Holland House Renovation

Built circa 1890, Holland House has remained in the same family for more than a hundred years. That continuity shaped every decision on this project. A house lived in by the same family for four generations is not a blank canvas, and the brief was never to strip it back and start again — it was to bring it up to the standard modern family life demands without erasing what makes it theirs.

Phase one — September 2023 to October 2024

The first commission covered the ground floor and the services running through the house. A full kitchen remodel was delivered with bespoke cabinetry designed in collaboration with Apron Kitchens, and the downstairs layout was reconfigured to improve flow between the kitchen, living and dining spaces.

The flooring told us more than the survey did. Lifting the boards revealed rotting original joists across a significant area — the kind of discovery that quietly redefines a project. Rather than patch around it, the floor structure was replaced and new flooring laid throughout. Work of this sort is invisible in the finished photographs and is the reason the house will still be sound in another hundred years.

A small downstairs guest cloakroom was opened up and rebuilt as a full bathroom — a change that does more for how a house of this age works day to day than almost anything else on the list, because it takes the pressure off a single family bathroom upstairs.

Underfloor heating and limestone tiling were laid through the orangery, the kitchen, the new downstairs bathroom and the utility room. Limestone over underfloor heating is a good pairing in a house like this: the stone holds and releases the heat slowly, and it suits a building that predates radiators by half a century.

Also within phase one: bespoke bedroom cabinetry, conversion of a flat roof area into usable space, full interior decoration throughout, and specialist finishes including tiling and Venetian plaster.

Phase two — November 2025 onwards

The family returned to us a year later for the upstairs family bathroom and en-suite. Being asked back to the same house after a gap is the clearest verdict a client can give on the first phase, and it is the part of this project we are most pleased about.

The approach

Throughout, the work combined genuine structural intervention with detailed interior design. Every decision was guided by long-term durability, honesty in materials, and respect for the building's history as a lived-in family home rather than a showpiece. Holland House has been reworked for how the family live now, while keeping the character built up over generations intact.