Home Renovation in Islington

Islington's terraces are older and narrower than the Victorian stock further out: late-Georgian and early-Victorian houses around the squares of Barnsbury and Canonbury, three or four storeys over a semi-basement, on plots that are often only four or five metres wide. Many were converted into flats after the war and have been coming back together as single houses ever since.

The classic Islington project follows from that plan. The lower-ground floor — dark, damp and originally the service floor — is lowered, tanked and opened to the garden to become the kitchen and family room; the ground floor returns to two connected reception rooms; the roof gains a bedroom and shower room. Everything happens behind a facade that the conservation area protects almost completely, and between party walls shared with neighbours on both sides.

Narrow plots make the construction sequence unforgiving: there is no side access, so every skip, every steel and every kitchen has to come through the house. We plan for that from the first programme. See basement conversions, structural renovation and loft conversions.