Twin Pitches: Deep Retrofit Turns an Edwardian House into a Home
Twin Pitches transforms a once tired Edwardian house in London, United Kingdom, into a bright, energy-efficient family home. Designed by Atelier Baulier, the retrofit and extension replan daily life across a four-bedroom house with purpose and warmth. This is a house project, commissioned by a family of four, that threads low-impact construction through everyday routines without losing character.
Light slides across lime-plastered walls and catches on plywood grain. From the garden, a crisp double peak frames the new rear rooms with a quiet confidence.
This is a deep retrofit and extension in Ealing by Atelier Baulier, recasting an Edwardian house as a highly efficient, four-bedroom home. The throughline is resourceful reuse under clear constraints—upgrading fabric, reworking rooms, and reducing operational and embodied carbon without erasing the building’s character.
Retrofit The Envelope
The team starts with performance. Suspended timber floors are insulated, internal and external walls receive wood fibre insulation, and the original roof is upgraded from beneath to tighten airtightness. Double-glazed windows and underfloor heating stabilize comfort, while an air source heat pump supplies heating and hot water. The house is pre-wired for solar panels, making a future installation straightforward and minimizing disruption later.
Extend With Timber
At the rear, a 22.5 square metre (242.2 square foot) addition holds the kitchen and a sun room. A timber frame carries the new volume, packed with breathable wood fibre and finished in lime render for a diffusive, repairable skin. Robust aluminum fascias and gutters handle heavy rain, and green clay tiles wrap the base as a protective skirting that resists splashes and ties visually to the front door’s tiled foot.
Shape Light, Save Carbon
The sawtooth roof doubles the profile: one pitch repeats the original outrigger’s 22-degree slope, the other kicks up to 55 degrees to draw in daylight. Rooflights lift the rooms and heighten the vertical dimension, while a circular west-facing window in the gable frames garden views and becomes a calm anchor. Screw piles replace concrete foundations—faster to install, lower in carbon, and kinder to the existing ground conditions.
Replan Daily Life
Downstairs, previously chopped-up rooms give way to a sequence of living areas that flow but still hold pockets of quiet. A separate sitting room and a snug welcome retreat, and new utility and guest WC streamline the household routine. The first floor carries a generous main bedroom with en-suite and walk-in wardrobe, alongside a guest room, a study, and a family bath; the loft adds two children’s rooms and ample storage.
Kitchen By Zones
Phoebe’s sink faces the garden for small daily moments tied to the outdoors. An L-shaped kitchen stays efficient, linked to an island and adjacent utility to ease cooking and hosting. Plywood cabinetry—stained with pink linseed oil—sits under stainless steel counters, with a recycled timber terrazzo backsplash that brings texture and durability to hard-working surfaces.
Reuse As Tactic
Material choices steer away from excess. Timber stands in for steel in key structural areas to trim embodied carbon, and a fireplace salvaged from upstairs now warms the sitting room. Inside, raw lime plaster, plywood, and exposed ceilings in the extension read honest and tactile, with green, yellow, and pink accents threading through built-in joinery for the family’s vinyl collection (a nod to shared listening).
Late sun slides through the round window and lands on the terrazzo’s flecks. The house breathes through lime and wood fibre, holds heat where it should, and adapts with care. Nothing is showy; everything pulls its weight.
Photography by Jim Stephenson
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