Townhouse Renovation
in Kentish Town, NW5

Reading a townhouse floor by floor is more useful than reading it room by room, because each storey in an NW5 terrace behaves differently in structure, damp and daylight.

• Lower ground and vaults. Expect solid or suspended timber floors sitting close to damp ground, a front lightwell that is often the only source of natural light, and frequently a brick-arched vault running under the pavement with its coal-hole plate still set into the path. Vaults suit plant, wine or bicycle storage once ventilation, tanking and drainage are resolved; they are seldom habitable without substantial work.
• Raised ground floor. The entrance level holds the deepest plan and the original front-to-back reception geometry. Opening the spine wall buys length, but the beam has to carry load from every storey above it down through the terrace to the foundations.
• First floor. Tall sashes, generous heights and the most complete surviving shutter, architrave and cornice detail — the storey where careful restoration repays more than reinvention.
• Upper bedroom floors. Rooms shrink and joists lighten as you climb. This is where en-suites and fitted storage are won or lost, and where partition changes are simplest to make good.
• Top floor and roof. Dormers, mansards and rooflights fall under Camden's Article 4 controls and are assessed against the Kentish Town Conservation Area appraisal, so external roof change needs a well-detailed application rather than an assumption of permitted development.

The connective tissue is the staircase, and it deserves its own line in the schedule: balustrade repair, creaking treads, worn nosings, handrail continuity and the half-landing windows that light the core of a deep plan. Treat the stair as a room in its own right and the finished house reads as one building rather than five refurbished flats stacked on top of each other.

Sequencing a multi-storey house is a vertical problem before it is a trade problem. Strip-out generally runs top-down so debris falls with gravity and the lower floors stay clean; structural work then runs bottom-up, because nothing on the second floor should be finished while beams are still being installed at ground level.

Party walls sit on both sides of the house, so notifiable work — beams into shared walls, chimney-breast removal, underpinning at lower ground — usually means two sets of notices and two party wall awards, each with its own surveyor and its own timetable. Serving them late is the single most common cause of a stalled townhouse programme, and neighbour coordination on the tight NW5 terraces deserves the same attention as the build sequence.

Logistics are dictated by the staircase. A narrow Victorian dog-leg with tight winders sets a hard limit on what can travel through the house: baths, boilers, stone slabs, sheet goods and beams frequently cannot turn the half-landing and have to come in through a sash opening or over the rear scaffold instead. That decision has to be made at design stage, not on delivery day, because it determines glazing sizes, hoist positions and where the scaffold goes. On street frontages with mature trees noted in the conservation area appraisal, scaffold, skip and hoist positions need agreeing early with Camden.

• Top-down strip-out, bottom-up structure, then services vertically through the whole house in one pass.
• First fix by riser, not by room, so pipework and cabling are pulled the full height before floors close up.
• Decorate downwards once the stair is protected, finishing the entrance level last.

Phased floor-by-floor occupation is achievable on cosmetic schemes; it is far harder once the house has one stair shared by family and trades.

How do you get daylight into the middle of a deep, narrow townhouse?

Light comes from three directions in a terrace: front, rear and above. Widening or deepening the front lightwell lifts the lower ground floor; a rooflight over the stairwell drops daylight down the full height of the house to the darkest landings; and a glazed rear return or roof glazing brightens the back of the ground-floor plan. External changes are assessed against the Kentish Town Conservation Area appraisal and Camden's Article 4 controls, so the front elevation usually offers the least room for manoeuvre.

Where do services run in a five-storey house?

Vertically, in as few routes as possible. Redundant chimney breasts, the void alongside the stair and stacked cupboards are the usual candidates for a riser carrying soil, water, heating and data through every floor. Boiler or cylinder position matters more than in a flat, because hot water has to reach a top-floor shower and a lower-ground utility from the same plant.

Can we fit a domestic lift?

Sometimes. A through-floor lift needs an aligned footprint on every level, a structural opening trimmed at each floor, pit and headroom allowance, and fire separation where it passes through the protected stair. Where cupboards already stack, it can work; on a narrow cottage plan such as those around Kelly Street it rarely does.

Can the family stay in the house during the works?

Floor-by-floor phasing works for cosmetic and joinery-led schemes, particularly where upper bedrooms can be sealed off. It is impractical once the stair becomes the trades' only route, once services are being pulled through the whole house, or during structural and lower-ground work.