A late-Victorian terrace in E17. The front had been painted white in the 1970s and stayed that way for fifty years. Underneath the paint was London stock — the soft yellow brick most of the postcode is built from, with red detailing picked out at the corners and around the windows. The brick had been there since the 1880s. It hadn't been visible since the 1970s.

London stocks are soft brick: a thin fired skin over a softer body. The right way to take paint off them is a chemical poultice — painted on, covered, left to act, peeled off. Slow, careful, and the brick comes through intact. We worked through the whole front this way. After the poultice work, the joints needed attention; we repointed in lime mortar mixed to the right ratio for the wall, not the modern cement that traps moisture in the brick face.

Once the brickwork was clean, the rest of the elevation could come back. The porch capitals had lost their detail under sixty years of paint. We remade the Corinthian profiles using moulds taken from the neighbour's house, which still had its originals. The stained glass at the top of each sash was kept and cleaned. The sashes themselves were taken out, repaired, repainted, draught-proofed, and rehung on new cords.

The front wall came down and went back up in matching stocks with sandstone caps. The path was relaid in encaustic tile — hand-laid in the original Victorian palette of mustard, black and terracotta. The door, painted a deep mustard to pick up the colour of the path, went on at the very end.

The house is the same age it always was. It looks it again.

Acacia Road