Acacia Road

You can spot an over-painted Victorian terrace from the end of the street. The bay looks heavy, the brick detail has filled in, and the porch mouldings disappear under sixty years of white emulsion. This house was one of those.

Underneath all the paint was London stock — the soft yellow brick most of E17 is built from, with red detailing picked out at the corners and round the windows. It had been there since the 1880s. It just hadn't been visible since the 1970s.

Paint removal from stock brick is the part that scares most builders off. You can't pressure-wash it, because the brick is too soft and you end up with a face rougher than when you started. We use a chemical poultice instead — a gel painted on, covered, left to do its work, then peeled off. Slow, careful, and the brick comes through intact.

Once the paint was off, the rest of the work could start. The porch columns had lost their detail. We remade the Corinthian capitals 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 refurbished and fitted with shutters inside. The front wall went back up in stocks with sandstone caps, and the path was relaid in encaustic tile, hand-laid in 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 just looks it again.