The perfect family hub with a new side return and rear extension

Pager Michal’s excellent craftsmanship and communication ensured this project ran smoothly

Michal

Pager

Thomas

Reno expert

Henry

Homeowner

Project brief

We bought the house a few years ago and always had the intention to do the side return, appreciating that our family was going to get larger. We have two children and a dog so we really needed more space. The house had a small galley kitchen that felt outdated and we wanted to create a kitchen that was the epicenter of our home; where we could hang out and socialise. Maximising natural light and improving the connection to the garden was really important to us. 

We had a good idea of what we wanted structure-wise (a flat roof, boxed off ceiling lights, skylights and crittall-style doors out to the garden) so we used an architect and structural engineer to get plans drawn up. We needed planning permission, which was quite straightforward despite having to make a slight alteration for height – it took about eight weeks to come through. We’d done some other work to the house and it had taken so long so we wanted to find a new builder. We had some recommendations from friends and family, and our architect, but the quotes were all over the place; extremely expensive or what felt like far too cheap. A couple of builders we met just didn’t really seem like they wanted the job either. So we got in touch with The Page to help us find the right team. 

“I’m very grateful to The Page for connecting me to such a good builder. This was the first renovation project we’ve done and I’m so happy with everything, there’s really nothing I would have done differently (maybe add a few more plug sockets!) so I feel very lucky. And a lot of that is down to Michal our Pager. I liked him from the word go and his quote just felt sensible; I went through it all with him line by line and everything was accounted for. We met every other week to chat things through and it got to the point where I could just trust Michal to make the right call, which was such a good place to be. He’s a really good communicator and explains things well. The project was pretty smooth sailing. He delivered it basically on time and on budget and was transparent about any additional cross costs which crept out the woodwork, the majority of which were things that I hadn’t asked for originally, like cornicing.”

Henry