Art Deco House, Rebuilt and Restored

What it was

The house had good bones and very little else. The original 1930s design was there in the horizontal banding above the front door and the flat-roofed porch, but the roof was worn out, the joinery was rotten, and the plot had gone back to scrub and bare earth. It is the sort of house that gets demolished.

What we did

It did not get demolished. The building was taken back, rebuilt and extended, and the Art Deco language of the original was pushed further rather than tidied away: curved bays, a turret over the entrance, arched openings, and the horizontal balcony banding carried right around the elevations.

The roof is blue glazed pantiles, which is what pulls the whole thing together. Above the entrance it wraps a circular turret, and the hips are cut and set out so the courses run true around every change of plane. There is no forgiving a glazed tile roof – every line on it is visible from the road.

Outside

The plot was terraced from scratch. Rendered retaining walls hold the levels, stone paving runs round the house and down the steps, and the front forecourt was block paved to take cars. The curved steps in the photographs are set out to match the curve of the building above them.

Why it matters

This is the largest kind of job we take on, and it is the one that shows what the firm can actually do. Every trade on it – groundworks, brickwork, roofing, rendering, stonework, landscaping – was run by us.