Bad builder forum

JJ_Egan

Small Claims Court  and bill for repair costs .

z101uk

Space 120 Architects Space120 Architects (Jennifer Huckerby)

Great plans (despite a key piece missing from them, which later cost us), however, things started to go bad when we also asked them to recommend builders. They recommended two – and unfortunately, we had a very bad experience with the one we chose. Space120 are certainly not responsible for the builder’s work. But as we did not have much experience with managing projects, we went back to Space120 to ask for this help. They were initially very understanding, and came to see the state of works out of hours, and offer their advice – for which there was no charge. When they pointed out issues which they also thought were very concerning (like excessive cracking to upstairs walls), we asked them to directly manage the builder to finish the project – and agreed an hourly rate for this. But then when the builder got even more difficult, “rectifications” were making things worse (like the builder’s poor attempt to fix the wonky ceiling), and the builder sent aggressive texts and emails, the architect just disappeared and stopped communicating with us. Our emails and texts went unanswered for weeks. When we sent emails and texts to the architect asking to be given an update on where things had been left with the builder, and for a copy of the snagging list that they had engaged to prepare, there was simply no response – for weeks! We can appreciate that people don’t like dealing with disputes, and the situation was unpleasant, but this unfortunately just left us with an even worse mess to sort out, and caused a lot of needless anxiety and stress. So in summary, Space120 did a good job on the plans (despite a key piece missing from them, which later cost us), but we should have done our own homework on the builder. Space120’s attempts to help were probably well-meaning at first, but we can’t forgive them for agreeing to help with the contract management and then just disappearing when things got messy. With hindsight, given our experience level, we should have paid more an architect to provide a full service from start to finish of the project, and gone with someone with both good design experience and contract management.