Quotes
What a good builder quote includes
The line items, exclusions and assumptions that separate a real quote from a number on a page.
Construction advice
Construction advice for homeowners, not for the trade.
Everything here is written for the person paying for the work. Start with builder quotes, then contracts, then the changes and payments that follow once work begins.
Quotes
Comparing builder quotes
Why totals mislead, what a complete quote contains, and how to line quotes up fairly.
Contracts
Agreeing terms before work starts
Scope, programme, payment points and how changes get handled once the site is busy.
Variations
Changes and extra costs
What a fair variation looks like, and how to approve one without losing control of the budget.
Snagging
Finishing well
What to check before the final payment, and how to write a snagging list a builder will act on.
From the library
Contracts
Reading a building contract before you sign
The handful of clauses that decide what happens when the project slips, changes or goes wrong.
Variations
Approving a variation without losing control
How to keep changes on site from quietly rewriting your budget and your completion date.
Snagging
Snagging and the final payment
What to inspect, how to record it, and why the last payment is your strongest position.
Longer reading
Variations
The anatomy of a variation
It starts with four words on a Tuesday morning — 'while we're at it' — and ends, on the projects that go wrong, as £30,000 of work nobody agreed a price for.
Contracts
The contract conversation nobody wants to have
Homeowners avoid contracts because they feel like distrust. In practice a contract is the opposite: it is the document that lets two people who like each other survive a bad month.
Quotes
Three quotes, three different projects
When builders' prices are far apart, the usual explanation is not greed or generosity. It is that each one has priced a different job — and only one of them has priced yours.