The best extensions and renovations of 2022
(Picture: ES)Most extensions follow something of a set formula, if only to maximise your chances in front of the local planning agent.
There’s the standard box-on-the-back rear extension, the side return or the master bedroom loft conversion (if you’re feeling really adventurous, you might add more than one skylight).
An unconventional extension or renovation, though, can transform standard London housing stock, radically changing the way you live day to day and adding serious value to your home when you come to sell up. Just ask the Don’t Move, Improve! award winners.
We’ve rounded up ten of our favourites renovations of the year, from a first time buy with big ideas to a versatile rear extension that moonlights as a gallery space.
The Supersized Studio: Muswell Hill
If architects Christian Brailey and Faye Johnson appeared to subscribe to the ‘worst house, best street’ philosophy with the purchase of their home in Muswell Hill, it was hardly planned – the poky studio was all they could afford in an area they’d fallen in love with on a Satnav detour.
Happily, there was an 1,000 sq ft garden to extend into – and plenty of insider knowledge on hand for the planning application.
The answer to their space woes was a long, narrow extension along one side of the garden, which has increased the home’s square footage by a third. Its Douglas Fir plywood frame was built in Devon and craned in.
“It is certainly not a cheaper way to build,” said Brailey. “The main reason we did it was the quality you can get working in workshop conditions; the details are far greater than anything you can achieve on site.”
Renovation cost: £125,000
The Home Gallery: Camberwell
“I don’t think art works as well in cold, white boxes; I prefer a warmer, more welcoming setting,” said gallerist Katherine Oliver, who spent fifteen years at the Royal Academy before establishing her own nomadic gallery, Oliver Projects.
It made sense, then, that a long-debated extension for the Victorian terrace in Camberwell she shares with her husband and children should also be able to put on a show.
Armed with images of Brutalist architecture and Mediterranean courtyards, she enlisted local architects Delve to design a side and rear extension with exposed brick walls and a fully glazed outlook.
Now performing a deft double act as family living area and domestic gallery, its generous approach to storage means that the paraphernalia of modern life can be swept away at a moments’ notice.
Renovation cost: £175,000
The Award-Winner: Walthamstow
A swing hanging in the hallway is the first clue that this Victorian semi in Highams Park is no paint-by-numbers family home.
When architect couple Gillian Lambert and Geoff Shearcroft left Clapton for Walthamstow – in what they call a “rite of passage” for young east London families – they were determined to put their stamp on this standard period property.
An ambitious renovation, inspired by nearby Epping Forest, meant swapping their single-storey garage for a three-storey stacked extension that now houses the kitchen, a garden room, a mezzanine studio and an attic room at the top.
A suspended wall that connects the house to the extension is clad in cork bark, while an “an array of greens in the palette creates the busy calm of the forest,” said Lambert. It went on to win the Unique Character prize at this year’s Don’t Move, Improve! awards.
Renovation cost: £200,000
The DIY-ers: Plumstead
“The galley kitchen was cramped but the other spaces felt generous and the bones of the place were good,” said Will Gottelier, remembering the ‘before’ of the flat in a Victorian terrace he shares with partner Lena and baby Monty.
It was exactly this well-reasoned summation of the property’s potential that persuaded the pair to stay put, but there was one slight hitch – a rather slender budget of £20,000.
The biggest job was extending the kitchen to swallow up the corridor that ran alongside it, but otherwise much of the makeover was managed by the couple – who weren’t afraid to follow a tutorial or two.
They even created a worktop and splashback wall in the kitchen themselves, using a micro-cement kit. “I can’t imagine how we’d have managed this project without YouTube,” said Will.
Renovation cost: £20,000
The Bedsit Reborn: Forest Gate
Strip lighting, swathes of magnolia, a bed in every room – Richard and Kristina Andrews paint a familiar picture for anyone who has ever tried to turn a bedsit back into a family home.
“It was truly horrible, but the bones of the house were great,” said Richard, who runs his own architecture firm as Richard John Andrews. “The London stock brick on the façade and the intact box bay windows were the real selling point.”
Not one to shy away from labouring jobs like brickwork and roofing, he took 14 months away from his architecture practice – enlisting Kristina when it came time to rip out the back of the house to make way for an extension clad in compressed cork. A new garden room, dubbed The Light Shed studio, was built in 21 days by Richard and an assistant.
