The Ultimate Guide to Your Project

So you're thinking of a project...Now what?

If you are reading this, you are probably about to embark on a project to your home. You’re probably feeling excited, if not a little overwhelmed, and wondering what the next steps are to avoid spending money and time you don’t need to spend. You’re probably looking for some answers to questions like:

1. What is the process?
2. Who do I need to go to first?
3. Is my idea possible? Or even, what do I do if I have no ideas?!
4. How much will it all cost me?
5. How do I find good builders?
6. And probably a long list of other things which are keeping you up at night!

So here goes. Here’s our ultimate guide to what you should do next to gather your thoughts, make a plan and ultimately bring your ideas to life.

1. Talk to the Right People at the Right Time

You’ve spent months (maybe years) scrolling through home renovation hashtags and staring at that one awkward wall in your kitchen thinking, “You have to go.” But once the initial “let’s do it!” adrenaline wears off, the “how do we actually do it?” panic usually sets in. Do you call a builder? An architect? A bank? It’s not always clear who you need to contact first. Here’s a list of people who might be involved in your project, their remit and who to call first.

Builder: They will run the project, organise the construction, bring in the relevant subcontractors and organise the various trades to come in at the right time to do their bit. If you contact them now, they might be able to give you an estimate and some good advice, but it’s a bit early to call them in just yet. They really want a set of building regulations drawings and structural calcs to be able to give you a firm price.

Interior Designer: Experts in internal finishes, colours, textures, furnishings, layouts and storage. A valuable professional to have on board if the budget stretches to it, but not the first person to call.

Structural Engineer: An essential part of the process when it comes to calculating structural elements. But not the first point if contact. Your Architect or Architectural Technologist will work with engineers often and be able to introduce you to a suitable professional at the right time.

Architect or Architectural Technologist: These are the people to call in the first instance. They will be able to coordinate all other professionals and they will guide you through the entire process from this point on.

So speak to an Architect or Architectural Technologist first. They will get you off to a good start and bring in the other professionals at the right time. Funnily enough, we know a good Architectural Technologist! Give us a call today.

2. Identify Potential Issues as Early as Possible

It’s tempting to start picking out paint colors and velvet sofas immediately, but first, we need to make sure your house-and the local council-will play ball.

Before you commit to a full set of expensive planning and technical drawings, we think it’s a good idea to spend some time to try to highlight things which could become issues and any associated hidden costs which are worth knowing about up front. We spend some time at the property to look at things like drains, trees, soakaways, ecology, flood risk and more. The areas we look for a things which commonly cause us, and in turn our clients, headaches. It all started with a client of ours who got all the way through the design and planning stages only to find out that the foundations were going to be significantly impacted by nearby trees. We were able to overcome the issues but the client wished he had known up front. Off the back of this we devised our Feasibility Study to highlight these types of issues as early as possible so that you can budget and prepare appropriately.

Finding out a project isn’t viable before you’ve spent thousands on planning fees is money well spent. It allows you to pivot to a better, smarter idea that is feasible. One of our recent clients completely changed their plans based on the outcome of the feasibility study and saved thousands of pounds in the process while still ending up with a brilliant outcome giving them everything they needed.

3. Know Where Your Money Goes

A common mistake is thinking that your budget will all go on bricks and mortar. When you see Grand Designs or your favourite Instagram Renovation accounts claiming “Our project cost us £100,000”, you have to ask, is that £100,000 total cost, or £100,000 for the builder? Did that include VAT and design costs? Did that include their planing fees, ecology surveys, building regulations fees, structural engineer and so on? In many cases, the answer will be ‘no’. Its important to know how your budgets gets sliced up and how much of it will actually go on those nice engineered wood floors or that Quooker tap you’ve always wanted!

Here’s how it usually get broken down:

Professional Fees (5-10%): Architectural Technologists, Structural Engineers, Ecologists, Surveys, Calculations, Building Control fees and more.
Construction (60-70%): This is the bricks and mortar—labor and materials.
VAT (20%): Often forgotten, but it’s a big chunk!
Contingency (10-15%): A slice kept aside for things you didn’t expect.

That’s fairly broad, but as a rule, take your total budget, knock of 20% for VAT, knock off a further 10% for contingency, a further 5-10% for the design, planning and pre construction elements, and that leaves you with your construction costs. This is the builder’s chunk to pay for their work and all the materials to bring it to life from boring things like concrete and pipes, to nice things like taps, flooring and handles.

