Inside a Mews House Renovation: What We'd Do Differently

We watched a client renovate a Notting Hill mews house from the inside, start to completion: eleven months, one contractor change, and a kitchen extension that needed three separate consents. Three things went right. Two things we would change next time.

What went right

Starting the party wall agreements before exchange, not after, saved roughly six weeks. Keeping the original garage doors on the front elevation, a mews planning officer’s favourite detail, meant the extension consent went through on the first application. And using a structural engineer who had worked on three other mews houses on the same street meant nobody had to relearn the foundations from scratch.

What we would change

The kitchen extension went to a rear glazed box, which is the obvious move and also the one every neighbour on the mews has already made; it added less value than expected because it no longer reads as distinctive. We would also budget more contingency for services: mews houses built in the 1880s as stabling rarely have drainage routes anyone expects, and this one did not either.

The finished house sold for a fair price, well above what was paid unrenovated. But the margin would have been better with a less predictable extension and a bigger drainage contingency from day one.