This time next year (Peckham townhouse renovation)
Discussion
Harry Flashman said:
Been looking forward to this thread! We are in the final stages of the full renovation of a house in Streatham - similar size, but not as interesting as yours. I would have loved a Victorian house, but we fell for a 30's house due to the street and location. Peckham is a great area to buy, and will carry on rising in value/amenities.
I have been posting on my thread sporadically - will do more as things start to look more interesting. If you would like a benchmark of how much things cost us, to keep a sense check on London prices, I'd be happy to share my geeky renovation spreadsheet with you. Just PM me. Total cost of a 2900 square foot renovation including loft has been around £200k. High. But not insane, spec. Almost Everything new except walls and roof.
Best of luck and please keep posting!
We lucked out with the location in a big way. It's a stone's throw from Peckham Rye Station (<10 minutes to London Bridge), two doors from an Outstanding rated school, backs onto Bellenden Road (the gentrifying hub of Peckham) and still close to the proper guts of Peckham for all the worldly treasures of Rye Lane. The hound also has some decent green space on our doorstep. To find all that with a ripe renovation opportunity, where we weren't paying for anything we'd be gutting, meant we couldn't say no (despite the lack of parking).I have been posting on my thread sporadically - will do more as things start to look more interesting. If you would like a benchmark of how much things cost us, to keep a sense check on London prices, I'd be happy to share my geeky renovation spreadsheet with you. Just PM me. Total cost of a 2900 square foot renovation including loft has been around £200k. High. But not insane, spec. Almost Everything new except walls and roof.
Best of luck and please keep posting!
One of my weekend jobs is to build my own geeky spreadsheet. Having yours as a reference and a template would be awesome, thanks. The jobs sound quite similar. We're going for 'high but not insane' too. Same floor area once extended, but we're also redoing the roof, excavating the basement level a little and extending at the rear. There'll be several steels going in, the floors need levelling and the walls need stripping back and making good after 173 years of settling. My budget is £300k, which sounds comparable after taking the extra stuff into account. That'll make your real world spreadsheet super useful!
Just spoken to the planning officer and he's going to recommend the plans are approved when they go before the board this week. As we're in a conservation area he was insisting on conservation style skylights on the top floor and on the flat roof extension of the lower ground floor. It seemed incongruous and illogical to demand conservation style windows on a modern extension with enormous panes of sliding glass doors on the vertical and I was able to argue him into seeing reason. Can't grumble about the top floor skylights though as that seems a reasonable demand. Nothing is guaranteed until the planning board has approved it but it's looking very promising now.
We met up with the seller of the house at her new home a few streets down and spent a couple of hours chatting. Lovely lady and as she's been there since 1969 her knowledge is a treasure trove of history on the place. She's a textile designer and worked on the lower ground floor (my new studio space), employing 3-5 people at a time. Her husband, the artist Paul Benjamins, worked on the upper ground floor and also had lots of people around. They've used one of the walls to mark the height of their kids over the years. Then it expanded to include their cats, their employees, the kids of their employees etc. Peckham was always quite a hub for artists. Every year he'd give his wooden floorboards a fresh coat of white paint, ready to get splattered again as he created his art. I'm keen to re-use some of the most interesting floorboards for something - I don't know what, yet - and preserve some of the history of the house.
Jaqui, the seller, gets on well with all of the neighbours (it seems many have been there for decades) and gave us a bit more information on our immediate neighbours. On our left is a young couple with a 2 year old kid. They've already posted a note through the door welcoming us and offering any help they provide. On the right is an older couple who've been there decades. I get the impression they're not so enthusiastic about change and they were the people who complained to my architect about not receiving the planning notice. Apparently other had received it so they got the impression they were being deliberately excluded as some kind of ruse. It seems they've raised no official objections. They've grumbled in the past about the tree in our front garden potentially destabilising the steps that we share, so they may be the kind of folk who like to complain. The party wall we share with the neighbours on the right stops at the top floor. The loft space is completely open. Apparently this was quite common in this period. Jaqui mentioned the neighbours were a bit sad it would be built up because they always considered it a fire escape.
On Sunday we've got the stags and hens from last years wedding coming to the house for what I'm calling the Before Brunch. I think it'll be nice to see the place as it is now, with all of its history on show, and then throw and After Party 'this time next year' when we've transformed it. Happily for you lot I'll be taking the SLR along and getting all the photos I can before we start smashing the place to bits, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
We met up with the seller of the house at her new home a few streets down and spent a couple of hours chatting. Lovely lady and as she's been there since 1969 her knowledge is a treasure trove of history on the place. She's a textile designer and worked on the lower ground floor (my new studio space), employing 3-5 people at a time. Her husband, the artist Paul Benjamins, worked on the upper ground floor and also had lots of people around. They've used one of the walls to mark the height of their kids over the years. Then it expanded to include their cats, their employees, the kids of their employees etc. Peckham was always quite a hub for artists. Every year he'd give his wooden floorboards a fresh coat of white paint, ready to get splattered again as he created his art. I'm keen to re-use some of the most interesting floorboards for something - I don't know what, yet - and preserve some of the history of the house.
