From top to bottom

After buying their first home together, Lucy and Jason Parker, who have two children, Zora, three, and seven-month-old August, spent 18 months living in the cold and damp Victorian house without making any changes. ‘We knew it would be a lot of work,’ says Lucy.

Their patience enabled the couple to gain insight into the building before embarking on the renovations. ‘We got a sense of the light and the space,’ says Jason. The couple’s aim was to gain extra room, to improve their home’s energy efficiency and make it family friendly. So Lucy, 42, and solicitor Jason, 45, hired architect Emil Neumann to devise a scheme for the entire house.

His ambitious design includes a three-storey extension at the rear that reaches 4.3m into the garden at the lower-ground floor level and has a kitchen with dining area and sliding doors leading to the garden that span almost the full width of the building. There’s a home office in the new 3m-deep ground-floor addition, while an extra 1sqm on the top floor increased the size of the family bathroom. Removing the loft provided vaulted ceilings in the top-floor bedrooms and bathroom.

While waiting for planning permission, which took five months to come through, Emil and the couple sought a pre-tender cost estimate from a quantity surveyor for the architectural drawings before choosing a contractor. ‘Our biggest concern was going over budget and schedule,’ says Jason. ‘We wanted as much of the design completed and to make as many of the decisions as possible before work started.’ Their advance planning paid off as having the details in place enabled the contractor to buy building materials before prices soared due to the pandemic, and the project ran smoothly to completion in just ten months.

Lucy, Jason and baby Zora moved into a rented home before construction began in January 2021. Project managing was taken over by the contractor with Emil as the contractor administrator. ‘I paid regular visits to the site, chaired site meetings, and checked that works went ahead in accordance with the contract, design and specification,’ he explains. ‘I also prepared further information that was needed for the construction, such as following site visits by the structural engineer or Building Control inspector, and by maintaining and updating the drawings.’