The first involved ripping down the old conservatory and replacing it with a monumental concrete and brick extension designed by architect Greg Walton, co-founder of Studio McW.
“I have always loved modern houses, but I also love the way London mixes the very old and the very new,” said Cavalieri.
“You have something like the Shard, and then an old church next to it. I love that and I wanted to do something like that on a much smaller scale.”
The results of the work thrilled Cavalieri, whose house looks like a classic terrace from the outside, and a modernist masterpiece inside. “It is a showstopper,” he says. “I have zero regrets.”
Once the ground floor was complete he moved in, and got to work on the upstairs, redoing both bedrooms, and installing a new bathroom. Phase three will be to go up into the loft, transforming the property into a three-bedroom house.
So far Cavalieri, 49, has spent around £200,000 on upgrading his house; renovating even small houses isn’t cheap. But he believes the property is now worth around £700,000, and once he has added floorspace with a loft conversion it could go up to around £900,000.
For him buying a small house and then slowly refashioning it was a way to get on the property ladder as soon as possible.
“If I had wanted to buy a bigger house it could have taken me another six or seven years,” he points out. “It was about the timing.”
Cavalieri felt that his house offered better value for money than a two-bedroom flat. But the price differential between two-bedroom flats and two-bedroom houses varies depending on where you are.
In Wales, Peett estimates that a terraced house in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, would cost around £155,000 on average – around £70,000 more than the £85,000 an average two-bedroom flat would set buyers back.
But in Sevenoaks, Kent, two-bedroom houses cost from around £350,000 to £500,000, according to Oliver Hodges of Savills, while a modern two-bedroom flat would range from around £375,000 to £400,000. That means it would be possible to pick up a house instead of a flat for the same money.
Chennells said that a classic two-bedroom Victorian terrace in Cambridge would cost around £450,000. City centre two-bedroom flats trade at between £550,000 to £600,000. But out in the suburbs a similar flat would cost £300,000 to £350,000.
Coronation Street connotations
Value aside, one issue which has historically put buyers off two-up two-downs, is their plebeian history – more Coronation Street than Selling Sunset. “The two-up two-down is really indicative of the 19th century when you rows and rows of these small houses were being built,” explains architectural researcher Melanie Backe-Hansen.
“Developers wanted to fit as many houses as possible on a plot of land so that they could maximise rentals. They were built around mills, railways, factories – people had to be able to walk to work.”
Most of these original houses had rudimentary sanitary facilities: an outdoor tap if tenants were lucky, or water supplied via a shared well or pump. Toilets were also outdoors and, again, often shared.
“That is where the slightly grim image of these houses was born,” says Backe-Hansen.