Garden Room Dining Space

The project

A garden room dining space with full-height glazing on two sides and a polished stone floor, built as a light-filled link between the main house and the garden.

The effort behind it

Solar gain was the risk, so the glazing specification went through thermal modelling and gained a solar-control coating plus a concealed motorised blind pocket. The stone floor was laid on an isolation membrane over the heated slab to prevent hairline cracking, and the whole room was commissioned through a full summer before handover.

Challenges faced

Working in Surrey brought the classic London constraints: party walls on both sides, no lay-down area, and neighbours two metres from the scaffold line. The Garden Room Dining Space programme had to absorb structural discoveries made only after opening up, and every delay risked cascading into the finishing trades booked behind us. Weekly look-ahead planning and a just-in-time delivery schedule kept the site moving without ever blocking the road.

Team & involvement

Delivery was led by a working site manager with a core crew of our own trades, supported by structural engineers, building control and specialist subcontractors we have worked with for over a decade. Morning briefings, a live programme on the wall and photographic records of every concealed stage meant the client in Surrey always knew exactly where their project stood.

A successful outcome

Garden Room Dining Space was handed over on programme and within the agreed budget, with building control sign-off at the first inspection of every notifiable stage. The client moved back in on the date we gave them at tender — and the aftercare visit twelve months later found nothing to put right. That is the standard every DBS project is measured against.