Latest blog posts

The Brief Our clients had recently bought a mid-terrace 19th Century 4 bedroom 4 storey property in SW6 London. They had picked the property on the basis that is had great potential for development, highlighting their desire to re-develop the existing rear addition and explore the idea of splitting the property into 2 x 2 bedroom flats. The ... Read more >>

Every now and then there is a catastrophic incident involving the construction industry somewhere in the UK. When a house collapses it gets reported in the national press and sometimes on radio and TV. It’s a dramatic event but fortunately it doesn’t happen that often. A recently reported case involved an ordinary medium sized, Victorian, ... Read more >>

If you’ve read the previous posts in this series you’ll know that the renovation was split in to 2 phases; effectively dividing the barn down the middle. Since the last post was uploaded phase 1 has been largely completed so we’ve swapped sides with the builders. Even though phase 1 overran by about 5 weeks I’m still told that the work ... Read more >>

Our 2 children went back to school this week and that was originally the target for phase 1 of the refurbishment to be completed. Unfortunately, we’re running 4 weeks behind the programme so we’ve had to set the kid’s desks up on the landing for the next few weeks. Despite the delays it’s nice to see phase 1 progressing, all of the 1st ... Read more >>

We’re now 6 weeks in to phase 1 of the work and I’d estimate that we’ve fallen a couple of weeks behind the program. The reason appears to be the lack of availability of sub-contractors but hopefully we’ll pull back the time during the phase 2 program which appears to be a bit more generous. Anyway, it is nice to see the shape of the ... Read more >>

We’re now a little over halfway through phase 1 of our barn refurbishment. The structure of the barn is long and narrow so it divides quite neatly in to 2 parts with a sound and dust proof screen in the middle. Phase 1, the smaller half of the barn, is programmed to take 9 weeks following which we swap halves with the builders and work continues ... Read more >>

As you can see from the picture below, work is now well underway on the refurbishment of our barn. The lower part of that space was my bedroom until last Sunday evening! As only demolition work has happened so far I thought I’d provide a quick overview of the planning process in this post. The barn is Grade II listed so any changes, ... Read more >>

Having talked about it for many years my family and I ‘escaped to the country’ in October last year; specifically to a converted barn on the edge of a little Essex village. When we started our search we laid down certain criteria, the property had to be: Within a 1 hour drive of Peter Barry’s North London office. In a rural ... Read more >>

We’ve written quite a few posts over the last few months on how the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 works in principle, so we thought it was probably about time to look at a ‘Real World’ example and show how you can benefit from taking professional advice at an early stage. As they always say in these cases, ... Read more >>

Appointing Owner: Owner of a mid-terraced house in Highbury, London N1 Proposed work: Side return extension Notice date: 4th February 2011 Background: We were approached by an architect to provide a fee proposal for his client who was planning to add a modern Garden Room alongside the existing back addition of his mid-terrace property. The ... Read more >>