Fire Damage Restoration, Residential Property, Swansea Council

When a fire broke out at 08:20 on a weekday morning, the cause was a mobile phone charger left charging under the bed overnight. The single tenant escaped safely, but the property, a mid-terrace house managed by Swansea Council, was left extensively damaged. R&M Williams were appointed to carry out a full structural and fabric restoration, returning the home to a habitable, high-quality standard within an eight-week programme.

The scale of what lay beneath the fire damage only became clear once our team began the strip-out. A structural report was commissioned at the outset, a requirement before any works could proceed, given the extent of the damage to the roof and floor structure. The report confirmed what the initial assessment had suggested: this was a full rebuild.

The roof was stripped entirely. Damaged purlins were removed and replaced, the chimney was taken down to joist level, and all internal block walls were dismantled due to the load they were placing on fire-damaged flooring. Once the structure was exposed and cleared, we reinstated the flooring throughout and replaced the affected joists. Because the neighbouring property could not be realigned, traditional joist-to-joist construction was not viable for the roof, so all new rafters and purlins were fabricated and installed to suit the existing party wall conditions.

All upstairs walls were hacked back to the block. Every surface was re-plastered and re-rendered throughout. The opportunity was also taken to reconfigure the layout, restructuring the room sizes on the upper floor and combining the bathroom and toilet into a single, functional bathroom suite.

On the ground floor, the staircase was replaced entirely, and a new cloakroom WC was formed beneath it. The kitchen was stripped and replaced with a new fitted unit. New ceilings were installed throughout. The entire property was rewired, and a new central heating system was commissioned.

All windows were replaced and the property was redecorated throughout. When the tenant returned, the house was unrecognisable from the shell our team had walked into eight weeks earlier.

The result spoke for itself. The tenant described themselves as over the moon with the finished home, a response that reflects what R&M Williams sets out to achieve on every project, regardless of scale or value.