An extension is one of the biggest things you will do to your home — and one of the easiest to have go wrong. You already know the stories: the budget that quietly drifts, the builder who stops answering, the work you can’t see hidden behind the plasterboard, the months of living in dust waiting for someone to make a decision.
What you actually want is simpler than that. To know it will be done properly. To be told the truth about cost and time, and told early if either changes. To watch the home you love handled with care — and to stop bracing for the next bad surprise.
If you are an architect, the worry is a different one. You want to hand over your drawings without spending the next six months defending them. You want the design built as you intended, not value-engineered behind your back — and you want the client relationship you built to still be yours at the end. You want a contractor who makes you look good.
That is the job we take seriously, on both sides.
How your extension runs — so most surprises happen on paper, not on site
Most of what decides whether an extension goes well happens before anyone lifts a tool. We read the architect’s intent, find the buildability problems early, and agree exactly how the work will run — so the awkward questions are answered on paper, while they are still cheap to answer.
Once we start, you are never left wondering where the job is. A short report comes to you every week. Anything that needs to change is put in writing and priced before the work happens, so the cost never moves without your say-so. Defects are caught as we go, not saved up for a list at the end. And your home stays liveable wherever the build allows — the working area sealed off from the rooms you use, the site left clean at the end of every day.
When something on the drawing will not work on site, you hear about it as a question, not as a quiet substitution after the fact. The design stays the architect’s. The client stays the architect’s. Our part is to deliver the extension to the line of the drawing and keep both of those intact.
The kinds of extension we build
Single-storey rear and wraparound extensions, side returns, double-storey extensions, and the structural alterations that open a period house up to the garden. Most of our work is on Victorian and Edwardian homes across London, where the existing fabric needs care and the planning side has to be handled properly. We can appoint building control on your behalf and, whether it is the council or a private approved inspector, deal with them directly through to final sign-off. A party-wall agreement, where one is needed, is work for a qualified party-wall surveyor rather than the builder, appointed by you or your architect. The structural, electrical and gas elements run through Gas Safe and NICEIC-registered specialists, with window installations to FENSA certification, and the works are covered by £10m public liability.
Straight talk on cost
Older London homes keep their secrets. A Victorian or Edwardian house can hide damp, movement, or decades of earlier work that no longer meets current regulations — and no one, however experienced, can see all of it until the building is opened up. That is the nature of the work: it is why every honest project carries a contingency, and why budgets on older homes sometimes move.
So we will not promise you that nothing will ever surprise us — you have read enough horror stories to know no builder can. What we promise instead is a fair price, openly arrived at, and the truth the moment the house shows us something we could not have seen. When a hidden problem appears, you get exactly what it is, why it matters and what it costs — in writing, agreed with you before we carry on. No invented extras, no margin slipped in under pressure, no decisions taken for you behind a closed door.
A fair price, a sensible contingency planned in from the start, and honesty the moment we know something. That is a promise we can keep.
Working with your architect
If you are an architect, we are the contractor you can hand a detailed set of drawings to and then breathe out. We respect architect-led contract administration, we flag buildability early instead of value-engineering behind your back, and we hand the finished work back in a way that makes you look good to your client. Our case studies show the programme and the method, not just the finished photo.
Where we cover
Talk to us about your extension
Send us the drawings and a note on what you are planning. We respond within two working days. If it is the right fit, we will arrange a visit and show you a comparable project and exactly how we would run yours.
