Renovations in Oxford
Whole-property refurbishments and room-by-room renovations — structural alterations, kitchens, bathrooms, plastering and decoration, handled end to end by one Oxford team.
Old houses are worth doing properly
A good share of Oxford's housing was built well over a century ago, and it has usually been altered several times since — not always sympathetically. Renovation work here is as much about undoing previous decisions as adding new ones: a partition that killed a room, a blocked chimney breast, a bathroom squeezed into what was a landing.
We take on complete refurbishments as well as single rooms, covering the structural work, the services and the finishing. The point of using a multi-trade builder on a renovation is sequencing: plaster goes on after the rewire, floors go down after the plaster, and nobody is waiting three weeks for the next trade to appear.
- Full property refurbishment
- Structural alterations & steels
- Kitchens & bathrooms
- Rewires & replumbs
- Plastering & joinery
- Flooring & decoration
Where renovation work usually starts
Just bought, needs everything
A full refurbishment before you move in — rewire, replumb, replaster, new kitchen and bathroom, floors and decoration. Fastest and cheapest while the house is empty.
The ground floor does not work
Removing walls to open up kitchen, dining and living space, with the steelwork and building control sign-off that goes with it. Often paired with a rear extension.
Rental & HMO upgrades
Bringing a let property up to standard — bathrooms, kitchens, fire doors, decoration and general making good between tenancies or before re-letting.
Tired kitchens and bathrooms
Stripping out and refitting, including the work behind the units: moving services, levelling floors, tanking, tiling and extraction.
Loft, extension and refurb together
The efficient version — the whole house dealt with in one programme so the finishes match and the disruption happens once.
Making good after other work
Plastering, joinery, flooring and decoration to put a house back together after structural work, damp remediation or a change of layout.
Survey first, price second
Renovation quotes go wrong when they are guessed. Lifting a floorboard, checking the consumer unit and looking at the state of the plaster takes an hour and changes the number significantly — in both directions.
So we survey the property, agree the scope room by room, and give you a written quotation against it. Where something can only be established once we open up — the condition behind a wall, for instance — we say so up front rather than burying it.
If the scope changes mid-project because you have changed your mind or the building has surprised us, you get the cost before the work happens, not on the final invoice.
Planning a renovation in Oxford?
Whether it is one room or the whole house, tell us what you are working with and we will come and look before quoting anything.
Renovation questions
Do you take on whole-house renovations?
Yes. Full refurbishments are a large part of what we do — often on a property that has just changed hands and needs bringing up to standard before anyone moves in.
Working on an empty house is faster and cheaper than working around a family, so if there is a window between completion and moving day, it is worth using it.
Can renovation work be phased?
It can, and for occupied houses it often should be. We can work room by room or floor by floor so you keep a functioning kitchen and bathroom throughout.
The exceptions are jobs that are genuinely whole-house — a rewire, a replumb, or replastering that follows either of them. Those are cheaper and less disruptive done in one go than repeated three times.
What should I expect in an older Oxford property?
Victorian and Edwardian houses here commonly turn up lath-and-plaster ceilings, solid walls with no cavity, original single-skin rear additions, old wiring, and floor levels that are not quite what a drawing assumes.
None of that is unusual and none of it is a problem when it is expected. What causes trouble is a quotation that ignored it, so we survey properly and price what the building actually is.
Do you carry out structural alterations?
Yes — removing walls to open up a ground floor, forming new openings, underpinning where it is genuinely required, and installing steels with a structural engineer's calculations behind them.
Anything load-bearing goes through building control. This is not an area to take shortcuts in, and it is one of the reasons a builder who also does structural design is useful.
Will you fit kitchens and bathrooms?
We do, including the parts around them that decide whether they work — moving services, levelling floors, tanking wet areas, tiling, extraction and decoration.
We can fit units you have bought yourself or arrange the supply, whichever suits.
Can I combine a renovation with an extension or loft conversion?
That is the most efficient way to do it. One programme, one set of approvals, one scaffold and one round of making good beats three separate projects across three years.
It also means the finishes match. Renovating the ground floor now and extending it in two years usually means a visible join.