The first work on a Harlesden refurbishment should almost always be making the building dry, because everything else fails if water is getting in. That means roof coverings and flashings, parapets and chimney stacks, rainwater goods that actually discharge into a drain rather than onto a wall, and external ground levels that have not been raised above the damp-proof course by successive patios and paths. It is unspectacular work and it is what determines whether the plaster you pay for in stage two is still sound in stage four. Where a house has visible damp, the cause is usually in that list rather than in the wall itself.
Unapproved past work is common in this stock and worth confronting early. Loft rooms converted without building regulations approval, rear additions built without permission, structural openings formed with an optimistic lintel and no calculations, electrical work of unknown provenance — all of it surfaces eventually, usually when a buyer’s conveyancer asks for certificates. Deciding whether to regularise or rebuild is a judgement made after opening up. Regularisation asks building control to assess the work retrospectively, which typically means exposing structure and fire separation and often carrying out remedial work first, and it is far easier while the house is stripped than afterwards.
Services are the stage where phasing most often goes wrong, so they deserve planning even if they are not all installed at once. The vertical routes for soil pipes, extract ducts and cabling need reserving before any ceiling is closed up, because there are only a few places they can go in a narrow house and retrofitting them means reopening finished work. Electrical capacity is worth establishing early too: an older supply and consumer unit may not support an induction hob, an electric shower and eventual car charging together, and a supply upgrade runs to the distribution network operator’s timescale rather than yours.
Fire safety needs planning against the final state of the house rather than the current one. If a loft conversion is likely at any point, the house will become a three-storey building requiring a protected escape route from the top floor to a final exit — an enclosed stair, fire doors to habitable rooms opening onto it, and mains-linked alarms. Opening the ground floor fully in an early phase and then reinstating separation later means paying twice for the same walls. Designing the escape route into the plan from the outset costs nothing extra and removes that trap entirely.