Renovation cost: £188,000
The Accidental Developer: Stoke Newington
Architect and designer Daniel Sanderson was living at the top of a converted Victorian townhouse in Stoke Newington when an inquisitive passer by asked about buying the largely abandoned garden next door. He had a brainwave – and two years later he’d bought it himself.
An ambitious build followed. “It was vital I didn’t create some kind of Victorian pastiche,” he explained. “The house needed to be contemporary, while at the same time reflecting the heritage of the area — nods to the past include bricked-up windows.”
The finished Brickfields House is a four-storey structure divided into two homes, with the property on the upper levels sold to fund the fit-out of the one downstairs, which is arranged around a central courtyard.
Almost everything here features Sanderson’s touch, from the dark brickwork and exposed joinery to the hand-turned furniture.
Build cost: £750,000 - £800,000
The Architectural Gem: City of London
A long-time magnet for creatives that can’t quite stretch their budgets to the Barbican, the Golden Lane Estate has earned a reputation as its more modest neighbour.
“I moved here in 2010, renting with some friends,” said architect Ogi Ristic. “It’s an architectural gem and so central, with an amazing community feel. But [my partner] Hayley and I thought it would be out of our reach until we found this studio flat.”
It was on budget — but in a rather sorry state. Having previously worked as a project manager in his dad’s Passivhaus construction business, the first priorities for Ristic were installing ultra-thin Spacetherm insulation and underfloor heating. “It was all about investing in the building fabric, the things you never see but that make a home warm and comfortable.”
As well as a complete renovation of the bathroom and kitchen, he created a series of subtle transitions in the apartment, from replacing the original wall on to the kitchen with a panel of glass to installing sliding veneered-birch panels that could carve a dressing room from the bedroom at will.
Renovation cost: £30,000
The First-Time Buy: Honor Oak
If you’re starting to suspect that being an architect yourself is your only hope of securing a successful outcome, look no further than this ambitious first time buyer.
Persuaded by her dad — who put down the deposit — to plump for a “beige, beige, beige” top floor flat in a period house in Honor Oak, visual artist Hannah Smith enlisted Fraher & Findlay to turn it into something more her style.
The answer, as it often is, was going into the unconverted loft. “I sketched out a plan, with the bedrooms on the top, but they flipped it upside down. They said if we had the bedrooms at the top we wouldn’t get much living space, whereas using the loft as our living space it’s massive, there’s lots of light, and I can just see Canary Wharf out of the window.” The project has since been shortlisted for a Don’t Move, Improve! award.
Renovation cost: £260,000
The Church Conversion: West Norwood
It’s the words that every renovator wants to hear — your refurb was so well-done that it’s added £200,000 in value. Jude Davis’ apartment in a converted baptist church in West Norwood already had plenty to love, from a liveable open plan layout to a soaring roof, exposed beams and stained-glass windows. Still, he suspected it could benefit from a few well-judged tweaks.
He called in Complex Design & Build — “they did an incredible job on my last place” — who redid the kitchen, installed sliding pockets doors in the bathrooms and replaced the balustrades of the mezzanine level with glazing to create a master bedroom.
“You come in and feel cocooned, and then as soon as you get upstairs you think, ‘Oh my gosh, this place is amazing!’” says Davis. “That’s the feeling I had when I came here. It’s an incredible space.”
The Planning Insiders: Archway
If any of Louise and Philip Allard’s neighbours on Kiver Road decide they fancy a mansard roof extension, they’ll be pleasantly surprised to find it’s been pre-approved by Islington council — thanks to Philip’s job as a planning consultant.
When the pair applied to go into the room of their Victorian terrace, they had the foresight to put in a rather neighbourly pre-application for the entire street, which guarantees approval. Their architecture firm, Cuozzo Fleming, has since been enlisted by five neighbours and counting.
The husband and wife, who had previously added a rear extension after their three sons arrived, had seized on the loft as the best way to add another whack of square footage.
Now, a Douglas fir staircase leads up to a new master bedroom and bathroom, while a home office space has been squeezed into the landing.
“Before, if you had the odd day working from home you’d just sit at the kitchen table,” says Louise. “Then the whole world changed. That office space was a real lifesaver.”
Renovation cost: £125,000
