Practical notes on buying plots, pricing builds, and reading the drawings — written for people building one house, not a portfolio.
A garden room or a garage conversion still touches planning, building regs, drainage, party wall and structural questions. The size of the build has never been what decides whether due diligence is needed — but it's almost always the reason that due diligence doesn't happen.
Read →Ten percent contingency is a habit, not a calculation. Here's how to size it against the risks your project actually carries, and how to stop it leaking away before you need it.
Read →Large programmes don't avoid risk by being lucky — they name it, score it and own it before it happens. Here's how to put the same discipline on a single page for a self-build.
Read →Most self-build programmes are an optimistic best-case sequence with no float built in. Here's how major-programme practice thinks about the same problem, and what to borrow from it.
Read →A drawing that looks finished and a drawing that can actually be built are not the same thing. Here's what an independent buildability review is actually checking for, and why it belongs before tender, not after.
Read →Applications rarely get delayed or refused for grand design reasons. Far more often it's a missing document or a drawing that contradicts the application form. Here's what to check first.
Read →The Party Wall Act rarely stops a project. Late notice does. Here's what actually triggers it, what a surveyor decides, and why timing it into your programme matters more than understanding the law.
Read →Even a modest garden building needs its foundation matched to the actual ground, and needs power, water or drainage runs planned properly if they're going in. The checks are smaller in scale than a house, not different in kind.
Read →The line between an "incidental" outbuilding and a genuine separate dwelling decides planning permission, council tax, and — as the recent BNG changes showed — biodiversity net gain exposure. Here's where that line actually sits.
Read →A garage conversion is often assumed to be a straightforward internal job. In practice it usually triggers Building Regulations for the first time, and sometimes planning permission too, depending on what's being created.
Read →Outbuilding permitted development rights look generous until you check the detail — height near a boundary, coverage limits, and the rule that a building "incidental to the enjoyment" of the house stops applying the moment it's actually lived in.
Read →Boundary proximity is where extensions generate objections. Here's what right to light actually protects, what counts as overlooking versus what doesn't, and how to handle neighbour consultation so a reasonable scheme doesn't turn into a dispute.
Read →The jump from one storey to two changes more than the price. It changes overlooking exposure, structural implications for the existing house, and how much scrutiny a planning application actually gets.
Read →Where new foundations meet an existing building is one of the most common sources of extension defects — differential movement, damp-proof course continuity, and matching a modern foundation to one built to an unknown historic standard.
Read →Permitted development rights for extensions are genuinely useful, and genuinely narrower than most people assume. Here are the actual limits, and where they stop applying altogether.
Read →Living through a renovation is genuinely possible for some scopes and genuinely isn't for others. Here's how to judge which one you're in before committing to a phasing plan that turns out to be unworkable.
Read →Damp that was masked rather than solved, foundations shallower than a modern eye expects, services buried behind old plaster with no drawings — the surprises in an older building tend to be structural and hidden, not cosmetic.
Read →The gap between what people assume needs listed building consent and what actually does catches out a lot of renovation projects — replacing windows and re-rendering can trigger it; some internal work doesn't.
Read →A survey that just lists defects isn't enough to scope a renovation. It needs to say which walls are load-bearing, what's already moved and why, and what that means for what can realistically be opened up.
Read →A new build's critical path runs in a genuinely different order to a renovation's. There's no strip-out, no working around an occupied structure — but a great deal more has to happen below ground before anything above it can start.
Read →Most refusals for a genuinely new house on undeveloped land come back to a handful of recurring policy tests. Here's what they actually require, and where the narrow exceptions sit.
Read →No mains water, gas or sewer isn't a dealbreaker — but it turns three assumptions into three separate technical questions a feasibility check actually has to answer.
Read →A structural warranty isn't insurance you buy once the house is finished. It gates your mortgage stage payments, and it can constrain design choices if it's brought in after the drawings are already done.
Read →An existing house comes with a planning history, a service connection and a postcode a search engine can already interpret. Bare land has none of that. Here's what to check that a renovation or extension checklist won't cover.
Read →A brief that is really just a Pinterest board and a budget number is why so many first-draft designs miss. Here is what actually needs to be nailed down before anyone picks up a pencil.
Read →The dedicated Biodiversity Net Gain exemption for self-build and custom-build homes was revoked a month ago. What's left is a much tighter test — and the date on your application now matters more than it used to.
Read →The drawing is what you are buying, what you are consented for, and what the contractor prices. Here is what all of it means.
Read →Nobody overspends on kitchens by forty thousand pounds. They overspend below ground, before anything visible has been built.
Read →The cheapest quote is usually the least complete one. Here is how to get three prices onto the same footing before you choose between them.
Read →The moment you offer is when your negotiating position is strongest and your information is weakest. These are the ten things worth knowing before you close that gap.
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