Builder in Utrecht for remodelling and renovation

Utrecht is the city where I work most outside Nieuwegein. That is down to the distance, but mostly to the kind of houses. A large part of the housing stock is pre-war or from the fifties, and that is exactly the work I am good at: existing rooms that no longer match the way people live now.

What I do in Utrecht

Most enquiries from Utrecht are about three things. A bathroom that has to be redone from top to bottom, because the tiling dates from the eighties and so does the pipework underneath. A complete renovation of a floor or the ground floor, often around a move or after a child has arrived. And custom carpentry for the alcoves and sloping ceilings you run into everywhere in older Utrecht houses, where no off-the-shelf cupboard fits.

Alongside that I do the smaller work: floors and tiling, and the list of odd jobs and maintenance that piles up in a house and never gets done.

Why a tradesman from Nieuwegein

Eight kilometres sounds like a detail, but it is the whole difference. I work on my own, so travel time is working time nobody pays for. Out of Nieuwegein I am in Lombok or Tuindorp at eight without having sat on the A12 for an hour first. That is also why I turn up for half a day, which is rarely worth it for a builder coming from further away.

It means something for the aftercare too. If a door sticks or a bead of sealant comes loose three weeks after handover, I come back. Not as a favour, but because it is twenty minutes’ drive.

The Utrecht housing stock, honestly

A few things I run into more often in Utrecht than elsewhere and that I point out beforehand, because they affect the planning and the price.

Old wooden floors are rarely flat. If you want laminate, vinyl or tiles on top, levelling is not an optional item but the basis of the work. Skip it and you see the joints within a year.

Pipework in pre-war houses often does not run where you expect it. I allow for that in the planning by stripping a bathroom out first and only then ordering the final tiling, rather than the other way round.

And access. In the city centre, Lombok and parts of Ondiep there is nowhere to leave a van and material has to come in smaller quantities. That costs time, and I would rather say so up front than have it turn up afterwards as extra work on your quote.

How it goes

You send me a message about what is going on and a few photos. I usually reply the same day and come and look within a week. After that visit you get a quote setting out what I do, what I supply and where the uncertainties are. If you agree, I schedule it in and from that moment you have one number for everything.

I am not a building firm with a planner and a site manager. That is sometimes a drawback, because I can only be in one place at a time. The upside is that there is nobody to point at when something goes wrong.