Interior redesign and reconfiguration for London homes

It depends on how settled your layout is. We build from your architect's or designer's drawings and price against them, and a structural engineer is engaged where a wall or floor is affected. What matters is that one party is responsible for whether the drawing can actually be built at the price agreed.

Usually, within three limits. The lease governs what you may alter and normally requires the freeholder's written consent. Structure limits which walls can move, and in a block many internal walls are also compartment walls between flats. Drainage limits where a kitchen or bathroom can go, because waste runs need fall to reach the existing stack. We check all three at the survey.

Almost always for anything beyond decoration. Most London leases require consent for altering partitions, changing floor finishes, moving wet areas, or touching services. Consent often takes the form of a licence to alter, with the freeholder's surveyor reviewing the drawings and a fee payable. It takes weeks rather than days, so we build it into the programme rather than discovering it at mobilisation.

It depends on whether it is a single room, a room with made-to-measure joinery or a whole flat, so we give you a programme with the quote. Joinery manufacture and a licence to alter both come before the work on site.

A survey, partition alterations, joinery designed to the surveyed dimensions, a lighting and electrical redesign, floor build-ups and finishes, plastering, tiling and decoration. It excludes loose furniture, curtains and styling. Where a new layout crosses a loadbearing line, the structural calculations, the steel and the building control application are added as a defined package.

Earlier than most people expect. The procurement schedule gives each item an order-by date, working back from the week it is needed on site. Joinery, stone, specialist plaster and imported tile are the long poles. A decision that slips by a week rarely costs a week; it costs whatever the next available slot in the manufacturer's programme is.

Often yes, for reasons other than structure. New electrical circuits are notifiable, altering a flat's escape route or compartmentation is controlled, replacing a window engages thermal and safety requirements, and floor build-ups in flats engage the sound insulation requirements. We tell you which apply before pricing, so the fee and the inspection sit in the programme rather than appearing later.

For a single room, usually. For a whole-flat reconfiguration, rarely worth it: the services go off, the floors come up, and the dust reaches everywhere regardless of protection. Where staying is the only option we phase it room by room and keep a kitchen and a bathroom working, accepting that this adds weeks to the programme rather than pretending it does not.