Episode Information Hackney: The Terrace Conversion

Date Published:

11/06/2008

After 10 years of living in a small house in east London, John and Eleni hankered after modern, open-plan living. They didn't want to move, so they decided to give their Victorian terrace home a radical redesign. The house was in a conservation area, so the outside had to remain unchanged.

Inside, however, they decided to rip out everything; walls, ceilings, floors, and start again.

Budget And Build

The Cost

Budget for build £110,000
Final cost of build £120,000

Cheap Land, Hefty Budget

The original house was a typically narrow 19th-century terrace, with two receptions, three bedrooms and a kitchen extension at the back.

To maximise space and light, architects Tatiana and Torsten Overburg gave John and Eleni an almost entirely open-plan design.

The ground floor became one living space, with a kitchen and dining area at the back. The only conventionally solid wall was for the lavatory. There was a shower room made of glass bricks, and the rear wall comprised sliding-glass doors.

Upstairs, the ceiling rose to the steeply pitched roof and created a double-height space for the main bedroom and the study area. The bathroom was glass-walled and transparent, and Eleni's workroom looked out through a glass door to a small roof terrace.

Form And Function

John and Eleni moved into a rented flat, hoping to move back in 16 weeks. Demolition work uncovered structural problems. Damp walls, crumbling plaster, worn roof coverings and unsafe brickwork all had to be sorted out, adding to the cost and causing delay. However, John and Eleni felt it was worthwhile: the new structure would be much more sound than the original.

In true modernist tradition, the vaulted ceiling combined form with function. Besides being visually striking, it would be structurally important, as its large number of timbers would help brace the building. A flat section of roof above the stairs was more problematic.

Rows Erupt

The architects had hired German contractors to supply and fit glass walls and skylights, and lay the flat roof. They completed the job in just three days and returned to Germany. However, the flat roof leaked, and fixing it would require the entire pitched roof to be lifted and re-laid as well.

Rows erupted between the main building team and the architects, and John and Eleni had to use their legal skills to act as go-betweens. They compromised on a temporary seal to keep out the winter rain.

John and Eleni have now moved in, months late, and are enjoying a brief lull before the builders return to re-do the roof. Luckily, though, they love their new house.

How Green?

John and Eleni score many green points for renovating an existing house rather than building new. The fact that it's urban is also an eco-plus, as they will be making use of existing roads, shops and public transport and not adding to commuter wear and tear on the environment.

The building materials used are not especially green, and the usual balancing considerations come into play: for instance, the structural glass and the concrete were polluting to manufacture, but they do have insulating qualities.

While they didn't set out to make this a green build, John and Eleni have given themselves a new home in an old building and helped transform their little bit of the densely populated city, a pretty green thing to do.