Recommended tradesmen from our home renovations

[marianik]

Plastering, electrician, painting, tiling, plumbing, etc, etc,:

We bought and completely renovated our terraced Victorian house in East Dulwich this past autumn, and used the forum to find almost all of the tradesmen who did the work for us. We had to re-plaster the entire house, upgrade the electrics, and put in a new kitchen and bathroom, all in 6 weeks. We didn?t have a project manager, and in organizing things ourselves sometimes got tasks out of order, so the workers had to cope with some chaos. Every person we found through the forum was excellent: friendly, hard-working and very flexible?so I just wanted to add our own recommendations here.

FYI - I usually got quotes from 3 different people for each job, and only contacted people for quotes who had had at least 3 recommendations on the forum. Feel free to PM me if you?d like more information.

Plastering: John McCann 07905 044912? I posted a recommendation for our plasterer on the forum back in September so won?t repeat here, but he finished our walls beautifully, and regularly pointed out where we could save money on the work.

Electrician: Shaun Owens 07974 943346. Shaun is great, really conscientious and extremely helpful. The first two electricians who quoted for the work recommended a complete re-wire (without looking at the electrics)?Shaun checked first, found we didn?t need the re-wire, and saved us about 2000? by just bringing the system up to code.

Decorator/Painter: Eddie 07522 523415 ? Eddie painted the entire interior of our house on his own, including the woodwork and stairs, at an extremely reasonable daily rate, and he also took on all kinds of other odd jobs, like hanging our curtains, fixing a window frame, pouring cement on a damp patch and more. He is meticulous, very tidy, and wants things done right, and we were very pleased with the final result. He had to work around me and my toddler for a couple of weeks as we only finished the plastering once we?d moved in, and it went very well?he is pleasant to have around the house, and very hard working.

Plumber: Maurice Yeoman 07837 168978 ? I found Maurice on the forum to fix a leaking pipe that another plumber (recommended by a friend) had put in. Maurice gave us excellent advice on bathroom fittings, saving us a lot of money but with good-looking, quality products, and did all the plumbing for our bathroom and kitchen, as well as fixing the radiators. He was extremely helpful and very flexible, rearranging his schedule when our own plans were running late, picking up supplies for us, and even searching through the giant rubbish heap in front of the house to find the radiator brackets that had somehow gotten thrown away.

Tiler: Marcus Woloch 07817 050159. Again, a super nice, helpful guy. Marcus tiled our bathroom floor and walls, WC floor, and kitchen walls, and did a fantastic job. He gives great advice too, helping me decide on how to tile the kitchen. He also came back weeks later to re-grout where a carpenter had left gaps between the wall and door frame, and fix new door sills for us.

Kitchen: Andrew Robertson at Puccini Kitchens 07901 880334. I saw an ad for Puccini Kitchens in Living South magazine, and called after considering an Ikea kitchen and meeting with other kitchen fitters. I wanted something that looked more design, but at a reasonable price in case we ended up extending the back of the house one day and destroying the current kitchen. Andrew understood our expectations right away, and came up with exactly what I wanted (blue wooden cupboards, integrated appliances, wooden counter) for a great price. Very happy!

Cornices ? Simon 07761 006002. Simon was recommended by our plasterer. Our cornices were beyond repairing, as there was substantial cracking all around the front room and bedroom. Other cornicemen suggested ripping them out (and risking the entire ceiling falling down in the process) but Simon ran off new cornices that were large enough to fit over the originals, but with a similar pattern. We were so pleased with the result that we had Simon design a plaster picture rail for us and fit that in the front room as well.

Bricklayer ? Alan 07988 666569. Alan lay a new outdoor window sill for us, and charged half of what he?d quoted since the job took less time than expected. Looks great.

Appliance repair ? Dave Nichols ?Cookerman? 07506 104882. Incredibly nice guy, very good at his job and happy to explain all his repairs to you. We got a second-hand Smeg cooker that looked to be in terrible shape, but with Dave?s repairs (and a professional clean?see below) it is now a super machine!

Oven cleaning South East Oven Cleaners? Sy 07976 705693. We were almost ready to throw the cooker away until Sy and Dave got their hands on it. Sy does all the heavy duty cleaning in his van, so no toxic chemicals directly in the house, and the cooker looks like new now.

