Marble Arch, W2 2ET

Connaught Place

A whole apartment, finished to a single standard.

Location: Marble Arch, London W2 2ET
Duration: 3 months
Type: Apartment refurbishment

A three-month refurbishment of a lateral apartment on Connaught Place, Marble Arch, carried out room by room within an occupied building: full-height wall panelling and bespoke joinery throughout, stone bathrooms, herringbone flooring, a fitted media room and a fully renewed electrical, lighting and audiovisual installation.

What we did

Complete internal refurbishment of the apartment
Full-height wall panelling to the principal rooms
Bespoke fitted joinery throughout, with concealed doors
Entrance hall joinery and integrated storage
Herringbone timber flooring over an acoustic build-up
Stone bathrooms and cloakrooms
Fitted media room with integrated seating
Full electrical rewire and lighting installation
Audiovisual first fix and integration
Decoration throughout
Protection of the common parts and adjoining occupied areas

Working in the building

An occupied block, a licence to alter, and a lift you cannot use

A high-specification apartment refurbishment is technically a straightforward job and administratively a complicated one. The structure belongs to the freeholder, the works are governed by a lease and a licence to alter, and every hour of noise is heard by somebody who did not ask for the project.

Working hours here were tighter than the local authority’s own limits, access was through a shared entrance, and materials were called off against the programme rather than stockpiled. Common parts were protected before anything arrived on site, occupied areas were sheeted and sealed as each room came into the works, and waste left the building continuously rather than accumulating.

Joinery and panelling

The finish is set out before it is made

The principal rooms are lined in full-height painted panelling, with the field sizes set out against the window positions, the door heights and the cornice so that no panel dies awkwardly into a corner. Doors, cupboards and the entrance-hall storage are concealed within the panelling and read as part of it.

Joinery of this kind is decided long before it is installed. Lighting positions, power, data, audiovisual routes and heating were all set out and first-fixed against the panel layout, so that nothing is surface-fixed and nothing had to be cut into finished work.

Floors, stone and services

Herringbone, stone and a fully renewed installation

Herringbone timber flooring runs through the hall and dressing areas. In a flat, a floor change is also an acoustic question: the build-up has to meet the lease requirement for impact sound, and the perimeter isolation has to survive the skirting rather than be bridged by it.

The bathrooms and cloakrooms are lined in stone with timber joinery and concealed cisterns, which means the drainage falls and the frame positions had to be confirmed by survey before the layouts were fixed. The electrical installation was fully renewed, with lighting designed into the panelling and the ceilings rather than added to them.

The media room

A room built around what it is for

One reception was fitted out as a media room, with upholstered banquette seating built in, acoustic treatment behind the wall finish, and the display, sources and speaker positions set out at first fix.

Rooms like this are won at first fix or not at all. Once the panelling is on, a cable that was not run is a chase through finished joinery.