16th Century House, Abingdon, Oxon

With this project, we worked closely with the owners, who work from home and have two young children.

The clients had recently bought the property as a family home.  The house had last been updated in 1982 but the roof was collapsing and the clients wished for a large kitchen/diner at the rear, the whole house updated to modern standards with new heating, plumbing, electrics & security, new parking area, a waiting room for one of their businesses and an update of a clinic (healthcare).

We liaised with the Local Authority, obtained Conservation Officer approval of our works and full buy-in with the other residents in the area (it has a very strong parish council).

To start the project, we had to move the kitchen (with appliances) to the former dining room, build a new waiting room and then divide the house into separate living and building works areas so the house could still perform as that, a house!  When we had completed the 1^st phase, we then moved the living space to the completed building space and began phase 2.

The rear of the house was demolished (interestingly built from local coral, formed in a reef thousands of years ago) & rebuilt allowing a huge increase in space, in modern materials with a new oak kitchen, bi-fold door, underfloor heating and a room above.  The roof was removed (we used our own in house scaffolding team to form the weatherproof structure over the house) and in an agreed schedule, we built, refurbished and updated  the entire house, including new bathrooms x 3, a new circular staircase, taking out walls with sign off from our engineers & installed a modern wood burner to Hetas standards.

Whilst doing the work, we found a basement that we refurbished and placed a structural glass walkway over (and gave it some beautiful mood lighting).