The landing lights have been moved to a sensible position

04/02/08

You might have noticed there's a gap between the last entry and the finished article. That's intentional.

Unfinished work, a bill for 3 times the agreed amount, solicitors being involved and another builder to finish kinda took the fun element away.

Anyway, here are a few snaps of the finished article:

Now it's all been finished we love it. It's an excellent use of space and is the room we use ourselves.

I'm glad we had it done although I learnt a lot on the way, mostly from the completely unexpected, unfathomable cr*p that happened at the end (not on this blog!).

If you're thinking of having a loft extension done, it's certainly worth seeing through and although there is a fair bit you can do to mitigate the risks of employing a shonky company, I think that reading this blog to be forewarned may give you sufficient knowledge of what to look out for. I'm quite sure the firm I used have many satisfied customers, just as the firm you're considering may direct you at satisfied customers, but I've had a lot of people contact me since this has been up and I've heard horror stories from what must be most companies out there.

The best summarised advice I can give is in two parts:

     1) Ensure the plan is exactly what you want before they start. Right down to every plug socket.
     2) Ensure the payment schedule leaves a decent chunk at the end for the final/completed payment. Ensure there's incentive there for them to actually finish the job.

It seems the most common trick for loft companies is to claim they've finished, you disagree, they leave the scaffolding up there until you pay them. 8 people have told me this happened to them... 

There is a lot of profit in loft conversions and this naturally attracts the more profit hungry element of builders, but even they can do a good job. It's not actually complicated after all!

Be sure to read my "In hindsight" comments here ...

Since writing this blog, I have had a steady stream of emails others who have used the same company.

All of them have a very similar theme to my experience, but one gentleman yesterday went further - to actually issue proceedings to recover a considerable amount of money.

The reaction appears to be that the company, "Heritage Lofts and Extensions Ltd", went into liquidation [click] making it more difficult to sue but he told me he will continue against the director, Mike Bell. However, he also pointed out to me that another company called "Heritage Works", has recently been created at the same address, with the same director, doing the same work and a website that looks remarkably similar to the previous. I tend to agree [click], whilst also noticing that "Heritage Orangeries" appears to be another that is similar [click].

This gentleman advised me that he has been able to track down numerous other unhappy customers of the now defunct Heritage Lofts & Extensions. Ironically he was able to do this via extremely disgruntled contractors. He was pointed to my site by a building control officer in a completely different borough to mine. I've been wondering where those 2,000+ per month unique page impressions come from!

I have been told that the MD's house is stunning and he "lives a life like a footballer". As I said earlier, he's a very shrewd businessman...