WOODSTOCK HOUSE, BEDFORD PARK

Our client had lived here for twenty years before she suddenly realised that her lovely house had degenerated into a cross between a car boot sale and a rough sleepers' shelter. The imminent demise of the central heating system, coupled with the constant short circuiting of the electrics affected by squirrels gnawing off the delicious pVC wire covering in the loft kick-started the remodelling process.

We reconfigured the ground floor of this handsome arts 'n' crafts house so as to make the most of its relationship with the garden, and built a single storey garden room with a glazed lantern running along the wall of the main house, and two corner walls formed of glass doors which rolled completely away behind plastered partitions. We laid a new woodblock floor to match the existing and fitted under floor heating throughout the new accommodation.

In a subsequent phase we remodelled the upper floors, forming two new bathrooms and a dressing room big enough to open a shop in. Throughout the seven month building project our client set up camp with an electric kettle, and a temporary sink, in the attic room where her au pair had lived when there were babies around the place. By insulating the external walls of the house we made enough difference to the thermal performance of the house so that we were able to replace the boiler with two smaller ones a quarter of the size.