Renovations & structural alterations
Opening up ground floors, installing steels, reconfiguring layouts and renovating older Herefordshire and Monmouthshire properties — with the engineering done before the sledgehammer comes out.
Better space without a bigger footprint
Plenty of houses don't need to be bigger. They need the walls in different places. A Victorian terrace with three small rooms downstairs, a 1970s house with a kitchen cut off from everything else, a cottage that's been extended twice by people who never spoke to each other — reconfiguring the existing space is often cheaper and more effective than adding to it.
What this work involves
- Removing load-bearing and non-load-bearing walls
- Installing steel beams (RSJs) with engineered padstones and correct bearing
- Temporary propping and sequencing so the building stays safe throughout
- Forming new openings, doorways and internal glazing
- Relocating kitchens, bathrooms and services
- Full property renovations and barn or outbuilding conversions
- Underpinning and foundation work where a structural engineer specifies it
Any wall might be holding something up. The calculations cost a fraction of what getting it wrong does.
Older buildings need a different approach
Herefordshire and Monmouthshire have a lot of solid-wall, lime-mortar and timber-framed housing stock. These buildings need to breathe. Sealing them up with modern cement renders and impermeable materials traps moisture and causes damage that shows up years later. Where a property needs breathable construction, that's what it gets.
Structural work questions
Can I remove this wall?
Possibly — but not on the basis of a builder tapping it and saying it feels non-load-bearing. Removing a structural wall needs a structural engineer's calculations, a correctly specified steel, properly designed padstones and Building Regulations approval. We arrange all of it.
What does it cost to open up a ground floor?
A single steel installed in a straightforward internal wall commonly runs £3,500–£7,000 including engineer's fees, making good and Building Control. Longer spans, multiple steels, corner openings and props to upper floors cost considerably more. Older properties with unknown foundations need investigating first.
Do you take on full house renovations?
Yes — full property renovations, barn and outbuilding conversions and internal reconfigurations, including older buildings. These projects need proper sequencing and a realistic programme, which we set out before starting.
How disruptive is structural work?
More than an extension, usually, because it happens inside the house rather than outside it. We'll be honest at the site visit about which weeks are difficult and whether you'd be better off moving out for part of it.