New spaces worthy of the house you put down roots in.
Design and remodeling for Londonderry homes, from the orchard roads and the older places around the Common to the neighborhoods that filled in off Mammoth Road and Route 102 in the seventies and eighties. One of our favorite kitchens is here, twenty minutes from Nashua.
Built in 1983. One of a hundred just like it.
Londonderry grew up all at once. More than half the houses in town went up between 1970 and 1999, and the biggest share in a single decade came in the seventies, when the neighborhoods off Mammoth Road and Route 102 were laid out and built a street at a time from a handful of plans. Which is why the kitchen in your house is the kitchen in your neighbor's: a U of cabinets against the back wall, a peninsula with two stools, a slider to the deck, and a wall between the cook and the family room on the other side of it. Good house. Same kitchen as everyone else.
We make it the one on the street that is different. The wall to the family room comes out where the framing allows and a beam carries it where it does not. The peninsula becomes an island with a seat for everyone. The pantry gets found in a closet or a corner the plan never used. And the finishes get chosen for your house instead of for a hundred of them: cabinetry built to last, counters that take a beating, and light where the cook stands.
Built for the chapter you are in.
Londonderry is where families settle in for the long run. The house just has to keep up.
A full house
A kitchen with a seat for everyone, a bath that is not a morning bottleneck, and the extra room a growing family keeps asking for.
Two speeds of life
Quiet comfort on a weeknight, the whole family at the holidays. One home, crafted to be at ease at both.
Designed for you, not for everyone
Nothing built to suit the masses. Spaces designed around the way you live, and built to make the everyday better.
Forty years of mornings. Same bathroom.
The primary bath in a seventies or eighties Londonderry house was drawn small on purpose: a five-foot tub with a shower curtain, a single vanity with a cultured marble top, a light bar over the mirror and a fan that moves no air. Somewhere along the way the tile got covered with a surround and the faucet got swapped, but the room is the same size it was the day the house passed inspection, and it has never once been big enough for two people on a weekday morning.
We rebuild it from the studs, and most of the time we find the room: a closet beside it, a few feet of the bedroom, the hallway linen cabinet nobody uses. The tub becomes a walk-in shower you can turn around in. The vanity gets two sinks and real drawers. New plumbing, proper ventilation, and tile, lighting and cabinetry chosen to last, so the room finally fits the people who use it.
Oak Hill’s craftsmanship truly impressed us. They went above and beyond to ensure every detail was perfect, often coming back to touch up areas that needed extra care. Their dedication to quality and use of high-end materials made all the difference in our remodel.
The house has one more room in it. We can find it.
Most Londonderry houses have space they have never used: the attic over the garage that could be a primary suite, the formal living room that turned into a hallway to the family room, the basement with eight-foot ceilings and no plan, the side yard with room for an in-law suite. Parents move closer. Kids come home. The house that fit a family of four in 1983 is being asked to do more, and it can.
We design the addition or the rework from the first sketch so it reads as part of the house and not a project attached to it: matched rooflines and siding, window proportions that agree with the original, one set of drawings and one crew from the first day to the last. Setbacks and lot coverage get worked out in design, before anything is filed.
Decided on screen. Built once.
Everything about the project gets settled in design, so construction is the calm part.
See it before you commit
Photorealistic 3D renderings of the new room, in your house, with your light. The layout, the fixtures, the color of the cabinets: all decided on screen instead of on site, where a change costs a conversation instead of a crew.
One team, one conversation
Design and construction under one roof. The people who drew the room are the people who build it, so nothing gets lost in a handoff and there is one clear agreement before demolition starts.
Permits and inspections, handled
Londonderry's Building Department asks for a residential permit application with drawings, a plot plan showing the setbacks and the state energy compliance form, and the inspections run through the same office. Our design phase produces exactly that. We file, schedule the inspections, and keep the project moving.
What homeowners ask us first.
Do I need a permit?
For anything beyond paint and fixtures, yes, whether it is a kitchen, a bathroom or an addition. The town requires a building permit with drawings and a plot plan, plus electrical and plumbing permits where those trades are involved. We prepare the drawings, file them with the Building Department and pull the permits as part of the project, so you never deal with the permit counter.
Where do we start?
With a visit. We walk the house with you, talk about how you live in it and what is not working, and take the measurements and photos we need. From there come the drawings and a 3D model of the new room in your house, so every decision gets made on screen and agreed on before anything is torn out.
How long will the house be torn up?
Nothing is touched during design, which runs four to eight weeks for a kitchen or bath and eight to twelve for an addition. Construction on a full kitchen takes about six to ten weeks, a primary bath four to six, and an addition depends on its size, with the schedule set before the first day of demolition. While we are in your home we take pride in keeping it clean and treating it with respect. The work area is sealed off, the rest of the house stays yours, and we disrupt your daily routine as little as we can. Some projects need an adjustment here and there, but the aim is a build that is as smooth and stress-free as it can be.
Do we need to move out while you work?
For most renovations, no. We set up a temporary kitchen for a kitchen job, plan a bathroom around the other bathrooms in the house, and keep the work area sealed off so the rest of the home runs as usual. For a large-scale renovation, or an addition that extends into the rooms you live in, it is worth a conversation. Moving out for a stretch sounds like an inconvenience, but it lets the crew move faster and spares you from living in a job site, so the project finishes sooner and with far less stress.
Will it look like it belongs to the house?
That is the whole job. On a Londonderry addition that means rooflines, siding, window proportions and trim profiles matched or complemented so nobody can date it from the street, even on a street where the houses started out the same. Inside, cabinetry, tile and millwork are chosen to sit with what the house already has rather than fight it.