Builder for renovation and remodelling in Nieuwegein

Almost nobody types “house renovation” into a search bar. What people type is “builder” with whatever they want done behind it. A builder for a renovation. A builder to convert a loft. A builder for doing over a whole house. That is exactly what I am, only on my own. I have worked in construction for over twenty years and I take on a job the way a builder does: look at the work as a whole first, then set out the order, then do it. The difference with a building firm is that there is no layer in between. You talk to the same person who then does the work.

What you are actually hiring a builder for

You do not hire a builder to lay bricks or tiles. You hire him for the order of work. On a renovation that is the real job: deciding what happens when, so you do not touch the same piece twice.

The most expensive mistakes on a job are nearly always mistakes in the order. Tiles ordered before anything was stripped out, that then just miss the new dimensions. A floor closed up before the wiring is in it. A bathroom finished before anyone worked out that the pipe to the loft has to run through that same wall. None of those cost extra material. They cost time, and on a job like this time is the most expensive thing there is.

At a big building firm that order sits in the head of a site manager who is not on the job himself. With me it sits in the head of the man who is, and he does not have to pass anything on to himself. I will name the downside straight away: I can be in one place at a time. Once your job is running it keeps running, but for those weeks I am nowhere else either. That makes me the wrong man for work that needs ten people on it at once, and the right one for everything under that.

Converting a loft

A loft is the cheapest room you can add to your house, because the space is already there. That is also exactly what people misjudge. The space being there does not mean it is ready to live in.

What actually has to happen

I always start at the floor. A loft floor meant for stacking boxes on is a different thing from a floor with a bed, a wardrobe and people on it. Sometimes the joists that are there are fine, sometimes they have to be doubled up or strengthened, and you want to know that before you start on the fun part.

Then comes the shell. Insulating between or under the rafters, sealing it airtight, and making sure the roof does not start sweating on the inside. An unused loft is allowed to be cold and draughty, a bedroom is not. The roof itself, from the skylight to the covering, is a trade of its own and you find that under roofing and roof renovation.

Then the light. A skylight is the simplest thing to do, a dormer gives you far more usable floor but touches the structure and usually the permit as well. Last come the services and the finish: running electrics and heating upstairs, getting walls and ceilings ready, and building the cupboards that under a sloped ceiling can only be made to measure. That last part I do myself, because it falls under custom carpentry and fitting.

Where it usually comes unstuck

Three things, and I would rather name them beforehand.

The headroom. Under a sloped roof the space you can actually stand up in is a lot less than the floor area suggests. Go and stand in the spot where the bed has to go and where your wardrobe has to stand, and you learn more than you do from a floor plan.

The stairwell. A fixed staircase to the loft has to start somewhere, and that comes out of the floor below. In narrow houses that is often the real limit, not the loft itself.

The ventilation. As soon as you insulate a loft properly and someone starts sleeping in it, you get moisture that used to blow straight out. Without ventilation that has been thought through you get cold bridges and mould patches where the roof meets the boarding. That is not a detail for afterwards.

Renovating a whole house

A full renovation is not a run of separate jobs one after the other. It is one stretch of work where the mistakes stack up if the order is wrong. So I work from the inside out and from rough to fine: strip out and fix the layout first, then the structure, then everything that disappears in or under the floor and inside the walls, and only after that the layer you will be looking at.

That is exactly where one point of contact pays off. A bathroom that has to be done again from top to bottom touches the pipework of the whole floor. Choosing a tiled floor or a wooden one sets the floor build-up and so the height of every door on that storey. Once those decisions sit with different parties, you get the gaps where everyone points at everyone else.

The biggest full project online is a house I split up into separate rental rooms, each with its own shower, kitchenette, wardrobe and bed. That is the most extreme form of a layout change: new walls, new pipework, new sanitary ware and a complete finish per room. What holds there holds on a smaller scale in every full renovation.

I should be honest about how that feels. On a job this size you hit the point halfway where everything is stripped out and nothing is finished. That is the phase where people start doubting the decision. It is not a sign that it is going wrong, it comes with the work, and I would rather say it beforehand than afterwards.

Renovating sustainably without making it a separate project

The cheapest insulation you will ever lay is the insulation you lay while someone is on the job anyway. With the floor up, floor insulation is mostly the material plus a few hours. With the floor still down, you pay first for taking it up and then for closing it back, and only then for the insulation itself.

The same holds anywhere the work is going to reach anyway. A wall that is open for new wiring can be insulated on the spot. A loft that is being converted is the natural moment for roof insulation. Sealing the gaps around joints and skirting is, in a stripped room, a matter of working properly, and afterwards a separate job. With new window frames fitted and the plasterwork around them closed up again, the biggest source of draught in a room often goes with it, as long as the joint work is right.

There is a warning with it that you rarely hear from a salesman. Insulating without ventilating does not make a house better, it makes it damp. A house that is sealed up tight has to take air in and push it out in a controlled way, or the moisture settles on the coldest spot that is left. If you want to renovate sustainably, the ventilation belongs in the same conversation as the insulation, and not in a conversation a year later when the mould is already there.

What a builder costs, and why the hourly rate is rarely the right question

“What does a builder cost per hour” is a fair question and a poor measuring stick. The problem is not the rate, it is that you do not know the number on the other side of the sum: how many hours.

Two tradesmen on exactly the same hourly rate can end up far apart on the same job. One strips out and only then measures and orders, the other orders up front and bends the work to fit the material. One has the pipework mapped before the floor closes up, the other chops it open again later. Those differences all sit in the number of hours and not one of them shows up in the rate.

On top of that, a builder is more than a pair of hands. Preparation, picking out and collecting material, taking the waste away, and the time it takes to make sure one part of the job is not left waiting on another. On an hourly rate you pay for those hours too, you just do not see them as a separate line.

So on a renovation I work with a price per part of the job instead of with hours. Then you know where you stand, and I have the incentive to do it cleverly instead of slowly. For one-off jobs and maintenance an hourly rate does make sense, because there you can see the size of it up front. On a renovation you cannot, by definition.

A renovation is carpentry for a good part of it

What makes a renovated room look finished is rarely the tiling or the paint. It is the joins. Skirting boards that meet neatly on the mitre, a window sill that fits, a door that shuts without pushing, a cupboard standing in a crooked alcove as if the alcove were square.

That is why the renovation builder and the carpenter here are the same person. In older houses nothing is square and nothing is flat, and standard sizes do not fit there by definition. I measure what is actually standing and make it fit, instead of making the room fit the material. What that looks like at the end you can see in a house I handed over completely fitted out: the toilet renewed, cupboards and beds fitted, and ready to use instead of ready on paper.

How it goes with me

You send me a message with what is going on and a few photos of the room. After that I come round to look. On that visit I measure up, check what sits behind the finish and we go through which choices move the price the most.

Then you get a quote per part of the job, with the uncertainties named honestly instead of tucked away. If you agree, I book it in and from then on you have one number for everything: for the planning, for the work itself and for the question why nobody is on the scaffold today.

I work out of Nieuwegein and do this work in the surrounding towns as well, Utrecht among them. I am not a building firm with a planner next to a site manager. That is awkward at times, because I cannot stand on two jobs at once. The upside is that on a renovation, where strip-out, structure, services and finishing touch each other every day, there is never any doubt about who promised what.