Finally breaking ground… the dust starts, November 2022

THE STORY DETAILS:

What: renovating our Victorian wreck

When: June 2021 - now

Where: London Fields

A Hackney home renovation project

Back story: we bought a wreck of a house in June 2021 when I was five months pregnant with our second child. It took over a year to get planning permission and break ground, and we started building works in November 2022 with an aim to finish by Christmas 2023. Reader, if you’ve ever seen Grand Designs, you won’t be surprised to hear that we actually moved into a partial building site in late October 2024 and come January 2025, we’ve still got builders and carpenters and painters coming in to finish off.

It has been a long and at times unforgiving ride, taking in everything from supply delays and arguments with gas companies to sleep deprivation and forgery (yes, really - that particular heartbreak caused a 7 month pause in work). Oh and don’t forget - in classic Grand Designs style - a pregnancy!

We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, about people, about construction, about things I never want to think about again that took up way too much thinking time and space (such as the required distances between utility supply pipes under the front garden path….)

Here are some things though that I’ve learned that I will carry through into my business - I hope these insights can help you too!

This was just a minor hole that had to be put right…

1. Communication is key

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? And yet surprisingly hard to get right. Your first impressions really count - whether that be in person, on the phone, or your website enquiry form - and set the tone for all future interactions with a potential supplier/client. Companies that had terrible websites but were helpful on the phone and quick to follow up with quotes and site visits got hired over others who had a slick web enquiry process but slow response times and unfriendly staff on the phone.

Speaking in person or on the phone got us to the desired result much quicker than emailing backwards and forwards, and yet many creatives are reluctant to do it. Trust me when I say that it saves so much time and energy in the long run if you just speak to someone - especially when there could be communication barriers. We had one long running issue that we couldn’t resolve over email between ourselves, our German architect, Polish builder and Italian engineer simply because of nuance in language. Nobody was doing anything wrong but none of us could make ourselves properly understood through the written word. And yet in the end all it took was ten minutes with everyone in the same room to work out how to solve the problem.

The lesson? Make sure your enquiry systems are slick and welcoming, and be quick to reply. Having brochures, guides and portfolios ready for potential customers to look at gives the impression that you are professional and have expertise in your field. And don’t be afraid to arrange a ten minute phone or video call with a client to get the booking over the line.

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2. You can’t afford to get complacent

If you’ve nailed all those things and the enquiries are coming and you’re making bookings, well done you. Now you have to maintain it. If you’ve been hired for a job, your customer service has to really kick in now. Having a client who has started paying you for a service with contracts in place isn’t enough; now you have to impress them and your communication has to be really clear.

No-one is ever going to care more about a project than the client. This is a simple truth. Whatever service or product you are supplying, the client is going to examine it more closely than anyone else. If you can make your client feel important, heard and cared for during your interactions with them, they will grow to trust you and come back to you time and again - even if you make mistakes. On the flip side, hearing worries or complaints from clients and shrugging your shoulders or passing problems off will not lead to good relationships.

One of the most frustrating parts of the whole project for me has been asking direct questions and not receiving answers. I could not run a photography business if I didn’t tell clients when their shoots were happening or what time I would be arriving, and yet communication about timelines has been a consistent struggle. The truth is clients don’t mind bad news anywhere near as much as they mind being in the dark. And the longer you leave clients in the dark and impact on other aspects of their lives, the more frustrated they get. It might only be confirming a date to you or your business, but to a client it could have more far reaching consequences - what if they need childcare, or to book a day off work during a busy period, or to book transport and the train fare just keeps going up as you delay? All these pressures create additional stress for your client and impact how they view your service.

I recently had a maternity photoshoot with a pal - booked and paid for through her proper channels - and a few weeks after I got my beautiful gallery, I received a feedback form about my experience. Not a request for a Google review (which I had already done anyway) but a private form to fill in wanting to hear my take on the whole experience from start to finish. This happens so rarely in small business, and yet polite, well intentioned feedback on your offerings can make a huge difference to your service (if you are brave and welcome constructive criticism!). Sometimes there are gaps in our service we don’t even realise are there. Be more like my pal and invite feedback, and not like some of our contractors who still don’t understand that lack of communication causes huge problems despite more than one stand up row!

3. Stupid questions are better than stupid mistakes

We knew next to nothing about DIY or building regulations before we started this project. My husband once made some concrete shelves (rather well, in the end actually) but that was about it. We hired experts - architects, builders, engineers - because they do know what they’re doing (most of the time. If you hire the right ones). Stupid mistakes happen when communication goes awry (see 1 and 2), or you do that thing that British people love to do and be polite and quiet even though you’re unsure about something.

My advice? Get over it. Ask questions from a place of curiosity - and in your business, answer them likewise. We cannot be experts at everything and of course you don’t understand something you don’t see or do everyday. We’ve been really curious throughout this project, and have tried hard to understand how things work and why things are done in a certain order. When somebody came to measure for our worktop, he asked me lots of questions about what we wanted - the finishing on the edging, whether the sink was going under or over the worktop - and I was absolutely clueless. In turn, I asked him lots of questions about the order he was doing things and how the process worked. I am certain he was annoyed with me to begin with and felt I was judging him, but actually as our conversation went on and I said ‘I just want to understand, and you’re the expert’, he relaxed. I’m sure I asked some questions he felt were stupid, but we’ve got a beautiful worktop now that we’re delighted with, the installation process was flawless and the service was impeccable.

It can feel challenging to be asked lots of questions as a creative - sometimes it can feel like our vision or skills aren’t appreciated - but most of the time people are looking to understand something they don’t know about. So be kind and patient, keep communicating (maybe even pick up the phone?!) and remember you are in a position to answer questions as an expert.

Another minor hole. You see the problem here

As you can guess, there is much more to come - look out for Parts 2 and 3 coming soon, in which I discuss why things get worse before they get better, and why there are always babies on Grand Designs. And it isn’t Kevin’s fault.