Jaqui, the seller, gets on well with all of the neighbours (it seems many have been there for decades) and gave us a bit more information on our immediate neighbours. On our left is a young couple with a 2 year old kid. They've already posted a note through the door welcoming us and offering any help they provide. On the right is an older couple who've been there decades. I get the impression they're not so enthusiastic about change and they were the people who complained to my architect about not receiving the planning notice. Apparently other had received it so they got the impression they were being deliberately excluded as some kind of ruse. It seems they've raised no official objections. They've grumbled in the past about the tree in our front garden potentially destabilising the steps that we share, so they may be the kind of folk who like to complain. The party wall we share with the neighbours on the right stops at the top floor. The loft space is completely open. Apparently this was quite common in this period. Jaqui mentioned the neighbours were a bit sad it would be built up because they always considered it a fire escape.
On Sunday we've got the stags and hens from last years wedding coming to the house for what I'm calling the Before Brunch. I think it'll be nice to see the place as it is now, with all of its history on show, and then throw and After Party 'this time next year' when we've transformed it. Happily for you lot I'll be taking the SLR along and getting all the photos I can before we start smashing the place to bits, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
Gruffy said:
Just spoken to the planning officer and he's going to recommend the plans are approved when they go before the board this week. As we're in a conservation area he was insisting on conservation style skylights on the top floor and on the flat roof extension of the lower ground floor. It seemed incongruous and illogical to demand conservation style windows on a modern extension with enormous panes of sliding glass doors on the vertical and I was able to argue him into seeing reason. Can't grumble about the top floor skylights though as that seems a reasonable demand. Nothing is guaranteed until the planning board has approved it but it's looking very promising now.
We met up with the seller of the house at her new home a few streets down and spent a couple of hours chatting. Lovely lady and as she's been there since 1969 her knowledge is a treasure trove of history on the place. She's a textile designer and worked on the lower ground floor (my new studio space), employing 3-5 people at a time. Her husband, the artist Paul Benjamins, worked on the upper ground floor and also had lots of people around. They've used one of the walls to mark the height of their kids over the years. Then it expanded to include their cats, their employees, the kids of their employees etc. Peckham was always quite a hub for artists. Every year he'd give his wooden floorboards a fresh coat of white paint, ready to get splattered again as he created his art. I'm keen to re-use some of the most interesting floorboards for something - I don't know what, yet - and preserve some of the history of the house.
Jaqui, the seller, gets on well with all of the neighbours (it seems many have been there for decades) and gave us a bit more information on our immediate neighbours. On our left is a young couple with a 2 year old kid. They've already posted a note through the door welcoming us and offering any help they provide. On the right is an older couple who've been there decades. I get the impression they're not so enthusiastic about change and they were the people who complained to my architect about not receiving the planning notice. Apparently other had received it so they got the impression they were being deliberately excluded as some kind of ruse. It seems they've raised no official objections. They've grumbled in the past about the tree in our front garden potentially destabilising the steps that we share, so they may be the kind of folk who like to complain. The party wall we share with the neighbours on the right stops at the top floor. The loft space is completely open. Apparently this was quite common in this period. Jaqui mentioned the neighbours were a bit sad it would be built up because they always considered it a fire escape.
On Sunday we've got the stags and hens from last years wedding coming to the house for what I'm calling the Before Brunch. I think it'll be nice to see the place as it is now, with all of its history on show, and then throw and After Party 'this time next year' when we've transformed it. Happily for you lot I'll be taking the SLR along and getting all the photos I can before we start smashing the place to bits, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
Crikey didn't realise it was Pauls house you was buying, I used to fix their cars, known the family for over 20 years, Was a lovely bloke and unfortunately died recently, They have a grey Fiat 500. We met up with the seller of the house at her new home a few streets down and spent a couple of hours chatting. Lovely lady and as she's been there since 1969 her knowledge is a treasure trove of history on the place. She's a textile designer and worked on the lower ground floor (my new studio space), employing 3-5 people at a time. Her husband, the artist Paul Benjamins, worked on the upper ground floor and also had lots of people around. They've used one of the walls to mark the height of their kids over the years. Then it expanded to include their cats, their employees, the kids of their employees etc. Peckham was always quite a hub for artists. Every year he'd give his wooden floorboards a fresh coat of white paint, ready to get splattered again as he created his art. I'm keen to re-use some of the most interesting floorboards for something - I don't know what, yet - and preserve some of the history of the house.