Example:
Total Budget: £100,000
VAT: (£16,600)
Budget Ex VAT: £83,400
Design Fees/Professional Fees @7.5%: (£7,500)
Contingency @10%: (£10,000)
Actual Build Budget: £65,900

As you can see the £100,000 budget quickly decreases to an actual build budget of around £66,000. This is a big difference and if not carefully considered, it’s easy to commit to a project cost of £80,000+, thinking that it’s well within budget, only to find the costs creeping up and money quickly running out.

4. Pen and Paper is Cheaper than Bricks and Mortar

The most expensive way to design a house is with a hammer in your hand. If you decide to move a wall while the builder is standing there, the “variation order” fees might make your eyes water. Not because the builder is trying to pull a fast one, but because often it’s not as simple as moving the wall. The wall itself is probably the easy part, but you might have already finished your first fix for your services, it might impact work you’ve already done, or work which has already been planned. It might delay other trades or impact the schedule causing delays or costs elsewhere. As a rule, the further through the process you go, the more expensive it is to change things. Changing things when we’ve got the pens and pencils out in the design meeting is essentially free. Changing things once the planning has been submitted costs a bit more, and will certainly cause delays. Changes during the building regs stage is more costly, especially if it requires changes to planning. And finally, changing things on site, when it’s being built, can often the most costly. Of course there are always changes on site, and minor things can be changed in consultation with the builder without issue. But it’s always a good idea to start with a solid plan, which has been well considered, and limit the changes you need to make later on.

This is why the Design Meeting is critical. We’ll talk through options, discuss pros and cons, work out better ways to do things and come up with a design which works for you.

5. Use AI, but know it's Limitations

The future is here. AI is everywhere and it’s tempting to think that it’s got all the answers, but use it with caution when it comes to planning your project. It is brilliant for generating ideas. Try taking a photo of your room, uploading it to your favourite AI and asking it to redesign it for you. You’ll get some great ideas. It is an incredible for helping you visualise styles or colour palettes you hadn’t considered. We do this too! However, it’s not (yet) going to be able to lead you through the nuances of this whole process. It might tell you that your loft conversion is possible, even if it isn’t. It will tell you that you won’t need a post in your new open plan living space, even though you might. We have found it can be misleading when it comes to planning and building regulations advice while at the same time being spot on on several other things. The trick is to know when it’s right and when it’s leading you down the garden path. That’s where you need the experience of someone who has been there and done it before. Our advice is to use AI for idea generation, images and visualisations. It’s also good for localised pricing and budgeting. Avoid it for nuanced questions about your specific project and take the planning advice it gives you with a pinch of salt. Certainly don’t trust it to tell you about structural elements of your home or anything which has a safety implication.

6. Keep it Simple to Keep it on Budget

There is a whole world of products out there, and knowing where to look to find beautiful vanity units, kitchens, flooring, windows, doors, roof lanterns and the like is critical for bringing your project in on budget. Builders are an excellent source for finding the right product. Not only are they used to fitting products from various brands so they get to know which ones work well, which ones last and which ones don’t, they are also exposed to the newest products through their contacts at various merchants and suppliers who they use. And best of all, because they buy so much for all of their projects, they are often able to get better prices than you can, even when you factor in their mark up. So lean on your builders to find beautiful, reasonably priced products. Where possible, avoid going for bespoke products. Not only will they cost more, but the tried and tested, ‘off-the-shelf’ products are a sure fire way to keep your budget in check. Don’t mistake this for being boring or poorly designed. There are beautiful products available out there, usually from your local builders merchant or a local supplier, which will give you everything you need at a reasonable cost. Large format tiles, slimline glazing, pyramid roof lanterns, herringbone flooring and the like are all available through your builder and local suppliers and don’t require you to shell out for expensive, bespoke products or brands.

7. Use Pinterest and Instagram with Caution

We love a good Pinterest board- it’s a great way to explore, find ideas, collate imagery and share it. However, keep in mind that those stunning Californian villas don’t have to deal with British weather, regulations or strict planning officers. Small, cosy loft conversions might look cute, but don’t necessarily meet building regulations. A lovely, clean, modern staircase might look great on Instagram but you’ll need a handrail if you want to get your completion certificate. You get the idea, sometimes images are AI generated, other times they are from a different country with different rules. Just because you have a picture of it, doesn’t necessarily mean you can have it. We’ll do our best to make it happen, but our advice is to use tools like Pinterest and Instagram for ideas and inspiration, but work with the professionals to design something which actually works for your property.

