Renovating a Period Home? What to Keep, What to Change and What to Restore

There’s something special about a period property.

Original windows that aren’t quite perfectly straight. Old floorboards with decades of wear. Decorative plasterwork, fireplaces, deep skirting boards and doors that were made for the house rather than ordered from a catalogue.

They’re often the details that made you fall in love with the property in the first place.

But period homes also need to work for modern life.

Around Sevenoaks and across Kent, we work on plenty of older properties where the challenge isn’t simply what should we renovate? It’s knowing what to leave alone, what can be restored and where change will genuinely make the house better.

Here’s how we approach it.