Good wood: the family’s new kitchen shows off vertical timber cladding
(Picture: Juliet Murphy)Picking an architect for an extension project is a high- pressure affair. You’re going to be entrusting them with an awful lot of money and spending a lot of quality time in your home together — along with their extended family of contractors. It’s like a business and romantic partnership rolled into one. Do you go with your head or with your heart? Are you swayed by looks or are you running a full background check?
Kate, 42, and Matt, 44, Robinson took a double-pronged approach when it came to picking architect Peter Morris to extend their end-of-terrace, four-bedroom Victorian home on Grenville Road, N19, within their budget of £200,000. The couple, a responsible business specialist and head of strategy for a development finance investment firm respectively, liked the aesthetic of his previous projects and they were also assiduous in checking his references.
“The thing that swung it for me was interviewing his previous clients,” says Matt. “They were very complimentary about his work and the way he worked with the builders, which for us was important because we’re busy and we didn’t want to do project management ourselves.” Their head said yes and luckily their hearts did, too. “He’s calm, he’s creative and he looks like the architect of your dreams. He has all these colourful clothes and funky glasses.”
This combination of a thorough vetting and gut instinct proved wise. The Robinsons, whose children are seven and five, had been mulling over the classic London conundrum — gamble on the housing market for more space or stay put and extend. “It was either move or change, because it was too cramped,” says Matt. “Moving in London is so difficult. The kids were in school and we like the street and the house,” for which the couple paid £750,000 in 2012.
But as they began their journey in 2019, their extension plans would face obstacles at every turn, from chaotic bureaucracy to the killer combination of Brexit and the pandemic. “Normally the challenge is with the builders or [the client] running out of money,” says Morris, ominously. “But this was a different kind of jeopardy.”
Getting permission
First, there was the planning application. The design was eventually done under permitted development, but in early 2019 it was down to the wire as to whether this temporary right to make rear extensions under the scheme would be made permanent by the Government. To be safe, Morris submitted the designs to the council for the extension twice: as a permitted development and as a full planning application. It was an experiment with an interesting result.
“We always say that permitted development is a lot easier,” he says. “Sure enough, the planners came back with the permit for the full planning application and said, ‘Could you reduce the height on the boundary wall?’” Under permitted development — which was made permanent in May 2019 — the plans were approved wholesale. “It shows that you can get a bigger extension with permitted development rather than full planning. That shouldn’t be the case,” says Morris. “They’re the same design.”
Everything goes wrong
Everything was in place to begin work in early 2020 when the pandemic began and the effects of Brexit began to bite. “With Brexit and Covid, the prices for materials all went up,” says Morris. “That was pretty tough for the builders. Weird materials would run out. There was a run on sand, then the price of timber went up, steel went up, glass went up.”
Normally the challenge is with the builders but this was a different kind of jeopardy
The knock-on effects rippled out through the entire construction industry and the delays began to stack up. If the windows couldn’t go in then they had to push back the kitchen, and so it went on. The Robinson family had moved out for the first stage of the build, so they spent the first lockdown road tripping around France to stay with family.
Back in London, they settled in an Airbnb for a few months, but with costs rising they moved back into the upper levels of the house. With summer 2020 over and more lockdowns looming they were staring down the barrel of a concerning scenario. “The thought of being locked up in three rooms, trying to homeschool, while 10 men worked downstairs was terrifying,” says Matt. Thankfully, the schools didn’t close again and the builders made the attic space as comfortable as possible for them.“They did a great job of building a little temporary kitchen upstairs in the attic,” Matt says, cheerfully. “It only leaked into the bedroom once.”
This was where the matchmaking seems to have really paid off, with the architect and his crack team of builders acting as a bulwark against the stresses of the project. While Morris privately calculated that this was the project with the most problems he had ever experienced, to his clients he radiated calm and competence. “Peter and Nick the builder were quite phlegmatic about it all,” says Matt. “I think they are used to things on projects going wrong.”
While the country was panicking about a Christmas lockdown, the building team were rushing to finish the project. “It’s always the Christmas deadline,” says Morris, ruefully. “I try and avoid them because they’re so caught up in the emotional element.” Snagging aside, the extension was finished on Christmas Eve 2020. “They had a very short period to put the decorations up,” jokes Morris.
It’s fun and bright, but I couldn’t call it minimalist because of all our clobber
Now, all the stresses of the build are a distant memory but the joys remain. “The pain is gone and we feel the benefit here every day,” enthuses Matt. Before the extension, the house had been only lightly modified, still occupying the same footprint as a standard Victorian terrace with an attic extension.
Morris extended the house to the rear and reorganised the interior space, moving the bathroom under the stairs and improving circulation between rooms. “It unlocked the Victorian dining room at the back of the main part of the house,” says Matt. “Before, we had a big table in this dining room that we used twice a year. That room was wasted, but now we use it all the time.”
Bringing down the budget
In looking for cost-effective options, Morris found opportunities for the creative flair that had attracted the Robinsons to his work in the first place. For the ground floor exterior, they opted for inexpensive vertical timber cladding. Rather than paint it (“an ongoing maintenance problem,” explains Morris) or let it weather (“it looks a bit shabby”) he introduced a DIY take on the Japanese art of shou sugi ban, where wood is charred to preserve it while introducing a fetching smoky-black colouring.
“They’re ordinary timber battens that normally go under a roof so they’re dead cheap, and you just get a blowtorch to burn it on site,” explains Morris. “It’s a bit like cooking, really.” The children very much enjoyed watching the builders choosing the exact degree of charring.
How they kept costs down
- Large matt grey porcelain tiles from Total Tiles give a concrete effect for much less than the cost of a real concrete floor.
- Standard IKEA base units were fitted with valchromat doors by Duncan Strong at Bespokea.
- Exterior cladding: inexpensive timber battens were charred by blowtorch to make them weatherproof.
For the kitchen, Morris used a supplier who specialises in Ikea hacks, taking the basic unit from the Swedish flatpack experts and applying custom doors and worktops. Morris carried the monochrome theme through from the exterior to the interior design, using black valchromat — a kind of MDF that is pigmented throughout. This was another thrifty materials choice that combines aesthetics and practicality. “It’s cheap, it has little flecks of lighter colours in it when you look up close,” he says, “and if you scratch it, it won’t reveal us another colour underneath.”
Morris continued the bold, monochrome look throughout, convincing his clients to paint the fireplace and the staircase a matching black. “I promised them it wouldn’t look like a teenager’s bedroom,” he says. The Robinsons are delighted with the chic gothic look, although they stress it doesn’t always look like the photos. “It’s fun and bright, but I couldn’t call it minimalist because of all our clobber,” says Matt.
However, there is one truly life-changing element to the whole project, Matt confides. “We love the cladding, and we love the spaciousness of the extension,” he says. “But we definitely love having the laundry cupboard with a washing machine upstairs. With two children it keeps all their clothes contained upstairs. It’s fantastic.”
Get the look
Portela dining chairs, £79 each, Dwell.co.uk
Arc Floor Lamp with white marble base, £409, Designer Editions
Burnt orange large pouffe-footsool, £59.99, Homescapes