7. Consider these Common Design Questions

Obviously , good design takes time and consideration and what works for one home or client might not work for another. However, there are some basic principles which we try to adhere to which have developed over time and are worth paying some attention to during the design process. If not rules, consider them guidelines. They are common issues which everyone faces, like how much room should there be between the island and units? Can my loft be converted to a room? And so on. The list is endless, but here’s a few key considerations we bump into a lot.

Entrance Hall: Aim to have the entrance hall in the centre of the property. All other rooms should radiate from this central space. It’s not always possible of course, but it will help achieve a good layout and limit the amount of floor space you use for corridors.

Hallways: Aim for about 1200mm for hallways to feel comfortable.

Small WC: You don’t need much rom for a small downstairs loo. About 900mm in width is sufficient but make sure you can get in, close the door and do what you need to do without being too squashed!

Kitchen Islands: 1m between worktop and island is comfortable. Aim for 1000mm-1200mm for optimum flow. Whether you have a sink or hob in the island is personal choice, but make sure that if you have seating nearby, people won’t get burned by sizzling bacon fat when you’re cooking breakfast! Consider what you want the island to be used for and whether to keep it clear or not. Before you commit to an island, get a tape measure out and measure the size. A 1500mm deep island might seem modest at first, but when you actually measure it, it is usually plenty big enough. So don’t underestimate the size based on the drawings. Get the tape out and see what it’s like in real life.

Headroom over stairs: For a loft conversion, you need 2m of headroom over the entire top landing. Don’t forget, you’ll probably need to beef up your ceiling joists (the loft floor for want of a better term) to form the new floor joists and you’ll need to insulate the rafters sufficiently. What this means is the space will shrink in all directions. You’ll have surprisingly less room in your loft than you do now, so if it’s already tight, you may not be able to fit the loft conversion in. As a rule, if you have more than 2300mm from joists to ridge, you’ll probably be able to make it work. Less that that, and it’s a non-starter.

Going open plan: Our most common request is to design a rear extension and knock out the back wall to form an open plan living, dining room, kitchen. Commonly this leads to a large steel beam being used to hold up the second floor of the house over the opening. This can lead to needing a post to support the beam. Sometimes, you need to embrace the post and design it into the room! If you really don’t want a post, we can work with the structural engineer to try to facilitate that, but ultimately until someone invents sky-hooks, the house sometimes just needs some support to hold it up! We have plenty of examples of posts in kitchens which work perfectly well and can even add some interest to a big open plan space.

Over-glazing: It’s common to want large doors, a large roof lantern and lots of windows to let in maximum light. The problem is it also lets in lots of heat in the summer and lets lots of heat out in the winter. Because of this, there are limitations. You are allowed, as a rule, glazing equal to the total of 25% of the floor area of the new extension, plus any glazing being removed. This often means extensions are considered over-glazed. More efficient glazing or using additional insulation elsewhere can help offset this through an area weighted U Value calculation which we can provide. However, in extreme cases, you might need to engage an energy assessor to provide a SAP calculation if you want to add lots of glass.

Don’t under-estimate the Utility Room: Factor into your plans things like clothes drying racks, bins and storage for vacuums, ironing boards and the like. They take up lots of space, especially the airer, so make sure you don’t skimp on the utility room!

8. Be Aware of these 3 Planning Pitfalls

This section could get quite lengthy, so We’ll limit it to 3 key things:

Bats: If you come under Chichester District Council Local Authority, and you plan to do any work to an existing roof, you are highly likely to be required to submit a Preliminary Ecological Appraisal or Phase 1 Bat Scoping Survey. This can be carried out at any time of the year. If the outcome is that there might be bats present, then you could be required to have further surveys. However, these surveys can only be carried out between May and September. So we have had clients put planning applications in at the start of October, and due to bat surveys, they get held up until the following May simply because the required survey can not be carried out and the planning application gets stuck. It’s not common, but prepare yourself for possible delays caused by seemingly trivial issues when it comes to planning!

Drains: Commonly, we are asked to add rear extensions to properties. And commonly, properties have a shared drain running along the back of the house. In particular terraces. If you want to build within 500mm of a shared drain, you will need permission from Southern Water. We can arrange this but it is a cost you should factor in. It will be highlighted on the Feasibility Study.

