Renovations in Streatham

Streatham's houses lean Edwardian rather than Victorian, and that difference is worth understanding before you draw a new layout. Frontages tend to be wider, bays squarer, rooms better lit and roofs more often hipped, and the long parades running along Streatham High Road put flats above shops into the mix as well. Between Streatham Common, the Rookery and Streatham station you find both extremes on the same walk. GS Renovation covers SW16 without holding premises here, so what you get is a contractor who plans the access rather than one who happens to be nearby. Quotations are free and carry no obligation.

Edwardian stock and how it takes alteration

An Edwardian house in this part of the borough generally gives you more to work with than its Victorian neighbour. Rooms are wider, the hall is more generous, and the rear is often already stepped rather than a bare closet wing, so opening the ground floor produces a genuinely usable space. The construction is still solid masonry in most cases, with timber floors and a cut roof, so any wall taken out needs a beam designed by a structural engineer. We appoint that engineer, build precisely to the design, and never write the calculations ourselves.

The defects follow the type. Square Edwardian bays sit on their own shallow footings and carry a lintel over the opening, and where that lintel is timber it can sag and drop the brickwork above, cracking the reveals. Hipped roofs spread outwards when purlin support has been removed by an earlier conversion. And a good many SW16 houses have had a rear wall opened by a previous owner with no record at all. We open up, inspect and photograph these areas at survey, because a beam priced on assumption is a beam priced wrongly.

Flats above the shops on Streatham High Road

A flat over a working shop is a different building to renovate. There is normally one street door, no rear access worth using, no lift, and a business below whose trading hours dictate when noisy work can happen. Materials come up a single staircase, which rules out long lengths of steel unless the engineer can specify sections that will actually turn the corners, so we measure that stair before anything is ordered. Waste comes back down the same way. We agree a schedule with the occupier below rather than arriving and hoping, and we protect the shared entrance every day we are there.

Fire separation is the technical point people miss in a mixed use building. The floor between a commercial unit and the flat above is a compartment floor, and drilling it for pipes or downlights, or cutting into it for a new bathroom, has to be reinstated to keep that separation intact. Escape routes and alarm arrangements come under Part B. Add the leasehold layer, where a freeholder's licence to alter comes before design and permitted development rights do not exist, and the paperwork sequence matters as much as the trowel work. We coordinate the building control side with Lambeth Council throughout.

Where most Streatham projects start: whole-house refurbishment in Streatham, everything we cover across Lambeth, renovations in Brixton, renovations in Clapham and building regulations explained.