OUR decision to move house was short-lived. Two evenings spent browsing the
websites of our local estate agents and it was clear that we weren’t going
anywhere.
Like many houses in southwest London, ours has soared in value in the past
decade. But we hadn’t noticed that the four or five-bedroom houses that
would be our natural next step had more than doubled in price in the same
period. To our astonishment, any property worth the move was going for close
to £1 million.
It was too much, especially once moving costs were added on: solicitors’ fees,
stamp duty, estate agents’ fees, removal men and surveys would wipe out the
best part of £60,000. But we desperately needed more space. Our problems
were twofold. The once-elegant dining room had been taken over by our two
daughters as their playroom, so the arrival of friends for supper was
preceded by hours of moving bikes, buggies and scooters into the garden,
stashing away naked Barbies and picking dried Play-Doh off the floor. We had
a modest kitchen and a great, roomy adult den in the converted basement, but
neither could take a dining table.
The second problem was bedrooms. Our daughters share a room, but I wanted them
to have the option of a room of their own. That wouldn’t work with the
stream of parents, inlaws and out-of-town friends who regularly stay over.
So, like everyone else caught in this new property trap, we have spent the
moving-house money on extending. In fact, in “nappy valley”, the residential
strip between Clapham and Wandsworth Commons where we live, the skips
outnumber the “For Sale” signs as families build up, dig down and invade
their own gardens in search of more space. Yet our options were limited. We
wanted to keep the den in our cellars, and the attic was the third bedroom.
The only space was the patio and “sidereturn”, that Victorian quirk of a
dank, dark alley from the garden to the rear kitchen door.
Carolina Aivars, the architect we had used on a couple of smaller jobs in the
house, convinced us that, if we used all the available space to build a big
kitchen, it would radically alter the way we live. Once it was kitted out
with comfortable chairs and a decent-sized TV and stereo, we would spend all
our time there, she predicted: the basement den could be converted into
three new rooms – a study, a smaller sitting room that could double as a
guest bedroom, and a bathroom – and there would be no need to move.
The work has taken four months and, having taken the decision to stay in the
house while the work was going on, it has been a struggle. But, now that
it’s almost finished, we are indeed spending almost all our time in the new
kitchen, freeing up the other rooms.
We are extremely happy with the quality of the work. In fact, we reckon that
the new supply of high-quality builders from the EU is another factor
fuelling the renovation boom. We went for an Italian, Benito Valente, a
perfectionist whose team of four or five builders were on-site six days a
week.
The pristine new kitchen immediately made other parts of the house look rather
shabby, so we decided to get a new patio and have a new wood floor laid in
the hall. That extended the three-month project by a month or so, but it has
come in roughly on the budget of £60,000. We have not had the property
revalued, but friends in the business reckon that the new kitchen has added
15-20 per cent to its value.
Our extension is pretty modest compared with what some families are doing
round here. Elspeth Yeldham, a neighbour on the other side of Wandsworth
Common, dug out her basement earlier this year, increasing the size of her
house by a third. She has a laundry, kitchenette, spare bedroom, bathroom
and a playroom for her three young sons, which becomes a cinema for the
grown-ups at night.
“This has bought us time,” she says. “The house can now sustain a growing
family and we can stay here as long as we like. If we do decide to move,
then we can sell it as a large house with a self-contained flat in the
basement. We haven’t had it revalued, but I hope it will cover the costs.”
The London Basement Company reports that business is booming because so many
families can’t afford to move. “Our business was up by 30-40 per cent last
year and looks like it will be up the same amount this year,” says Maggie
Smith, the sales and marketing manager. “Most of that is families who can no
longer afford to buy the size of house they want. Digging out your basement
is the only thing to do if you want a lot more space. People are even
digging out under their gardens now.”
Smith estimates the cost at about £300 per square foot, making the average job
about £200,000, and believes that in most areas the cost will be more than
recouped.
But the extension boom has inevitably made life very difficult for those
looking to move into the area, with fewer and fewer houses up for sale. The
summer has been painfully quiet for estate agents, and we have had a
constant stream of begging letters asking homeowners to think about selling.
“We have a lot of buyers and not a lot of properties,” says Anna van
Blommestein, the senior negotiator at Knight Frank in Wandsworth. “The cost
of moving – stamp duty in particular – is a big deterrent. If you have a
large house, you are looking at a bill of up to £100,000 on moving alone;
that will go a long way towards extending.”
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FACTFILE
One of our first decisions was whether to move out while the work was being
done. However, the cheapest flat in the area is around £400 a week – so we
stayed. It was a trying four months, with the house full of dust and noise.
So here are a few pieces of advice to make life easier:
Put what you can into storage. We set up a temporary kitchen in the dining
room and entrusted sofas, chairs, crockery, books and toys to a local
company, Burke & Wills, who persuaded us to move out more than we had
planned. Most of the cost (about £1,000) comes from the one-off packing and
removal, not the amount you store. I wish we had stored far more: one sofa
is almost destroyed by dust.
Make your makeshift kitchen as sophisticated as you can. Our builder plumbed
the dishwasher, washing machine and old sink into the dining room, moved our
old worktop, fridge-freezer and microwave, and put the tumble dryer in the
bedroom. All we had to buy was a mini-hob.
If you have more than one bathroom, designating one for the builders will
avoid embarrassing encounters.
Prepare for mission creep. A job that starts out as just the kitchen and
basement will encroach on other rooms because of electrical alterations and
collateral damage. So we got other little jobs done while the builders were
there.
Stay out of the house. Time the work to take in the summer holidays, and
impose on anyone who can put you up for the weekend, with the promise of
reciprocation once the work is finished.
Let your standards drop. We started off each week cooking supper as usual, but
by Thursday we were resorting to take-aways. It is only for a few months...
