Mews News - My house renos

Anyone else having or planning renovations?

Like Heidi at Adelaide Villa and Jenny from The Lime Walk who are undergoing extensive but exciting renovations at their lovely homes , I am in the eye of the storm that is my renovations.

There is the pain, the expectation, but then you go home to nest and like the end of a Grand Designs episode, it seems all worth it in the end.  But I swore after my last home refurbishments, I was never ever going to do renovations ever again but like childbirth one forgets the pain and the labor involved and does it all over again.

 
This is the top of our roof before we finally started construction in end of July.

We are currently building another floor to our two story home.

I had been telling Mr CSW that we needed to get planning permission sorted out way in advance but he always postponed it every year for the past 7 years. 

My house at present

Just before last Christmas, we he finally decided to get an architect and lodged the application for a new floor addition late December.  The last two years we were in between two homes that got theirs done and we decided that this was the perfect time.  

What it should look like before the turn of the century.

We never hurried doing it as we have just about enough space.  
We live in a 3 bedroom house but as we don't have children the spare rooms end up being my storage cupboards or guest rooms.
 

This drawing is only for the hard-core build enthusiasts.

Normally planning permissions in the UK are not meant to take more than 3 months and as there was already plenty of precedence of roof additions in our street, I thought we would be starting construction some time in April...

The end result we are hoping for.

But of course like most construction projects, 

there was a delay due to various issues.

We only got our formal approval at the end of June but then there was the issue of getting a scaffold license and finding a scaffolding company as the one we were going to use went AWOL.

The extensions to the right of my house.

Cut a long story short, my builder somehow managed to start and continues the build without any scaffolding by going through our skylight.  I will tell you more about my builder another time as he is a "character".

The roof extensions to the left of my house.

Things have been a bit disruptive this year in many ways as at present we had to move out of our house to temporary digs but also the house to our left is undergoing huge renovations.

A property developer bought the house next door and has been doing a complete gut and also being the first in the street to undergo what is simultaneously popular and unpopular in London right now.

The basement excavation.
The exposed line of brick in the middle used to be the ground floor.

So even before we moved out, we had to endure days of endless drilling and cranes and trucks coming to take away the dirt.

 I thought my living room was a mess before but actually compared to now it isn't too bad.

 

This is the new coffee table and chill out zone.

I don't know how much longer it will take and decisions 
are being changed all time...
Will update you intermittently on progress.
Wish us luck and strength!