The open-plan kitchen diner is the room most families end up wanting.
Somewhere you can cook dinner and still see who is doing homework, arguing over the iPad or building something enormous out of Duplo on the floor.
Taking down the wall between the kitchen and the dining room is one of the most popular home projects in the country, and for good reason. Before the sledgehammer comes out, though, there is one question worth asking, and it has nothing to do with RSJs or worktops.
It is about the age of your house and what the previous generation built it from.
Companies handling asbestos removal in Hampshire and elsewhere in the UK will tell you that most of their domestic call-outs come from families who were three days into a knock-through when something unexpected turned up.
The Age Of Your House Matters More Than The Age Of Your Kitchen
The UK has some of the oldest housing in Europe. Around 78 per cent of our homes were built before 1980, compared with an EU average of 61 per cent. If you live in a 1930s semi, a post-war terrace or a 1970s estate house, you are in the majority.
Asbestos was not fully banned in the UK until 1999. That ban stopped new use, but it did not remove anything already installed, and an estimated 1.5 million UK buildings still contain it.
It was used because it worked. It was fireproof, cheap, strong and easy to mix into other products, so it went into thousands of everyday building materials in ordinary family houses.
There is one more thing worth knowing. The legal duty to manage asbestos under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 applies to non-domestic premises, so schools, offices and the shared parts of blocks of flats. It does not apply to your own home.
Nobody is going to inspect your house or send you a register. Which means the check, if it happens at all, happens because you decided to do it.
Where It Actually Turns Up In A Family Home
If you have ever wondered why a builder pauses at a certain ceiling, this is the list.
Artex and textured coatings.
Swirled or stippled ceilings and coving, hugely popular from the 1960s through to the 1980s. Very common on kitchen and hallway ceilings in exactly the houses people knock through.
Vinyl and thermoplastic floor tiles.
Usually nine inches square, often laid straight onto the concrete in kitchens and utility rooms, sometimes with a black bitumen adhesive underneath. Frequently hiding under laminate someone else laid in 2004.
Boiler and airing cupboards.
Insulation board lining the back of the cupboard, old flue panels and fire protection boxing.
Soffits, fascias and garage roofs.
The exterior boards under the eaves, and any corrugated sheeting on an outbuilding.
Panels around meter boxes, under stairs and behind fires.
Small, easily missed, and often exactly where a new wall or radiator ends up going.
You cannot identify any of it by looking at it, and neither can a builder. Confirmation comes from a small sample analysed at a UKAS-accredited laboratory, usually within a couple of days.
Undisturbed Is Not The Same As Dangerous
This is the part that gets lost in the panic, and it is the part that should reassure you.
Asbestos-containing materials in good condition, left alone, are not releasing fibres into your kitchen. Your children have been eating breakfast under that artex ceiling for years and it has been sitting there doing nothing at all.
The risk comes from disturbance, which means drilling, sanding, cutting, scraping, smashing or breaking. That is when fibres are released into the air.
The health picture explains why the care is worth taking. Around 2,500 people die from mesothelioma in the UK each year, and the HSE estimates roughly 5,000 asbestos-related deaths annually.
These conditions take twenty to fifty years to develop, which is precisely why a short, well-managed job now matters and a rushed afternoon with a hired sander does not feel like anything at the time.
So the everyday rule for families in older houses is simple. Do not sand an artex ceiling. Do not pull up old floor tiles to see what is underneath.
Be careful drilling into ceilings for hanging chairs, shelving or bunting. If you are not disturbing it, you are fine.
Getting It Checked Before The Wall Comes Down
If you are planning structural work, the right step is a refurbishment survey. It is intrusive on purpose, because it opens up and samples the areas your build will disturb rather than just walking round and looking. Surveyors doing this work are qualified to BOHS P402 standard or higher.
Booked early, it costs a modest fixed fee and slots into the same window as your drawings and building control application.
Discovered halfway through, it becomes a stopped job, trades standing down, and a family living around a sealed-off kitchen for far longer than anyone planned. There is also a timing detail worth knowing. Higher-risk removal work requires a fourteen-day notification to the HSE, so it needs to be in the diary rather than sprung on you.
Why This Is Not A Job For Your Builder
A good builder will be the first to say so. Removal is split into licensed work, which covers the higher-risk materials such as insulation board and pipe lagging, and non-licensed work, which covers things like cement sheeting, floor tiles and textured coatings. Licensed work can only be carried out by a licensed contractor, using a sealed enclosure and controlled access, and it finishes with a four-stage clearance air test before anyone is allowed back into the room.
Even the lower-risk materials need trained operatives, controlled methods that keep the material whole, and proper waste handling. Asbestos waste is hazardous waste. It cannot go in the skip on your drive.
It goes to a licensed facility with a consignment note, and you keep that note with your survey report and clearance certificate. If you sell the house in eight years, that folder answers a question a buyer’s solicitor is very likely to ask.
Planning It Around The Children
A few practical things that make the week easier.
Removal work on a domestic property is usually short, often a day or two. Book it for a period when the children are with grandparents, at holiday club, or you are away for a couple of nights. That is easier than trying to keep a four-year-old and a dog behind a plastic sheet.
Clear soft furnishings, bedding and soft toys out of the rooms next to the work area before anyone arrives. Take the pets out for the day.
Do not treat the sealed area as a place to have a quick look at progress, and that goes double for anyone under twelve who wants to see the big machine.
Then let the clearance certificate be the thing that tells you the room is ready, rather than the fact that it looks finished.
The Short Version
Check the age of the house. If it predates 2000, get a refurbishment survey before structural work starts. Leave anything suspect alone until it has been sampled. Use a licensed contractor for removal rather than adding it to the builder’s list.
Keep the paperwork. Then get on with choosing the tiles, which is the fun bit and the reason you started.
