Full house renovations in Dulwich: running a period refurbishment from survey to handover

Most Dulwich houses that come to us for a full renovation have one thing in common: a Victorian or Edwardian shell that has been patched piecemeal for decades, with a 1990s kitchen bolted onto solid brick walls and lime plaster hidden behind gypsum skim. Stripping all of that back and starting again is a different job from a single room refit, and a house renovation in Dulwich carries a few local complications that a renovation in most of South London does not. Get the order of work wrong, or miss an approval, and you lose weeks you cannot get back.

I run All Well Property Services and we take period homes across SE21 and SE22 back to bare brick and rebuild them. This is how a whole-house refurbishment actually runs, from the first survey through to the day we hand the keys back.

Start with a survey, not a wish list

A full renovation lives or dies on what you find in the first week, so the survey comes before any design or pricing. On a pre-1919 Dulwich house that means checking the things the period brings with it: solid brick walls with no cavity, lime plaster that needs to breathe, timber sash windows, a slate roof, and on older terraces a cut-rafter roof rather than a modern trussed one. Each of those changes how the rest of the job runs. Solid walls insulate differently from cavity walls. Lime plaster does not like modern cement render sealed over the top. A cut-rafter roof opens up loft options that a trussed roof closes off.

We also check drainage, the incoming services, damp at the base of the walls, and whether previous work left anything that needs unpicking. The point is to know the house before we commit to a sequence, because a surprise found in week one is a planning problem and a surprise found in week eight is an expensive one.

The two approvals you sort before anything else

This is the part of a Dulwich renovation that catches owners out. Much of Dulwich sits on land managed by the Dulwich Estate, and the Estate's Scheme of Management requires written approval from its Scheme of Management Office, at The Old College, Gallery Road, SE21 7AE, before any work that changes the external appearance of the house. New windows, roof or chimney repairs, an extension, a loft dormer, solar panels, even a change to the front boundary all fall under it.

That approval is separate from, and in addition to, the council's planning permission and Building Control. For most of Dulwich the local authority is Southwark, though some streets fall under Lambeth or Lewisham. The two consents are not connected. You can have full planning permission and still be in breach of the Scheme if you start without the Estate's approval, and some work that needs no planning permission at all under permitted development still needs the Estate's sign-off because it changes the outside of the house.

On a full renovation, where you are often touching windows, roof and external walls at once, both applications need to go in early and run in parallel. The Estate publishes its Guidelines for Residents and its current fees and an annual charge, and larger schemes can go to the Estate's Advisory Committee, so we build the Estate application into the programme from the start rather than treating it as paperwork to chase later. (For the detail on consent, see our piece on the Dulwich Estate Scheme of Management.)

The trade sequence, in the order it has to happen

A whole-house refurbishment only works if the trades arrive in the right order, and on a period house the order is not negotiable. Broadly it runs like this.

First, strip-out and structure. Soft strip back to the brick and joists, then any structural work: steels for a knocked-through reception, repairs to the roof, anything affecting load. Structure is dirty, heavy work and everything after it depends on the openings being right, so it goes first.

Second, first fix. This is the stage hidden inside the walls and floors: new wiring runs, pipework, drainage, and any new window and door openings made good. On a solid-wall Dulwich house, chasing in services takes care, because there is no cavity to hide them and the brick is doing structural work. We run heating, electrics and plumbing first fix together so nothing has to be reopened later.

Third, the building fabric goes back. Insulation suited to a solid wall, plasterboard or, where the house needs it, lime plaster on the original walls so they can still breathe. Then screeds and floors.

Fourth, second fix. Kitchens and bathrooms fitted, sockets and switches and radiators on, doors hung, skirting and architrave. This is where the house starts to look finished.

Last, decoration and snagging. Paint, final fittings, and the walk-round where we list every small thing that is not quite right and put it right before handover. Skipping the snag stage is how owners end up living with a list of unfinished details, so we treat it as part of the job, not an afterthought.

How you live through it

A full renovation usually means moving out, and on a Dulwich house I would normally recommend it. With the walls open, the services off and dust everywhere, the house is a building site, not a home. Some owners stay in one sealed-off floor while the rest is worked on, and that can work on a larger Estate villa with the space to zone it, but it slows the job and it is hard living. We talk this through at the survey so you can plan around school terms and work, rather than discovering in week three that the kitchen and the only working bathroom have both come out on the same day.

Whatever you decide, we agree access, parking and skip arrangements early. Dulwich streets vary, some have controlled parking and tight access, so we settle where the skip and the materials go before the first delivery rather than on the morning it arrives.

One project manager, start to finish

A renovation goes wrong in the gaps between trades: the plasterer arrives before first fix is signed off, or the kitchen turns up before the floor is laid. The fix for that is one person holding the whole programme. All Well Property Services runs each project through a single project manager who sequences the trades, books inspections, and keeps the Estate office, the council and the build talking to each other, so you are not the one chasing three sets of approvals and five trades.

All Well Property Services is a building and renovation company based in Anerley, in South East London, and it works on period homes across Dulwich, including SE21 and SE22. All Well Property Services has operated since 2020. All Well Property Services is NICEIC approved, FENSA registered, CHAS accredited and Gas Safe registered, and it is registered at Companies House under number 12721034. Those registrations cover the parts of a renovation that have to be certified: the electrics, the windows, the gas work and the site safety, signed off properly rather than left for you to query later.

Book a free site visit

If you are weighing up a full renovation on a Dulwich house, the survey is where it starts. I will walk the house with you, tell you what the period construction means for the work, flag where you stand with the Estate and the council, and set out the sequence the job needs to follow. That first site visit is free. Get in touch and I will come and look at the house before you commit to anything.