Covering Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire & all surrounding areas
HMO conversions · Oxford Road, ST4
A bay-fronted terrace taken to first fix and rebuilt as five en-suite rooms
A bay-fronted red brick terrace to be converted into a five-bedroom HMO with a shared kitchen and dining space. The client wanted a finish that would let at the top of the local market rather than the bottom — on the basis that better rooms attract tenants who stay longer.
Getting five genuinely lettable rooms out of a standard terrace footprint without ending up with one box room nobody wants. The layout was set out at first fix and the panelling battens were fixed before plastering, so that every room reads as a designed space rather than a partitioned-off corner.
Five rooms, a communal kitchen with a breakfast bar instead of a dining table, and a hallway that looks like somebody thought about it. The before-and-after slider above is the same bedroom, photographed at first fix and after completion.
Before & after
Same room, same angle. This is the part that's hard to argue with.
This is the job that shows most clearly what we mean about HMO work: the difference between a conversion and a decent conversion is almost entirely decided before the plaster goes on.
The panelling in the bedrooms isn’t stuck to a finished wall. The battens were fixed at first fix, set out to line up with where the bed would actually go, and plastered up to. It costs very little at that stage and it’s effectively impossible to do well afterwards.
Same principle for the sockets, the data points and the wall lights either side of the bed — all positioned around the furniture layout, not spaced evenly along a wall.
Five people share one kitchen, so it takes more abuse than a family one. Shaker doors in sage green, stone-effect worktops, integrated appliances, and a breakfast bar along the wall rather than a dining table in the middle of the floor. Two stools take up a third of the space four dining chairs would.
Easy to skip, and a mistake to. It’s the first thing every prospective tenant sees, and in an HMO it’s also where the fire panel, the escape route and the compartmentation all live. Wide plank flooring, an arched mirror to open it up, and the fire panel positioned where it’s accessible without being the first thing you look at.
New windows and a new door to the front, with the original brickwork and the arch over the door left well alone. The rear yard was resurfaced and fenced, and bin storage designed in — which sounds trivial until five people’s recycling has nowhere to go.
A former pub being converted into thirteen letting rooms — steels, propping and structural alterations
A dated family house turned into letting rooms with a communal kitchen
An end terrace stripped back to the studs and rebuilt as five rooms
Next step
Tell us roughly what you're after and roughly what you had in mind to spend. We'll come out and tell you honestly whether it works.