The house was was built in 2005, winning an RIBA Award and The Manser Medal. 

On the site of a two-bedroom house built of dark engineering bricks with a roof of cement tiles the Architect, Robert Dye, created a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house of timber-frame construction. The design solution was simple yet ingenious. From the street it looks like a two storey house with a grey pitched roof – but this is where the ingenuity comes in for the monopitch roof hides a third storey with a double bedroom and an ensuite bathroom opening on to a hidden flat roof. With stressed plywood panels to allow for the double cantilever at the corners, and clad in black stained Russian redwood with a grey mineralised –felt mansard roof the house has a gross internal area of 200 sq metres ( 2,150 sq ft) with a limestone – paved patio and calm garden at the back.

In awarding this the 2005 Manser Medal for the best one – off house designed by an architect for a private client the panel of judges enthused: “It provides a lesson to suburban house builders in how to get much more than expected from a standard plot. It shows that doing things in a non-conventional way can produce buildings of quality without high cost.”

The design detail and interiors are by Geoffrey Powell, the construction by Cameron Maddern and Karl Bayer.

Very old, very tatty... a small listed building 
in Crystal Palace. With help from Bromley Councils' 
Heritage Department, a scheme was agreed to 
both save this little gem, and bring it firmly - 
but sympathetically, into the twenty-first century. 
The structure was stabilised and repaired with 
period correct materials, what could be saved 
was recycled, and what had been destroyed, re-built 
with great care and attention to detail. 
The finished house has one bedroom, one bathroom, 
a kitchen / dinning area, a reception room (with 
original fireplace) and a basement utility room and 
loo... all clad in English Oak. 

Dan Flowers ran the show and produced the wonderful carpentry
The photographs are by Paul Scannell

There are six fine upright Regency houses (actually built in 1838, but styled in the fashion of ten years earlier) in a quiet road in Peckham, a million miles away from Del and Rodney. 
One house stands out as having a much larger garden, and having retained all of its original windows, doors, steps etc. The project is to refurbish the first floor of this house, fitting out the front reception as a library, with the rear reception being a dark hued tv room. 
The lower ground floor to be completely rebuilt, lowering the floor level and cutting away the existing ceiling to reveal the full length 11m joists. The existing walls to be demolished or cut back to provide one large open space to serve as kitchen, dinning room and utility space. This floor had received a make-over fifteen years ago which (sadly) removed just about all the original features. The second part of the project is to demolish the concrete garage and build a 'coach house' to provide a studio, store and parking. 
Simon Ball Construction as builder. 
Mervyn Rodrigues as Structural Engineer. 
Conel Wingrave as carpenter. 
E&E Systems for power and lighting 
Pawel Lis for plumbing. 
Billy Fido installed the AGA. 
Martin Thompson, Oscar Thompson and Don painted. 
The photographs are of the projects iPhone snaps, showing glimpses of the process, with 'proper' shots by Martin Thompson.

A complete make-over, including four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a huge kitchen. All very white and simple. We rescued a few lost features and installed beautiful cornice plasterwork, deep skirtings and crisp window-frames. We rebuilt the chimneys, tiled the roof, re-plastered all the walls, new wires, new plumbing… the cornice is by Miles & Wilde
Fabulous black and white floors by Sinclair Till. 
Great lights from One Foot Taller in Glasgow, made from recycled plastic bottles. 
Plastering by Lindsay Gibbons.

The existing side extension was a timber frame with glazing infill - it leaked, was far too cold in winter, and hot in summer.

The aim was to unify the existing kitchen space and that of the extension  replacement. The rear, and side walls have been demolished - supported by visible steel beams and posts - and the whole rear wall will be slide glass units from GlassRooms...these are very slim and allow maximum light and maximum view. A glass box has been added to push the kitchen boundary into the garden. A sloped roof, part clad in copper provides a canopy to allow garden and house to flow into each other. The dominant feature of the roof is an oval timber light box... this should capture and project available sunlight into the centre of the house.

Planning Permission was granted.

Building, by Simon Ball Construction started in autumn 2015

Carpentry by Conel Wingrave...

Carpentry oval by Conel Wingrave

Sometimes, the plan doesn't come together...

A variety of reasons can scupper a project, money being the most obvious, Planners, the most likely. None of those illustrated here were ever built.

1 a small kitchen extension in Brixton

2 two Oxfordshire cottages, knocked into one and extended to gain a fabulous river view

3 replace the clients Islington house with three flats, each having a roof terrace and parking

4&5 Herne Hill conservatory: replace a twenty year old timber conservatory in the Disney meets Victoriana style, with a neat heated glass box

6 kitchen extension to the ground floor of an East Dulwich house, we gained planning, but project remains stalled

A loft conversion, with slim tongue and groove cladding. A new en-suite shower room and a refurbished bathroom. All quite and simple.

Simon Ball Construction did the heavy work, the house needing to be stitched back together and stabilised, involving much steelwork.

