Renovations in Peckham

Peckham's housing is Victorian at heart and heavily altered on top. The terraces running off Rye Lane and around Peckham Rye were built with a bay front, a rear closet wing and a narrow side return, and a large share of them were divided into flats and bedsits during the last century. Renovations in SE15 are as much about undoing old work as adding new. GS Renovation carries out structural openings, extensions, lofts, kitchens and bathrooms across the postcode, appointing the engineer and coordinating Southwark Council building control from first visit to completion certificate.

What a Peckham terrace hides behind the plaster

Strip a room back in SE15 and the same findings come up again and again. Solid nine inch brickwork with no cavity, lath and plaster ceilings that have parted from their joists, suspended timber floors sitting on low sleeper walls, and airbricks rendered over or buried by a raised garden path. On top of that sits the legacy of the flat conversion years: joists notched almost through for waste pipes, a chimney breast taken out at first floor with nothing carrying the stack above it, and cabling that has been extended rather than replaced.

None of that is a reason to panic, but it does change the order of work. We open up and look before anything is priced as certain, and where load paths have been interfered with, the structural engineer we appoint inspects and issues a design for us to build to. Unsupported stacks get gallows brackets or a beam, notched joists are sistered or replaced, and floor voids are given back their cross ventilation. Where earlier work was never signed off, Southwark Council can regularise it, and we prepare what the inspector needs to see.

Turning divided houses back into single homes

A good proportion of our Peckham renovations start with a house that is legally one dwelling again but still laid out as two or three. Kitchens sit on landings, there are meters in odd cupboards, and the staircase has been boxed in to make a lobby. Putting that right is a sequencing job. Services come out and are replanned around the layout you actually want, redundant soil pipes are removed from the rear elevation, and the hallway is reopened so the house reads as one home from the front door.

Structural changes usually follow rather than lead. Once the plan is settled, the spine wall on the ground floor often comes out on a designed steel beam, and the closet wing is opened into the side return to widen the kitchen. Because the beam commonly bears into the wall shared with next door, notice under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is served by you as the building owner before work starts. We prepare the drawings and information your surveyor asks for and phase demolition to match the agreed method.

Access, waste and parking in SE15

Most Peckham terraces have no rear access at all, so every bag of rubble and every length of steel travels through the hall. We plan that route before the first day: boarded floors, sheeted walls, a dust screen at the foot of the stairs and an agreed barrow line to the skip. Beams are usually split into sections that two people can carry rather than craned, which matters on streets where the frontage is narrow and there is nowhere for a lorry to stand for long. Timings are agreed with you the week before.

Kerbside space is the other constraint. A skip on the public highway needs a permit from Southwark Council, and around Bellenden Road and the streets leading to Peckham Levels a suspended bay is often the only way to keep a delivery legal. We arrange permits in advance and switch to bagged removal where a skip simply will not fit. One named project manager holds the programme, so you have a single person to ask when a delivery, an inspection and a school run all land on the same morning. Nothing is left standing on the pavement overnight.

Where most Peckham projects start: whole-house refurbishment in Peckham, everything we cover across Southwark, renovations in Dulwich, renovations in Camberwell and full house renovation cost.