Design, survey and the honest budget
A whole-house refurbishment starts with a measured survey, a structural appraisal and a design developed far enough to be priced properly. A tender based on planning drawings alone is not a price; it is an opening position, and the difference is discovered later as variations. Building regulations drawings, a structural scheme, an outline services strategy and a written specification are the minimum for a fixed price with any meaning.
Consents and the long lead items
Planning permission, listed building consent, building regulations approval and party wall awards all run on their own timetables and none of them is the contractor’s to accelerate. In parallel, the genuinely long-lead items — bespoke joinery, stone, architectural glazing, sanitaryware, heat pumps and switchgear — should be selected and ordered during pre-construction rather than during the fit-out, when their lead times become the programme.
A realistic programme
For a typical London terraced house, allow roughly: two to four weeks for strip-out and opening up; four to ten weeks for structural works, depending on whether a basement or an extension is involved; six to ten weeks for first fix and making watertight; six to twelve weeks for second fix and fit-out; and four to six weeks for finishing, commissioning and snagging. Whole-house projects in our experience run from six months for a straightforward flat to fifteen or sixteen months where basements, extensions and multiple units are involved.
Decision points and the cost of changing your mind
Every project has moments after which a change becomes expensive: once the structural scheme is fixed, once the floor build-ups are set, once first fix is complete, once joinery is templated. We set those dates out at the start as a decision schedule, with the last responsible moment for each choice. Changing a bathroom layout at first fix costs a day; changing it after tiling costs three weeks.
Living arrangements and money
Assume you will move out for a whole-house refurbishment. Living on site through structural works is possible only rarely and always slows the programme. Financially, agree a valuation cycle, a mechanism for pricing variations, retention and the definition of practical completion before work starts, so that the difficult conversations happen when everyone is relaxed rather than in month nine.