What is a full refurbishment?

A full refurbishment means every trade passes through the house: strip-out, electrics, plumbing, plastering, carpentry, tiling and decorating. The structure stays where it is, but almost everything inside gets renewed.

Here is how it runs on a typical job for us, say a three-bed Victorian terrace in Sydenham bought at a probate sale. Strip-out first: old kitchen and bathroom out, carpets up, sometimes wall plaster back to brick where it has blown. Then first fix: the electrician runs new circuits and a new consumer unit, the plumber runs new pipework and hangs the boiler. Plasterers follow. Then second fix: sockets and switches on, radiators and sanitaryware connected, the new kitchen fitted, doors hung, skirtings and architraves on. Tiling in the bathroom and kitchen, flooring throughout, decorators last.

What it does not usually include is structural work. No steels, no walls coming down, no extension. If we are knocking the kitchen through or converting the loft, that is renovation or remodelling territory, and the difference between renovation and refurbishment is a separate question. A full refurb keeps the plan and renews the fabric.

The order matters more than most people expect. Get a trade out of sequence, tiling before the plumber finishes first fix for instance, and you pay twice. Managing that sequence is most of what you hire a firm like ours for. We survey first, then give a fixed written quote for the whole job, and the price we quote is the price you pay.