Surface Water: if you are in the Arun District Council Local Authority, and in particular in the Lidsey Catchment area, you will run into problems with soakaways for your new extension. We will need to consider this early on in the process to make sure it’s feasible. This will also be highlighted in the Feasibility Study.

9. Go for Permitted Development if you can

Not every project needs to go through the full, formal planning permission process. This is where Permitted Development (PD) comes in. It allows you to make certain changes to your home without asking for permission first—provided you follow some very specific rules.

It’s a great way to avoid some of the red tape associated with a full planning application. We always advise going for permitted development if your proposal meets the criteria.

The Basics:

To qualify for PD, your extension has to meet certain conditions. These usually involve the height, the materials, and how much of your garden you’re taking up. If you step outside these rules, you’re back in the territory of a Full Planning Application . This is not a show-stopper, but you would choose to avoid it if possible.

Single Storey rear Extension Example:

If you are planning a simple extension out the back, you can often use PD rights if it meets the following criteria:

The Depth: You don’t extend more than 3 metres beyond the back wall (for a terraced/semi-detached house) or 4 metres (for a detached house). Note: In some cases, you can go up to 6 or 8 metres under the “Prior Approval” scheme, but that involves a bit more paperwork!

The Height: The highest part of your extension isn’t taller than 4 metres, and the eaves (measured from the part of the roof vertically above the face of the outside wall) aren’t taller than 3 metres if you’re close to the boundary.

The Look: The materials used for the exterior (bricks, roof tiles) must be of a similar appearance to the existing house.

The Footprint: You aren’t covering more than 50% of the total area of land around your original house (including sheds and other outbuildings).

We always advise obtaining a Certificate of Lawful Development. This is a formal recognition from the council that the proposal is indeed permitted. It’s important to get this as there are many rules for permitted development, on top of the basics above, which are less clear cut. It will also be useful if you come to sell and you need to prove that your development is legal.

10. Obtain Estimated Build Costs

Before you submit your planning permission and building regulations, it’s a good idea to find out approximately what the build cost will be. The typical process is that you’ll submit the planning, when that’s approved, you submit the building regulations, and then you go out to builders for prices. The issue is that if the prices come back too high, you might need to go back to planning and building regulations to make some changes which will cost and lengthy delays. By getting a build cost estimate at the design stage, you can submit the planning and building regulations with a great deal more confidence that the project is likely to be within budget. We produce our cost estimates in-house using the same type of pricing software that the builders use, pulling in daily prices from builders merchants and local labour rates. This means we have control over the pricing and can make changes as the design evolves.

11. Use Reputable Builders and Make them Lots of Tea

The builder will be in your house for several weeks or months, making a mess, making noise and generally getting in the way. They’ll be making dust which you can’t clean up no matter how much you try and they’ll be turning your water and electric on and off at all the wring times. And you’ll be paying them for the privilege! At times, you probably won’t like the builder much and you might have awkward conversations about money or extra work. That is all part and parcel of doing your project and – as people will tell you over and over again – it will all be worth it in the end!

You need to find a builder you can trust, work with and who will do the work to a standard you’re happy with. Using our local trusted builders is a good start, as well as doing your own homework, checking references and asking to speak to past clients and looking at past projects. All good builders will be happy to put you in touch with happy customers and show off some of their work.

And when the builders are in, don’t underestimate how far a cup of tea and biscuits goes. Building is a game of give and take, and keeping builders topped up with tea and generally being easy-going when it comes to the disruption goes a long way when it comes to them doing extra work or going the extra mile for you.

So, not much to think about then!

In all honesty, there is a lot to consider and while the design part is usually exciting and fun, there can be frustrations with planning and building regulations. By engaging us, you have the benefit of our experience in guiding you through the complexities of the project. We know intuitively what to avoid and how to make projects more feasible, on budget and buildable.

In summary, the best process we have found is to start with the Feasibility Study. If you would like to continue after that, and we don’t uncover any show-stoppers, then we’ll carry out the Measured Survey, followed by inviting you in for the Design Meeting. We’ll then draw up the proposals and produce a Build Cost Estimate. When you’re happy, we’ll submit for Planning Permission. We’ll then handle the Building Regulations drawings and gain approval from Building Control. Additional Services we can offer are Electrical layout plans, 3D Visualisations and Pricing Schedules (for builders to price against). We can also run the Tender Process and eventually act as Contract Administrator when the build is underway.

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