Bespoke joinery in Hampstead Garden Suburb

Start with the bespoke joinery brief

Start with what the furniture needs to hold and how you use the room. Record alcoves, ceiling heights, skirtings, sockets and radiator positions before setting cabinet depths or door swings. Keep the details worth retaining in the measured brief.

Agree internal layouts, lighting, ventilation, hardware and finish samples before manufacture. Drawings should show how new joinery meets uneven walls and existing cornices, and how access for installation will work.

Find the correct character area first

The Suburb's appraisal is divided into 22 character areas, each with its own map. Locate the property in that set before selecting a reference design. Prepare photographs showing the house as part of its group, including any shared composition, green, close or boundary planting. Then set out what you need from the additional or reorganised space. A proposal that works on the floor plan still needs an explanation of its relationship to that particular group; a photograph of a different Suburb house is useful for discussion but is not evidence that the same alteration will be suitable here.

• HGS Trust: character appraisal

Keep the house and garden in the same drawing

The joint Trust and Barnet guidance gives weight to spaces between houses and the balance of building groups. Show the retained garden, neighbouring relationship and existing additions alongside the proposed work. Compare alternatives that meet the room brief with different footprints or roof connections. Where a scheme relies on removing a feature, identify that feature explicitly and explain why retaining it has not met the brief. Record tree and hedge information for the appointed advisers to assess; do not turn a sketch of a clear plot into an assumption that excavation or access will be straightforward.

• HGS Trust and Barnet: design guidance

Specify the details that belong to this house

The Trust's technical guidance warns against copying later alterations as though they were original. For your specification, build a photographic schedule of the existing windows, doors, roof edges and wall finishes, noting where their history is uncertain. A joinery proposal should show profiles and meeting points rather than relying on a catalogue name for a style. Measure fitted storage against the actual room, and identify any historic material that a fixing would penetrate. Keep replacement, repair and new work as separate items, with samples agreed before manufacture where the appearance matters.

• HGS Trust: technical guidance

Maintain a clear record of each approval

The Suburb has both council controls and the Trust's separate powers. Keep a schedule identifying which drawings have been submitted to each body, which decisions have been received and which conditions remain open. A revised cabinet, window or roof detail should be checked against that record before it is ordered. For the construction discussion, plot where materials can wait without relying on an unagreed garden or shared route. Set out how the occupants will reach essential rooms and when any protective enclosure needs to move. Those practical arrangements should follow the agreed design and site survey, rather than being inferred from the Suburb's generous-looking landscape.

• HGS Trust: character appraisal
• HGS Trust and Barnet: design guidance

Continue planning

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