Coast Projects Ltd

16/09/2026

09/09/2026

Buying a newly renovated home? Don’t let a fresh coat of paint fool you.

Before you fall for the finish, here’s what to check first:

🏠 The roof: it’s the last thing anyone spends money on because nobody sees it, but it’s your first line of defence against the weather

🎨 Freshly painted walls: are they hiding damp or cracks underneath?

🧱 External cracks: small ones aren’t always a problem, but once winter sets in and water gets into render or brickwork, you’re in for a world of issues

🚿 Bathroom tiling: is the grout solid? Is there silicone in the corners, or has someone just tiled over a problem?

📄 Removed walls: if a wall’s been taken down, ask for the paperwork. Was the steel lintel designed and installed by an engineer?

A lovely finish can hide a lot. Always look past the surface.

Are we mad for checking all this, or is this exactly what you’d want your buyer’s surveyor doing? Let us know below

08/09/2026

Fort Hill, Margate: old cannons, Georgian proportions and a boiler house roof nobody’s used in decades.

Another one with Dan Thompson, this time walking the back streets behind Turner Contemporary. Fort Road, Fort Hill, a sculpture courtyard that’s sat empty since it was built, and a well deserved shoutout to the RNLI, who are putting a new lifeboat station, shop and training facility where the “temporary” 1970s building has stood for fifty years.

Margate’s full of spaces like this. All the bones are there, they just need someone to spot the opportunity.

04/09/2026

Cliftonville, the posh bit of Margate? Not quite. It’s a name property developers invented in the 1800s to make one side of town sound smarter than the other. Margate was seen as a bit common, so they dreamed up Cliftonville on one end and Westonville on the other, two posh bookends around a “dirty, cheap” market in the middle.

Fast forward through decades of ups and downs, and here we are again, people telling you Cliftonville is the nice bit and market is downmarket. Same trick, different century.

It’s not about one side being better than the other. It’s property marketing dressed up as local history.

📍 Margate, Kent

02/09/2026

By the 1970s, Margate had filled one of its own outdoor pools with sand and renamed it Lido Sands, trying to sell a beach where a pool used to be.

Part 4 of our walk with local historian Dan Thompson, and this one gets to the heart of why Margate looks the way it does. James joined Dan to talk through the decades after the war, when the town’s infrastructure struggled to find a new purpose and people went elsewhere. Not just Benidorm, but Bournemouth, Eastbourne, anywhere that had invested in itself while Margate hadn’t.

Here’s the bit that changes how we see it. That same neglect is why so many houses here still have their original Georgian front doors, shutters and fireplaces. Towns that bounced back faster ripped all of that out for uPVC. Margate being written off for two or three decades is the reason those details are still standing, and it’s part of what draws us to the buildings we work on.

Dan also pointed out the 1920s obsession with Egyptian and Indian design in the town’s pagodas and towers, plus a story about a chimney fire that sent flames straight through a building and out the top.

Would you rather take on a house with all its original features, or one that’s already been modernised?