Guide library

Practical guides for UK homeowners

Everything here is written to answer one question properly: what should be in front of you before money moves.

The library is organised into five hubs. Each hub covers one stage of a building project, from reading a quotation through to dealing with work that has gone wrong. There are 15 published guides.

Builder quotes: what to check before you accept

A building quotation is the only document most homeowners get before they commit thousands of pounds, and it is usually the least examined. Two quotations for the same extension can differ by £20,000 simply because one of them prices the groundworks, the scaffolding and the making good, and the other quietly leaves them out.

All 4 guides in this hub

Deposits and stage payments on UK building work

Most money lost on domestic building work is lost through the payment schedule rather than through bad workmanship. Money paid in advance of work is money you can only recover by argument.

All 2 guides in this hub

Choosing and checking a builder

Choosing a builder is mostly a documentation exercise. The homeowners with the smoothest projects are rarely the ones who found a secret list of perfect tradespeople — they are the ones who asked everybody the same clear questions and wrote the answers down.

All 3 guides in this hub

Extensions and renovations: planning the whole job

Larger projects fail on the parts nobody priced: the drainage diversion, the steel design fee, the decoration afterwards, the six weeks of living without a kitchen. The building work itself is usually the predictable bit.

All 3 guides in this hub

When building work goes wrong

Problems on building work are almost always visible early and almost always ignored, because homeowners do not want to seem difficult. Raising something factually and in writing is not being difficult; it is how disputes get resolved before they become expensive.

All 3 guides in this hub

Not sure where to start?

If you already have a quotation in your hand, run it through the free checker first — it tells you which of the 27 essential items are missing and gives you the exact wording to send your builder.

Check my builder's quote Download the free checklist Homeowner tools