In South London,

Loft Conversions Costs London

(Music playing)

Gabriella: I’m Gabriella

Greg: And I’m Greg, and we live in Balham, and we’ve been here 6 years now. And we’ve got Isabella and Aralia downstairs, so there’s 4 of us all in. It’s a 3-bed house and when we moved in, it was just me and Gabs, so 3 was plenty. We had room for people to stay over, but since these 2 have arrived obviously we’ve run out of space a little bit. Guests are now on the floor, or the kids get shifted around or whatever. So, it got to the point where it was kind of like, it was either time to move and try and find a bigger house or look at doing a loft conversion. 

Gabriella: So, we had 3 people quote, so I just rung my friends who’d done exactly the same thing and said who’ve you had quote and got the same shortlist and got the same 3 people round. We knew really that we were just dealing with standard quotes, and also we were recommended right at the last minute, just as we were about to go with one of these providers, a company called Visionary and heard that their customer service and their approach was completely different, so even though it felt really late in the day, I decided to give them a call because they were doing a renovation on our street and asked them to come over a do a quote. 

Greg: The other side of it was, of course, that you’ve got to weigh up who’s going to do you a dirt-cheap thing, but who’s going to leave you, kind of like, in a mess at the end of it, and who you’re going to be comfortable with handing your house over to for 2 or 3 months, to look after it… you’ve got your kids running around…

Gabriella: And that was the really big thing for me – the experience was a big thing for me. 

Greg: Yeah. And that’s what sold it. I mean, the numbers were good, but what really sold it was kind of meeting those two guys. We’ve had kind of dealings with party wall agreements before. When we had the downstairs done, and so, we had a little bit of experience ourselves, but the experience was that they’re not easy, and that, they’re either done straight away or complicated and you need to get surveyors involved and stuff like that. And given it was a – it’s a loft conversion, there’s quite a lot going on, and you kind of expect your neighbours to want to know a bit more about it and so on. So, JP kind of run that process and did a really good job. We know other people in the street who’ve had their projects delayed by 3 or 4 months because of party wall agreements, and not getting them signed off. So, I think it was as smooth as it could’ve been. I think it took 3 or 4 weeks? Probably all in.

Gabriella: Yeah, which is nothing. There was really poor workmanship on the 2 chimney stacks, with chimneys balancing on the rafters, is that right? 

Greg: Yeah, it’s along those lines. I mean, it’s 120 years old, the house, so – and no one’s been up there or done anything in 120 years, so when you go up and have a look at the loft, it’s only when, you know, you properly start taking the tiles off, you’re like oh ok, so they kind of, they spotted that. They flagged it to us. They were really good about it to be honest. 

Gabriella: They actually did offer to pay for something, didn’t they? I think they said oh you know, don’t worry, we’ll cover that chimney cost because, you know, the labour for it, and we said actually, no I don’t think that’s fair; you couldn’t possibly have anticipated that. They were really honest and transparent, and they offered to do several things, and we said no, I think that’s actually made us the same – so, we said no, I think we’d like to cover that, you know. And normally, you kind of, everybody’s trying to get away with as much as they possibly can on both sides, aren’t they? But that was the relationship with us all the way through. Very trusting. I always felt that they had our best interests at heart all the way through the process.

Greg: Yeah, I’d say it’s definitely a partnership. It was definitely a partnership. I think any other, I think the 2 building projects were not so much of a partnership at all. 

Gabriella: I think all those other providers need to be quite worried with them around here, because obviously, there’s so many lofts to be done now and I don’t think anyone else can provide the level of service and the attention to detail that they do. 

Greg: No. I agree.

Gabriella: As soon as people know that’s out there, you can forget the ‘old skool’, you know, knock it together and bodge it and bugger off type approach (laughing). Can I say that?

Greg: You just have… 

(Both laughing)

Greg: Too late!

Gabriella: Yeah, no, we’re really, really happy. Really happy.