GS Renovation installs steel beams and RSJs throughout Kew, where the TW9 housing stock is largely bay-fronted Victorian and Edwardian terraces with rear closet wings and side returns. With over 30 years removing load-bearing walls near the Gardens, we prop and fit steelwork to the engineer's sizing safely, coordinating structural engineers and Richmond Council building control from the first survey.
Load-bearing wall removal in Kew terraces
The typical Kew job opens the ground floor of a Victorian terrace, taking down the wall between the front bay and the middle reception, or removing the spine wall into the rear closet wing. Because these walls carry the floors and often the chimney breast above, we never touch them until a structural engineer has calculated the loads and specified the correct beam section, bearing lengths and padstones for your particular house.
Our sequence is careful and staged. We install temporary propping to support the structure, cut back cleanly, then lift the RSJ into position and bed it onto concrete or engineered padstones at each end. Only once the steel is bearing correctly and the propping is transferred do we make good, so the terrace stays stable throughout and your neighbours in the shared row are undisturbed.
Party wall steel work across Kew
In Kew's terraces the dividing walls and chimney stacks usually sit within a shared party wall, so where a beam bears into that wall or we cut a chimney breast back, the Party Wall Act applies. We flag this early, help you serve the correct notices on adjoining owners in good time, and keep a clear record of the wall's condition so relations along the terrace stay friendly and the works proceed without dispute.
Steel that lands on a party wall needs particular care with padstone bearing and the transfer of load into masonry that is decades old and shared with the house next door. We work to the engineer's details, protect the adjoining property, and book Richmond Council building control to inspect the steelwork before it is cased in, so you hold proper sign-off for the completed structural alteration.
When one beam becomes a frame
Plenty of Kew projects need more than a single length of steel. Combine a rear opening with a side-return infill and the structure becomes an L, with a beam along the old rear wall meeting a second beam across the return. Where they meet there is no wall to bear on, so one beam has to carry the other, and the connection between them becomes the critical detail rather than the beams themselves.
The engineer designs that connection: usually a bolted cleat or a welded end plate, sized for the reaction from the incoming beam, sometimes with a stiffener in the web of the supporting section. It is fabricated in the workshop to the drawing, not improvised on site. Assembly order matters too, since the supporting beam has to be in and bearing before the second one lands on it, and the propping is planned around that sequence rather than worked out on the day.
- Level, plumb and deflection checks before props are struck
- Goalpost frames where two walls meet at a corner
- Temporary propping and staged, controlled demolition
- Ceiling and floor levels resolved where the beam sits below joists
- Concrete and high-density padstones at every bearing
The GS Renovation Difference in Kew
Kew homeowners choose GS Renovation because we treat steel beam work as the structural job it is, not an afterthought. We coordinate the engineer, the temporary propping along your terrace and building control sign-off as one accountable process, backed by 30+ years of load-bearing removals across TW9 and Richmond upon Thames.
- Structural engineer instructed and coordinated on your behalf
- A written scope and programme agreed before work starts
- Free follow-up visit after completion if anything needs attention
- Making good and plastering priced in, not treated as an extra
- Beams boxed and fire protected to the approved detail
- Straight advice on what is and is not worth spending money on