Wall removal and refurbishment

No extension. We took things out instead, and the house got bigger.

Project type

Planning route

Borough

Renovation

Building regs only

Wandsworth

The decision that mattered

We have kept this project in the portfolio on purpose. It is by some distance the smallest job here, it added no floor area at all, and it demonstrates something the extensions do not: not every house needs building onto.

What we did was remove things. All the internal chimney stacks came out. The wall between the front and middle rooms came out. All seven windows were replaced, and the property was fully rewired and replumbed throughout.

Chimney breasts are the most overlooked space in a terrace

A chimney breast takes roughly a third of a metre off a wall, in every room it passes through, on every floor. Remove them and you get usable wall back on the ground floor, the first floor and often the loft — space you already own and are currently heating.

The critical detail is what happens above. If a stack is removed on lower floors but retained higher up, whatever remains must be properly supported — and gallows brackets are not universally acceptable to building control. That question is settled by structural design and inspection, not by assumption, and it is the part that separates a chimney removal done properly from one that stores up a problem for the next owner's survey.

Worth knowing if you are planning the same thing

If you are rewiring or replumbing, do it in the same programme as any structural work. Chasing walls and lifting floors is disruptive and it is far cheaper to do once. The single most expensive way to renovate a house is one trade at a time over five years.

Start with a survey, not a guess

If your house is a similar shape, most of the same decisions will apply. We will come and look, and tell you what the building allows before anyone spends anything.

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