House Refurbishments in South London

A refurbishment should start with a survey of the whole house, roof included, before anyone prices a single wall. What is found up there decides the order of everything else, and sometimes the budget.

The order that works is the same on nearly every house. Roof, gutters and downpipes first, so the building stops taking in water. Then structure: the openings, the beams, the chimney breasts and any floor joists that need repair. Then services — wiring, pipework and heating — run while the walls and floors are open. Then plaster, which needs time to dry. Joinery, floors and decorating come last, when nothing else is going to be cut into them.

Get that order wrong and you pay twice. New plaster under a gutter that still overflows soon blows. A fresh ceiling goes up and comes down again for a cable somebody forgot. A floor gets sanded before three boards in the middle of it are lifted for pipework.

If a scaffold is going up anyway, the roof, gutters, fascias and chimney stacks should be done while it stands. Access is a large part of the cost of most roof work, and on a refurbishment it is paid for once.

A refurbishment keeps the footprint of the house and puts right what is inside it and over it. These are the parts of the job. Electrics, gas and heating have their own section further down, because the rules on who may do them matter more than anything on this list.

Most Victorian and Edwardian houses in South London have a wall between the front and back reception rooms, and many owners want it gone. Whether that wall is load-bearing decides everything. A wall that carries floor joists, a wall above or part of the roof is load-bearing — and so, often, is one that looks too thin to be.

As the rules stand, removing a load-bearing wall or a chimney breast needs a structural engineer's calculation, temporary support while the steel goes in, and Building Regulations approval. Building control inspects the work in stages and issues a completion certificate at the end. Keep it. A buyer's solicitor will ask for it, and a knock-through with no paperwork becomes a question at sale.

In a terrace, the chimney breast and the ends of a new steel often sit in the party wall. Cutting into a party wall comes under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996: as the rules stand, your neighbour gets two months' written notice, and can consent or have a surveyor settle an award. A breast taken out downstairs also leaves the breast above and the stack on the roof to be supported or taken down, and the neighbour's flues may run through the same stack. Ask at the survey who will produce the calculation, who applies to building control and who serves the notice, and get the answers in writing.

A Victorian house has solid brick walls, plastered in lime. Lime plaster lets the wall breathe: moisture moves in and out of it and dries off. Gypsum on the same wall holds the damp against the brick, softens and blows, and the patch comes back through the new decoration. On a solid wall, lime is usually the right plaster. Gypsum is fine on plasterboard, on stud partitions and on masonry that stays dry.

Old lath-and-plaster ceilings are a choice rather than a rule. A sound one can be repaired and kept, especially under a cornice worth saving. One that has sagged away from its laths is usually taken down and replaced with plasterboard.

Before any wall is replastered, ask why the old plaster failed. On a period house the answer is very often above it — an overflowing gutter, a cracked downpipe joint, a failed flashing where the back addition meets the main wall, or a chimney capped with no vent, so the flue sweats into the breast. Plaster over that and the symptom comes back. It is a common way for a refurbishment to go wrong, and it is roofing work to fix.

Floors have their own version. A suspended timber ground floor relies on air bricks to keep the joists dry. Blocked air bricks, or earth banked up against them outside, are a common cause of soft boards and rotten joist ends.

A refurbishment is the time to rewire, because the floors are up and the plaster is off. It is also where the rules are strictest. As the rules stand, new circuits and a new consumer unit are notifiable electrical work under Part P of the Building Regulations, done by a registered electrician who certifies it, or notified to building control. Gas work — a boiler, a hob, a gas pipe rerouted — is for a Gas Safe registered engineer and nobody else.

Replacement windows have to meet the Building Regulations too, as the rules stand, either fitted by an installer registered with a competent-person scheme or approved through building control. In a conservation area with an Article 4 direction, changing the front windows may need planning permission as well.

Whoever quotes a refurbishment, ask who will do each of these, whether they are registered, and whose name goes on the certificates. At the end you should hold certificates for the electrics, for any gas work and for the windows, and a building control completion certificate for the structural work. Those are the papers a buyer's solicitor asks for.

Asbestos first. A house built before 2000 may contain it, and a Victorian house modernised before then may have picked some up in the process: textured ceiling coatings, old floor tiles and their adhesive, boxing round pipes, insulating board near an old boiler. Left intact and undisturbed, it is safe. It is tested before it is disturbed, which on a refurbishment means before the strip-out, not after the first ceiling is down.

Leases next. In a leasehold flat or maisonette you will normally need the freeholder's written consent before work starts — a licence for alterations — and structural work almost always needs it. As the rules stand, householder permitted development does not apply to flats or maisonettes, so changes to the outside usually need planning permission too.

Then CDM 2015. The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations apply to work on your home as well. As the rules stand, a domestic client's duties pass to the contractor, or to the principal contractor where more than one firm is on site. Planning the work safely and running the site sit with them, not with you — but on a job with several trades it is worth knowing in writing which firm that is.

Last, the house itself. A listed house needs listed building consent for work that affects its character, and that can mean work inside as well as out. If the roof is being opened, bats and their roosts are protected, and an ecologist's survey may be needed first. On planning and consents, the council, or the Planning Portal, has the final word.

Settle this before the price is agreed, because it changes the job. Living in means the work has to go round you: the house done in stages, somewhere kept clean to sleep, water and power off at agreed times rather than whenever. Moving out usually makes the house easier to work in, but it means rent or a spare room with family on top of the build.

Neither is right in general. What decides it is how much of the house is opened up at once, whether there is still somewhere to cook and wash, and who lives there — small children and a house full of drying plaster are a poor mix. Ask at the survey how the work would be ordered if you stay, and which weeks would be the hardest.