Builders in Merrow

Merrow is largely a twentieth century suburb built onto an old village, and that shows in the buildings. The bulk of the housing is substantial interwar and post war detached, with generous interwar and post war semis filling in between, spreading east from Guildford towards the Downs.

That matters more than it sounds. Interwar and post war detached houses in Merrow tend to sit on wide plots with a proper gap at the side and a deep rear garden. Very often there is a garage set back from the building line and a side return doing nothing useful. That combination is close to ideal for extending, which is why a large share of the extension work we do in the borough is in this one area.

The roofs help too. A lot of the stock here has a simple pitched roof with a decent ridge height and no awkward hips over the back, so a loft conversion can give you a full height room and an en suite without a huge dormer that looks bolted on.

Closer to Merrow Park and the newer closes the plots get tighter and the houses are later, so the work shifts towards internal remodelling, garage conversions and single storey rear extensions rather than large wrap arounds.

The wide plots here tempt people into building the biggest box the rules allow, and that is usually the wrong instinct. A large flat roofed square across the whole back of the house adds floor area but often makes the original rooms darker, because the new roof blocks the light that used to reach the middle of the house.

What tends to work better on the interwar and post war detached stock in Merrow is using the width rather than just the depth. A shallower extension that runs wider, with a pitched roof or a run of roof lanterns, keeps daylight coming into the middle of the plan and looks more settled against the original house.

The side gap is the other asset people underuse. Many houses here have a garage set back from the front of the house with a gap beside it. Building over that garage gives you a bedroom and bathroom upstairs and a bigger kitchen or utility below, and because the addition sits behind the front building line it usually reads as part of the house rather than a bolt on.

The planning system rewards this too. Extensions that stay subordinate to the original house and keep a gap to the boundary have a far easier time at application than ones that fill the plot to the edges.