I love the homes of the 60’s and 70’s. Ok, technically they weren’t the best houses in the street as roofs were often mono-pitched or flat and made of cheap 3-layer roofing felt. Walls, floors and ceilings were badly insulated and it was common for condensation to be running down the inside face of the single glazed windows forming little puddles on your window cill. But internally, the layouts were making great leaps forward following the dark, dingy days of the 30’s and 40’s to begin to create spaces that were more suited to a more modern way of living.

All homes need to be modernized and refurbished in some form or another every 30-something years. Electrical wiring and plumbing becomes outdated and often unsafe, roofs begin to fail and windows start to leak, so its easy to be critical and attack the faults of 60’s and 70’s housing when armed with the technical advances in building technology we have the benefit of now. But, overall these house are good. My office has refurbished many modernist houses from this period and although they need enormous amounts of technical upgrading, they rarely need significant spatial changes to make them into very workable 21st century homes.

Generally, these houses have a very simple layout. A small kitchen to the front of the house accessed off a very small hallway, ground floor loo to the opposite side of the kitchen and through the hallway you would have a reasonably sized living room with a dining area off to the side. The dining

area may be a separate room or part of the living room. Upstairs you had 3 very functional bedrooms and a small family bathroom.

The best part of this house type was that it was very efficient. It is rare to walk into a 60’s/70’s house and there be long circulation corridors and wasted space. Every room had a purpose and they were given nothing more or less that was functionally required, the design often being based on rigorously tested standard plans as defined by new housing standards. However, my biggest criticism of the 60’s/70’s house was that they were designed to be so incredibly functional that they often lacked, what I regard, as being essential creature comforts in a 21st century family home.

What I always try to do on these types of house is to add a ground floor extension to the rear of the property, something in-keeping with the simple style of architecture the house deserves and not a disgusting looking mock-Victorian conservatory that does nothing but destroy the quality of the house.

This new extension means that you can increase your living and dining space which can open out more onto the rear garden, while also looking to increase the size of the kitchen fractionally if possible, but definitely adding a highly desirable, separate utility room. To make the living spaces feel more homely I try to add a real flame fire or wood burning stove as well as losing all of the radiators and replacing the system with under floor heating throughout. Losing the radiators allows you to design in much needed storage units, which these houses are often lacking.

Upstairs is not as much of a problem. Obviously if you need an additional bedroom then you are going to have to consider a 2-storey extension at the back, which may be contentious with the planners and your neighbours, or you could consider ripping off the old flat roof and adding a third storey that will add considerable value. You could even set the roof extension back slightly (which the planners like) to create a roof terrace that the top bedroom can open out onto. This would be the most exciting way of adding a larger master bedroom and ensuite to the property but this is all subject to your budget and local planning policy.

As well as all of these spatial opportunities you must upgrade all of the poor technical aspects of these houses. New heating, electrics, double-glazed

windows, cavity wall and roof insulation is essential along with any other micro energy saving products you can afford. This will prolong the life of these exciting buildings before someone else comes along in another 40 years time to make the most of future advances in building technology and upgrades again.

The damp had then got into all of the internal structural timbers creating wet rot everywhere so walking on the timber floors was like walking on sponge. The original natural slate roof tiles had been removed in the early 1990′s and replaced with ugly, fake concrete tiles that were 3 times heavier than slate and caused the wet rot infested timber roof to sag and bow. If all that weren’t enough they also built a cheap and ugly, lean-to extension to the rear of the house that had no insulation anywhere and a wrinkly tin roof. In the summer we felt like oven-roasted chickens unable to breath and in the winter we were as cold as penguins in the Antarctic.

As I walked around with the estate agent I couldn’t stop myself saying ‘Why? Why? Why?. Why would anyone do such a thing?’ This once beautiful cottage that had been built perfectly well over 150 years ago had been ruined by naïve home improvements carried out in the last 10 years. For me, one of the problems is the phrase itself; ‘home improvements’. Just because you are spending your hard earned money on ‘new work’ to your house doesn’t automatically make it an ‘improvement’.

If your builder is cheap but compromises on good building practices, if your new window supplier doesn’t fully understand how old buildings live and breathe, if your roofer tells you to ‘strip off those old natural tiles and go for some man-made concrete ones that will last you forever’ without understanding the structure of your roof or if you are simply terrible at DIY then please don’t bother doing anything. What you are doing is not ‘home improvement’ its ‘home destruction’ and you will have completely wasted your money.

You might ask why the hell I bought the place then. Well, its location was perfect, it was all I could afford, and I love projects where I can add value. We lived in it for 2 years (god knows how!) and I tried everything to save the building, but when the roof, the floors and all the supporting brick walls we ruined we had to say goodbye to 150 years of history. We demolished it and it broke my heart.

For any ‘home improvement’ please get a good builder. Look for good value and don’t always go for the cheapest. The cheapest work will often costs your more in the end. If you aren’t any good at DIY then pay someone else to do it.

If you want to learn how to build and save money on the job then offer to become a labourer to someone who knows what they are doing. For extra technical help you could consult with your local authority building control officer who can also advise you on the best building practices and if you are doing substantial home improvements then employ the services of a good architect.

If you get home improvements right you are prolonging the building’s life, adding value and increasing it’s overall quality. If you get improvements wrong you can literally destroy the building and if that’s what you’re interested in doing then do yourself and your home a favour; save your money and get a job in demolition.