To refurbish and restore an 1840s semi detached house - add a huge, two storey, extension - designed to provide a kitchen, reception room spreading into 50m of lush garden. A bathroom in an oak box, a dressing room and bedroom.

All very simple, to create an area of calm in a house full of daughters and their friends. Divide off a huge bedroom and a very modern bath/shower room, and join with a hall full of cupboards. Entrance is by double doors through a wall of books. Palette: soft greys, sharp glass, little l.e.d. highlights – even fitted carpet... 

Dan Flowers supervised the build and produced stunning carpentry.

In collaboration with Lucie-Clare Watson, of Watson&Watson - Interior Design.

Billy Ryan building

Creative Metalwork restoring the late C18 metalwork for the Juliet balcony

Lighting by Flos

A design over-view to a large Arts&Crafts cottage, a ground floor extension plus a bedroom and bathroom to the loft.
These are snap-shots taken during the build.

Chris Carey was the carpenter

Feather light fittings: Vita Eos

A wonderful mid-Victorian house, grand and confident.. but sorely in need of  updating. Our brief was to make the loft a comfortable, serene, quiet - but efficient space for two of the children. Two bedrooms, one with a small shower for him. A bedroom and separate bathroom, built into the eaves, for her. The building has settled over the last 160 years... I used a huge oak frame to reinstate a flat and level grid to the space. Within this, it was very natural - rather like a trip to the beach, pebbles to the base of the cupboards (with a nod to Gio Ponti) huge sand-grain porcelain tiles, green (iron) glass and Mylands muted marble colours. 

Connell Wingrave made all and everything.

Project: to simplify the lower ground floor of a large Edwardian property, to provide a kitchen / dining room on one level with with access to the garden. Many walls disappeared, the existing floor levels lowered to give more hight.

All white and simple, the space unified by metre square black slate tiles (96 sq.m.), lit with three ceiling lights.

The kitchen units are a simple block holding ovens and fridges, and an island with dishwasher, basins, storage etc. The material was honestly anti-mdf, being duck-egg blue formica over birch ply. The island top: oak planks.

McCleave&Co. built all the units off-site.

The brief: to create a light, simple kitchen/dining/snug area, as a replacement building for the redundant 1973 extension, to a large terraced house in clapham.

Planning took over two years.

The glass roof and doors are by GlassRooms, Simon Ball Construction handled the rest of the project, with Conel Wingrave responsible for the huge kitchen, bookshelves etc.

The materials are judged as suitable for a Conservation Area, reclaimed brick, Welsh slate, York stone paving. However, we have introduced 'full' pointing to the brickwork and used the largest slates we could find. The floor is polished concrete, the gutters of rubber...some of the bricks are simply 10mm thick, stuck to the lightweight frame! There will be a huge green oak frame to the 3.8 x 2.4m window at the garden end of the kitchen, pegged and doweled into place. This is a self-supporting structure, the main building being sealed,  watertight and actually held up by internal steels.

photography: martin thompson

A tiny extension to an end-of-terrace home, a new kitchen and lots of detail work on tiles and cupboards - one of the smallest (in terms of m2) projects we have ever done - but one of the largest, in terms of detail, texture,colour and materials. It was a delight.

The client is a cookery blogger - see: crumbsfood.co.uk

50's terrace

Planning for four bedrooms and three shower/bathrooms, lots of storage... kitchen with island all in the spirit of austerity and a brave new world. No fripperies, no showing off - white tiles, white paint - simple architraves and skirtings, bauhaus door furniture to retain the style of the original. Wide board oak floors to ground floor - painted pine boards to first and second floors. 

Oak floor from French Forrest Floors

KEA kitchen... with a WorkTop Express wedge top to wall and island units -

Windows by Velfac

Glazing and slide doors by GlassRooms

Simon Ball Construction did the building...

Georgian terrace house in leafy Camberwell, the project: to simplify the layout to provide a shower room, a utility room - kitchen and dining area.

We gained space by exposing the beams - fitting 20+ silver top bulbs between. Very restricted palette - white paint, plain oak boards and detail.

The lower ground floor is now lighter and has become the centre of the home.

Building by Simon Ball Construction

oak, copper, glass extension - with huge frameless glass pivot door to small grass garden.

building - cupboards and kitchen by the brothers Colyer.

glass by the frameless glass company

floor by dinesen

1900 terrace house in south london.

refurbish and expand.

the basic structure is sound, but tired - we need to let in some light!

(not shown on the model is a 2.6m x 500mm glazed section to the roof - just above the stairwell -  which should go some way to opening up the space)

GlassRooms supplied the glazing.

The project has needed a completely new roof.

A loft conversion, with skinny balcony - huge, glazed kitchen/diner - four bedrooms and four bathrooms.

planning took three applications

island work surface in black steel with built-in basin, black-stained oak units - with wine chiller. 

dinsen floor.

splash back with art tiles 

huge metal-frame doors by glassrooms