Posts under ‘Housing’

In a recent post I rather jokingly referred to my chilly house with no central heating. It’s all very well for me making gags about wearing slankets but for some the situation is entirely more sobering and uncomfortable. Holly Billen, an eight-month pregnant 26-year-old who lives in Wiltshire and features in today’s Guardian, is having [...]

After what fellow blogger Mel Starrs described yesterday as “a funny old week” involving a range of heated discussions it was refreshing to hear from a man of action. Step forward then Cameron Sinclair, co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, who gave a lecture last night at the RSA. Sinclair’s work, which was described by RSA [...]

Guest blog by Robert Cohen, technical director at Camco, who is undertaking an ambitious green refurbishment project in east London. Here he reveals some numbers on the performance of the house and the long painful process in achieveing and measuring air tightness
In my first blog in this series (January this year), our project was on [...]

Right. Have got some sarf London roofers round my gaff and again my wife and I are somewhat puzzled on a few issues. As ever you’re never quite sure with the advice/ knee-jerk responses you get from trades. So here’s a couple of questions we’re scratching our heads over (when I say we I mean [...]

The question of the future of construction and architecture quangos has been hovering around my mind for some months, given that public spending is under such scrutiny. The word now appears to denote waste of money amongst many, largely populist, circles. BD ran a front page splash some weeks back indicating that the Tories had [...]

Continuing the series of guest posts on a refurbing a Victorian house in Hackney. Joint client Bronwen Manby takes up the story, highlighting window drama, working with her brother the builder and questioning the point of party wall surveyors
So of course the ‘extreme refurb’ is over budget and behind on timetable, but
not drastically so – [...]

First in a series seeking free advice for my upcoming refurb project
So, about six weeks have passed since I moved into my Tooting pile, if that expression doesn’t sound somewhat inappropriate. A month and a half of doing the easy, if still sweat inducing, stuff. Pulling up, ripping or steaming off or smashing into smithereens. [...]

Third in a series of posts on the ambitious refurbishment of a Hackney Victorian house. This time it’s the turn of the builder Dave Manby to tell his side of the story.. after he recounts tales of white water rafting

Around two years ago my sister Bron and her partner Rob bought 89 Culford Road, and [...]

A feeling of weary satisfaction after just over a week’s work on my new house in Tooting, south London. This has consisted largely of ripping stuff out, from contents of a cellar and garden sheds to carpets, wild vegetation, door frames, electric appliances (three fridges and a freezer and an old Amstrad desktop stereo [...]

One of the most intriguing sessions at last week’s Ecobuild event was a debate on the fate of the Robin Hood Gardens on the Wednesday. This East London council estate, designed by Alison Peter and Smithson and completed in 1972, has attracted plenty of attention since a very well publicised BD campaign to list [...]