I think that?s it!

Marie-Annick

[Sue]

Blimey, I went on Puccini Kitchens website and filled in a form to get a brochure, and within half an hour I was called by them and an appointment arranged.

That's impressive!

From what you've said I'm hopeful that this time everything will run smoothly ....

[jrpfinch]

Thank you for the recommendations.

Please update this post every year anniversary!

The main differentiator for tradesmen is their aftersales service.

[Sue]

jrpfinch Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> The main differentiator for tradesmen is their

> aftersales service.

xxxxxx

You must have been very lucky in your choice of tradespeople if you think their aftersales service is the main thing differentiating them!

I'm extremely thankful to get any job done properly in the first place by people who are also honest, reliable, reasonably fast working and reasonably priced, never mind any aftersales service required :))

[Redpea]

Thank you so much for these recommendations Marianik. My partner and I have just bought a house in Forest Hill - got the keys yesterday :)and it needs gutting- also a renovation project - so we will be requiring all these trades over the coming weeks and months. Will be sure to consider them. Also, further down the line I will be happy to do the same as you and recommend the people I have used and been impressed with. Forums like this are a godsend.

I have already used Marcus (tiler) actually in our flat and can definitely recommend him as I have mentioned in a previous post.

Thanks again

[on_the_hill]

Hello,

Thank you Marianik, we bought a house in December and your post was most useful, we have almost finished and I would like to follow up your post in a similar format:

We also did all the project management ourselves, and it meant we had to find the people to carry out the works. Here are the ones we went with:

Plastering: Aaron 07773 410 661 and John McCann 07905 044912. Aaron did most of the work and John worked alongside him when I asked if he could speed up things a bit, so he got John involved as they sometimes work together. The final result was very good, and we had a few compliments about it from other tradesmen who were doing other works.

Electrician: Shaun Owens 07974 943346. I knew Shawn from having used him before for minor repairs in our previous property, but this time we needed a full rewiring and he was amazing. Very professional and lovely to deal with. He is also very competitive with his prices. I wouldn't use any other electrician.

Decorator/Painter: Eddie 07522 523415. Can only second what Marianik says. Eddie is very hard working and is so pleasant to have around. My toddler got very fond of him and was the first name he learnt! Eddie is very competitive with prices too and would work hard till the customer is happy. He has painted our whole house and done lots of extra bits like hanging lamps and tidying cables, etc.

Plumber: Maurice Yeoman 07837 168978. Maurice rebuilt our downstairs loo and the final result was fantastic. Very tidy and professional.

Floors: Steve 07949 411 650 I have left a couple of recommendations for Steve and Nicola from Back to Wood. Cannot recommend them highly enough. Our house got transformed by sanding the floorboards. They look amazing and there was no sign of dust at the end of the day. They were very patient when we were finding it difficult to decide what colour to use and they painted a few swatches for us, so we could make our mind up. He was even extremely helpful with advice when I messed up the stairs and he rescued me from the mistake I had made when I got the colour wrong.

Carpenter and general repairs: Gary Strickland 07809 546 033. Gary is also very conscious and goes the extra mile to put things right, even fixing little things not related to his work. He has a can-do attitude and is not faced by any task. He put the skirting for the whole house up and hanged all doors, plus lots of extra work.

Carpenter and Joiner: George Rochester 07984 230 531. George is a very dedicated carpenter. He did all the spindles in our stairs and was very professional when I expressed that I did not like the spacing. He re-did the whole lot and did not stop till we were happy. We even tried to pay extra, but he was having none of it. He is very competitive. He also designed and built a fitted wall-length, floor to ceiling wardrobe that is great.

Garden Office: Garden2Office - Mark Ramuz 07804 632 651. Mark built a custom made office in our garden. They were so professional and great to have around. Him and his crew did an excellent job and were happy to implement last minute changes. The building is so efficient and keeps the heat really well.

Will update once we get more work done. Hope this helps.

[KatBarry1983]

Has anyone tried to use Shaun recently? he did as job for me in September/October but i have since had really problems with a light fitting he moved, which seems to have become dangerous. I have been trying to contact him since February about it but he refuses to get back to me.