We needed more bedrooms for a long time and finally decided to bite the bullet. We would also need to stay in the house while the work was done, therefore we decided on a single storey rear extension as the upstairs would not be affected.

My eldest son had come up with some layout ideas during lockdown and as I am mechanical design engineer, I was able to draw up the plans myself – we had quite a few different ideas before coming up with the final plan. When we were happy with our plan, we began our search for a builder.

After having a few builders look around and see the drawings we decided to use P.T. Higgins Building & Construction. They provided a full and very detailed quote whereas the other builders just gave overall costs, these initially came in lower than PT Higgins Builders, but we knew that these costs would just escalate and having the full detailed quote gave us confidence in the work.

Once we had the go ahead from planning, work began on clearing the site and digging the footings. During the build we made some slight changes to the internal layout which PT Higgins Builders took in their stride!

Once the breakthrough into the existing house happened, we were effectively living in the kitchen / dining room as the old lounge was now a building site. This was an “interesting” time, but we coped. My wife had also wanted a media wall in the new lounge and after I provided a drawing for this Paul very kindly included this. Throughout the build Donna kept us up to date with regular progress reports and answering our queries.