Brondesbury Villas

A full renovation of a lower-ground garden flat on Brondesbury Villas in north-west London, with a new kitchen extension. The flat was opened into a single bright, open-plan kitchen, dining and living space — a handleless island kitchen with a black marble splashback and herringbone oak floors, and a glazed rear extension where full-height sliding doors open the whole room out onto the garden.

That openness was the hard part. At the heart of the project was a genuinely complex structural install — a run of steel beams threaded in to carry the four storeys of flats above while the walls beneath them came out. Every part of the support and beam work was carried out from within the basement flat itself, so the flats above were never entered or disturbed — the whole install was completed without a single crack or any damage to the homes overhead.