Jaqui, the seller, gets on well with all of the neighbours (it seems many have been there for decades) and gave us a bit more information on our immediate neighbours. On our left is a young couple with a 2 year old kid. They've already posted a note through the door welcoming us and offering any help they provide. On the right is an older couple who've been there decades. I get the impression they're not so enthusiastic about change and they were the people who complained to my architect about not receiving the planning notice. Apparently other had received it so they got the impression they were being deliberately excluded as some kind of ruse. It seems they've raised no official objections. They've grumbled in the past about the tree in our front garden potentially destabilising the steps that we share, so they may be the kind of folk who like to complain. The party wall we share with the neighbours on the right stops at the top floor. The loft space is completely open. Apparently this was quite common in this period. Jaqui mentioned the neighbours were a bit sad it would be built up because they always considered it a fire escape.
On Sunday we've got the stags and hens from last years wedding coming to the house for what I'm calling the Before Brunch. I think it'll be nice to see the place as it is now, with all of its history on show, and then throw and After Party 'this time next year' when we've transformed it. Happily for you lot I'll be taking the SLR along and getting all the photos I can before we start smashing the place to bits, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.
Disco_Biscuit said:
Crikey didn't realise it was Pauls house you was buying, I used to fix their cars, known the family for over 20 years, Was a lovely bloke and unfortunately died recently, They have a grey Fiat 500.
Very sad. They'd started planning a renovation of their own and then he fell ill. Jaqui is lovely and it's a shame I didn't get a chance to meet Paul. 
Had a few friends over for the Before Brunch today and I took the SLR for some decent before pics.
I'll start at the Upper Ground Floor as that's the entrance.
The hallway will be wider than this but we'll preserve the cherubs and reinstall them with a wider arch.
Front to rear. The old artists' studio.
Rear to front.
Rear reception. We'll keep a fireplace of some description.
The floor had a fresh coat of white paint each year, right over the paint splats of the previous year. Lots of history in those boards.
Ceilings have seen better days but will be restored, on this floor only.
The rose in the front reception has fared better.
173 years of settling. All the walls will be exposed back to bare brick and made good.
I love how blasé they were with the place. It was very much a working building.
Champagne and wood stain.
I'll start at the Upper Ground Floor as that's the entrance.
The hallway will be wider than this but we'll preserve the cherubs and reinstall them with a wider arch.
Front to rear. The old artists' studio.
Rear to front.
Rear reception. We'll keep a fireplace of some description.
The floor had a fresh coat of white paint each year, right over the paint splats of the previous year. Lots of history in those boards.
Ceilings have seen better days but will be restored, on this floor only.
The rose in the front reception has fared better.
173 years of settling. All the walls will be exposed back to bare brick and made good.
I love how blasé they were with the place. It was very much a working building.
Champagne and wood stain.
Lower Ground Floor
Hallway. Lower front door ahead.
Off the hallway into the studio at the front.
Front studio, looking through to rear studio and garden.
We added ourselves to the height markers. I was a bit too tall for it though.
Rear studio. Concrete perimeter to the floor, suspended timber elsewhere. The back wall will be extended 4-5m further into the garden.
The two inspection pits show 700mm drop to the foundations. Current ceiling height is 2.1m so that allows for a much better height already but we have permission to excavate another 300mm if we choose to.
Hallway. Lower front door ahead.
Off the hallway into the studio at the front.
Front studio, looking through to rear studio and garden.
We added ourselves to the height markers. I was a bit too tall for it though.
Rear studio. Concrete perimeter to the floor, suspended timber elsewhere. The back wall will be extended 4-5m further into the garden.
The two inspection pits show 700mm drop to the foundations. Current ceiling height is 2.1m so that allows for a much better height already but we have permission to excavate another 300mm if we choose to.
2nd floor.
Single room with a very low window and some not very square corners.
Front bedroom, showing the height of the tree in the front garden, still visible from the top floor.
Rear bedroom.
Bathroom, showing the low ceilings everywhere on the top floor.
The loft space we'll be opening up to give height to the top floor. The low brick wall is our boundary but is left open to our neighbours. It was once used to escape a fire in their property. This will be sealed off now though. The roof will need to be replaced in order to open the full height up.
Single room with a very low window and some not very square corners.
Front bedroom, showing the height of the tree in the front garden, still visible from the top floor.
Rear bedroom.
Bathroom, showing the low ceilings everywhere on the top floor.
The loft space we'll be opening up to give height to the top floor. The low brick wall is our boundary but is left open to our neighbours. It was once used to escape a fire in their property. This will be sealed off now though. The roof will need to be replaced in order to open the full height up.
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