Roman cement Stucco repairs Stockwell London part 1

Restoration

Guildford Road Stockwell london part 1

The House in the 1990s

This is a house in South West London built between 1845 and 1850 by John Snell ltd. Described as  an Italianiate style Villa. It was part of an estate built at the same time  As you can see below the house has gone through considerable change so much so that by the 1980s the house lay almost derelict

Its maybe a little difficult for those new to London to imagine that much of the super expensive  housing stock that is so much a part of the Capital today was in-fact in many cases in a pretty poor condition not so long ago. Many of the properties were too large ,damaged by war and neglect too expensive to maintain and maybe associated by many Londoners with wartime destruction and poverty

However where some saw as the dilapidated past ,others had the vision and energy to restore as beautiful homes. Judging by the state of it in this photo it had to be some kind of love (Although I have got to say I quite like the place as it reminds me of a different London but probably not if you don’t want to bring your kids up in an acid house crack den )

The salvation of this particular house is the work of a brave couple who took his place on in the 90s  I understand that many of their friends thought they were mad when they took it on and you can see there point, its a massive undertaking. Unlike Grand Designs where Kevin try building up the cliff edge tension ‘But you have overspent there guys’ magically half a million quid appears Oh no they did it bit by bit bringing up two lovely kids no roof .no stairs no plaster on the walls  I am amazed at some peoples' sheer determination



 Over the years the owners had restored the inside, roof ,woodwork, lime plaster etc leaving only the outside to be repaired 


While working on the inside of another house in this road we had walked past this house many times wondering who owned it and why they had’nt finished it. but we never saw anyone there. I half expected to see a mad cat lady slamming the window up and telling us to clear off

We finally spoke to the owner who turned out to be completely wonderful knowledgeable energetic and totally committed to the work of what to most people would have been a lifetime The owner explained that although she had had several companies round  to look at the work most had said it was better to copy the existing mouldings and redo them in modern materials ,Its understandable most people like clean lines and uniformity. In this situation however the client wanted to repair the existing work keeping as much as was practically possible keeping the patinated surface of the original bare stucco with the repairs visible   We explained that we tried to ,where possible specialise in authentic restoration using appropriate 'like for like' materials and we would like to give her a price to do the restoration  as it would be great to work on Infact I would have probably done it for nothing if my  kids didnt keep wanting to eat but I didnt tell the owner that  or perhaps I did I cant remember 
 probably not great business practice that telling someone you would do it for a nothing
       Anyway this is what we were up against

Entrance Portico

Window surround with head missing

Cill in need of major repair

Pilaster missing with no base or capitol

Windows missing head and cill

Missing brackets and lions heads at cornice

Arched window surround repair

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Cill in need of repair

Decorative brackets to cills  in advanced state of decay

bracket

Scroll bracket damaged

Portico with missing pilaster and capitol base of columns in need of  repair