This has been Syndicate West’s most intricate domestic project so far. The brief: how to turn what felt like a run-down first floor flat with an almost unusable ground floor into a spacious family home on two levels on one of Walthamstow Village’s most prominent streets, Orford Road?
The solution: a land swapping exercise to move a downstairs WC belonging to the adjoining ground floor retail tenant to a far more sensible location, in order to give back the privacy needed for the rear ground floor home to work. This land swap involved complex legal negotiations with the landlord, solicitors, neighbouring tenants and freeholders, planning permission, party wall agreements and negotiations with buildings insurance to sort out an ongoing claim due to subsidence and a leaking roof.
Once that was all resolved, the sequence of works could begin. The home was reorganised with a side infill to create a large kitchen-diner overlooking the rear garden and the family bathroom was moved upstairs, together with 3 spacious bedrooms and a living room overlooking Orford Road at first floor level – a bohemian space for a much happier family!
