Nearly New House in Bury St Edmunds

We have taken this project on as our second in-house mini-development where we are substantially renovating and extending the existing house on the site. Planning permission has been granted and work started on site in July 2020.

The existing building is located on a narrow plot on a residential street in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. It was small three bedroom detached house with split-levels on both of its two floors. The building was not pretty and the layout was difficult. Seen from the street, it looked like a not-too-distant cousin of an electricity sub-station.

We felt from the start that a solid, heavy structure at ground floor with a lighter, separated shed like structure at first floor level would work well on this site: It seemed to work with the sloped terrain and with the narrow street frontage between our two neighbours.

Having decided to keep the existing structure, rather than demolish it and re-build something bigger, we started to consider how insulation could be added to improve the thermal capacity of the external walls. We retro-fitted Supafill insulation into the existing cavity and by adding insulated render to the outside face of the external walls at first floor level, the original concept of the heavy base and separated upper story remained intact.

The new roof presented the biggest and most welcome change to the appearance of the building and it also resulted in a huge increase in thermal performance of the building.

The project was completed in November 2021.