A full period-house renovation in Fulham.
A whole-house renovation rather than a single extension: full strip-out, new structural openings, a rebuilt roof terrace, a new bathroom and a restored original staircase.
- Location
- Fulham, South West London
- Property
- Period house
- Scope
- Whole-house renovation — strip-out, structural openings, roof terrace, bathroom, staircase restoration
- Role
- Client-side project management, appointed by the homeowner
The brief
A period house in Fulham taken back to its shell and rebuilt, rather than extended. The work covered a full strip-out, new structural openings, a rebuilt roof terrace, a new bathroom, the restored original staircase, and new flooring throughout.
Renovations of this kind are what most South West London period houses eventually need — the layout no longer suits how anyone lives, the services are long past their life, and the good original detail is worth keeping rather than replacing.
What made this one different
A whole-house renovation is not a bigger extension. It is several small projects running at once, in different parts of the same building, competing for the same staircase, the same skip and the same water supply.
At any given point there were builders on the roof terrace, a waterproofer in the bathroom and a floor layer downstairs. The useful question is never “is everyone busy?” but “is anyone about to be stopped by someone else?”
There is also the period-property problem: you do not fully know what you have got until you have opened it up. Almost every house of this age has something behind the plaster that was not in the plan, and the honest way to run a renovation is to expect that, hold a contingency for it, and price each find properly when it appears — rather than pretend the original number still stands.
Strip-out and structural openings
Back to the shell: plaster off, ceilings opened for rewiring, and new structural openings formed where the layout was changing.
This is the stage where a renovation either stays on budget or does not, because it is where the unknowns become known. Costing the surprises properly at this point — while there is still room to change the plan — is worth more than any saving made later.
The roof terrace
Stripped back to the deck, then rebuilt with new insulation and a proper falls-and-drainage build-up beneath the decking.
Roof terraces are the most common source of expensive trouble in London renovations, because a terrace is a flat roof with furniture on it, and it will find any weakness in the waterproofing within two winters. This one was rebuilt as a roof first and a terrace second — insulation, falls and drainage resolved properly before anyone thought about how the decking would look.
Wet areas and finishes, in parallel
Tanking in the new bathroom, herringbone marble to the walls, herringbone flooring downstairs, and the original staircase carefully restored rather than replaced.
Three of those four are the sort of work where the standard shows immediately and cannot be fixed afterwards. Herringbone in particular is unforgiving — the setting-out has to be right on the first row, or the error compounds across the whole floor.
The staircase was restored rather than ripped out. Original joinery in a period house is usually worth saving, and a replacement rarely looks as good as the thing it replaced — but it takes longer, so it only happens if someone protects that decision when the programme starts pressing.
Completed
New structural glazing onto the garden, the completed bathroom, and the landing with its glass floor skylight bringing light down through the house.
A house that reads as a period property from the street and works as a modern one inside — which is the whole point of renovating rather than moving.
Planning something similar?
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