Victorian & Edwardian homes
Period Property Renovation & Restoration in Nottingham
Renovation for older houses that keeps what makes them worth living in — the cornices, staircases, doors and joinery — and brings everything else up to standard. One family team, from the first visit to the last coat.
Our approach
Renovating a period home without losing its character
Most of what makes a Victorian or Edwardian house feel the way it does is in the details: a run of cornice, a moulded architrave, a plaster archway between two halls, the turned balusters on a staircase. Once those are ripped out and swapped for the nearest thing from a merchant, the room is quietly a different room, and nothing brings it back.
So a period renovation starts with a series of decisions about what to keep. We look at what is there, work out what can be repaired in place, and only replace what genuinely has to go. Where something is beyond saving, it is matched rather than substituted — profiles taken from what is already in the house, so a new length of moulding reads as part of the original run.
Old houses also behave differently. Walls move, plaster blows, woodwork carries decades of paint and nothing is square. Solid walls with no cavity deal with moisture by letting it move through the fabric, which is why we use breathable products on solid masonry rather than sealing it in. And most of the work happens before any finish goes on: stripping, filling, stabilising and repairing until the surface is genuinely sound. It is slower, and it is the difference between a finish that holds and one that lasts a season.
What we do
Period property services
All carried out by our own team. A period renovation usually needs several of these at once, which is exactly why having one company do them is easier.
Plaster repairs
Blown and cracked plaster patched, re-skimmed or re-plastered — including lime work where the building calls for it.
Original feature restoration
Cornices, mouldings, plaster archways, panelled doors and porches repaired and brought back rather than replaced. Conservation-sensitive restoration.
Timber, floor & staircase restoration
Original floors and staircases sanded back to bare timber and refinished; rotten timber cut back to sound wood and renewed. See a staircase we stripped back.
Joinery matched to period profiles
Skirting, architraves, doors, window reveals and sills, plus made-to-measure alcove units, shutters and shelving built for the room.
Decorative mouldings & panelling
Panelling and mouldings made and fitted on site, then filled, caulked and finished. Wall panelling.
Period interior decoration
Colour, materials and finishes chosen with you for the building, then painted onto properly prepared surfaces — walls, woodwork, fireplaces and furniture. Hand-painted kitchens.
Wallpapering & decorative finishes
Lining, hanging and pattern matching, including heritage and specialist papers on uneven period walls. Heritage wallpapering.
Exterior woodwork & walls
Doors, windows, render and brickwork prepared and painted with breathable products suited to the wall behind them.
Victorian houses
Victorian house restoration in Nottingham
Victorian homes are where most of the awkward work is — and where keeping the originals matters most.
The same handful of things come up again and again in Nottingham’s Victorian terraces, semis and villas. These are the ones we have repaired in place rather than replaced:
- Staircases and original joinery. Paint-spattered treads, strings and handrails sanded back by hand and machine, then refinished — the original flight kept.
- Decorative plasterwork. Cornices and archway mouldings repaired, with new lengths matched to the existing profile.
- Fireplace surrounds. Sanded back by hand and re-finished in place rather than replaced.
- Front doors and stained glass. A rotten rail below original stained glass spliced with new timber and repainted, with the glass never leaving the frame.
- Walls and woodwork. Decades of paint, blown plaster and old botched repairs prepared properly before any finish goes on.
Why us
Why choose the Art Deco
Twenty years in the trades
Edyta and Marek have over 20 years of experience in joinery, kitchen fitting, plastering, tiling and painting & decorating — the mix a period house actually needs.
The people who quote do the work
A family business. Nothing is passed down a chain of subcontractors, and the people who strip a room are the people who plaster, panel and paint it.
Advice at every step
Colour, materials, finishes and design, decided with you before work starts — not just a quote and a start date.
What customers say
Rated 5.0 across 82 MyBuilder reviews and 4.8 across 50 Google reviews. Read the reviews.
We received an amazing service from Art 4 Deco. They supported us with the renovation of our living room and dining room in a timely manner. They took care of the painting of our walls, ceilings, skirting boards and fireplaces.The quality of their work make it an amazing result. We will definitely work with them for future renovation projects in our Victorian home.
Completed work
Completed restoration projects
Original fittings, repaired and re-finished in place. Two are written up in full, with the photographs from each stage.
Where we work
Areas we serve
We’re based at Radcliffe-on-Trent, a few miles east of Nottingham, and we regularly work in the city and the villages around it. That includes the Victorian and Edwardian streets of The Park Estate and Mapperley Park, West Bridgford’s older roads, and Radcliffe-on-Trent and Bingham closer to home.
- Nottingham
- The Park Estate
- West Bridgford
- Mapperley Park
- Radcliffe-on-Trent
- Bingham
We also work further across Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire — see the full list and map.
FAQs
Period property renovation: common questions
Often, yes. Cornices, mouldings, plaster archways, panelled doors, fire surrounds, floors and staircases can usually be repaired and re-finished in place. Where a section is beyond saving, we match the new piece to the existing profile rather than fitting the nearest stock item. We’ll tell you honestly what can be kept once we’ve seen it.
Yes. We plan the order of rooms with you, keep dust managed and tidy up at the end of every day. On larger jobs some customers choose to stay elsewhere for a few days so the work can run without interruption — we’ll talk through what makes sense for your house at the first visit.
In most cases. Rotten timber is cut back to sound wood and the missing section spliced in with new timber; heavily painted woodwork is stripped back and refinished. We have repaired a rotten front-door rail without removing the stained glass above it, and rebuilt the louvres of a roof lantern the same way.
Yes — it’s one of our specialities. If your home is listed or in a conservation area, some work may need listed building consent or planning permission. That decision rests with your local planning authority (for most of our Nottingham-area work, Nottingham City Council or Rushcliffe Borough Council), so check with them before work starts. We can’t grant consent or give formal conservation advice, but if consent comes with conditions on materials or methods, tell us and we’ll price and work to them. More on our conservation area restoration page.
We visit, look at the property, measure up and listen to what you want from it. You then get an itemised written quote with a realistic duration and start date, so you know the cost before anyone picks up a tool. The visit and the quote are both free, with no obligation. On older houses we’ll also flag anything we can only judge once work starts — hidden plaster or timber condition, for example.
Planning a period property renovation?
Tell us about the house — roughly when it was built, what’s still original, what’s been lost — and the work you have in mind. We’ll come and look at it, free and with no obligation.