bathrooms deserve particular care because yours sits directly above somebody else's home. Full tanking to the walls and floor before tiling, correct falls to the drain and a properly built substrate are the difference between a waterproof room and an expensive conversation with a neighbour. Acoustic underlay to the terms of the lease, lighting circuits split so a whole room is not on one switch, and additional sockets placed where furniture actually goes all belong in the same programme, since the floor and the walls are only open once. Doing any of it in a later visit means lifting finishes you have already paid to have laid.

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