The Times, June 20, 2008
- Ginny Dougary

It took time, expense and stress - but I know how not to fix up your home

After my six-month odyssey to find a flat in London, following on from decades of family living in Nappy Valley in Wandsworth, I finally had a new home - but fresh challenges lay ahead.

Lucy Russell, of Quintessentially Estates, who had found the flat, reckoned that it would cost about £20,000 tops to knock it into shape. When I questioned this, she said: “Well, you could pay more but only if you really wanted to go for the ‘bling’ factor.” In the event, it cost about four times that amount - even with various deals, and the support of my model bank manager at NatWest.

Since, dear readers, my travails are meant to be instructive, let me say this: if at all possible do not do what I did. Do not, in other words, go it alone.

Find yourself a builder who has been highly recommended by friends and get him to bring in his own team of electricians, plumbers, carpenters, painter-decorators and so on. His fee may sound expensive but it will save you money in the long run and, more importantly, your sanity.

My first choice was Les, plumber extraordinaire, and a friend of a friend. He is, however, based in Brighton and when he came up with his quote for all the work it seemed too much. This was surely, I reasoned, because of travelling time and petrol.

Big mistake. If anyone could have saved me heartache and headaches, it would have been Les - but I was not to know that at the time.

The two main considerations were knocking down walls to open up the space and creating a second bathroom. This was such an anxiety for me that I paid three separate fees to establish that the walls were not load-bearing. The second bathroom was a particular concern. Les was completely confident that this could be accomplished with ease - and had done something similar many times before. I tried to get my head round soil pipes and lowered ceilings but it bothered me that I didn’t really know what he was talking about.

In the end, I contacted an old mate, Danny, who is a gifted artist but pays his bills with building work. As he lives up the road from my new gaff, it made sense for him to carry out the bulk of the job. He brought in an electrician, Russell (the spitting image of Richard Gere), and the flat renovations began to take off.

If Lucy Russell was the heroine of my last story, Danny Levy is the hero of the refurb. He was sorely tried but then, I would have to say, so was I. All the men, even the lovely ones (which most of them were) became exasperated by my barrage of questions. Danny would draw sectional designs on reams of plaster-coated paper but the only way I could comprehend his ideas was when he would make Blue Peter-style 3-D structures out of cardboard.

While Dan was smashing and bashing on Regents Canal, I was on the internet in Brighton sourcing lights and radiators. Who knew that the humble domestic rad could become such an object of desire? The range by Bisque was by far the most attractive (amazing colours and shapes) and that was what I went for, even though they were the most expensive.

I discovered that John Lewis offered an interior design service and was assigned the effervescent and ever-helpful Louis Dayanc. Louis was punctilious - from overseeing the laying of the carpet around a tricky landing (the fitter came back three times) to discussing blinds and fabrics and making sure that the kitchen appliances arrived. He also provided much-needed light relief, going into a lilac swoon when the gruff carpet-man announced: “Just push hard against the crotch.” Some aspects of the job went like a dream. The National Grid people were tremendous and fast-tracked an engineer to come round and move the meter. The Farrow&Ball main office was incredibly helpful both with supplies and sending one of its top designers, Joa, to inspect the property.

I had completed on the property at the end of August and my aim was to move in by Christmas. There was a real deadline, as for personal reasons I needed to have a home in London for my younger son come the first week of January. This news was greeted by mass tut-tutting from the blokes - “Unrealistic”, “isn’t going to happen” blah blah blah - but I was the Boadicea of this building project, and was resolute that it would.

Over Christmas - when the entire workforce took three weeks off - I managed to find some young men who were prepared to put down the all-important wooden floor downstairs. The floor was a success, so I asked the same team to install the new glass doors. This was the beginning of a sorry saga. The wrong measurements had been given to the glass supplier (who to blame?), which the chippy discovered only after trying to make them fit in the frames without success. He did not come back and it took me weeks and weeks to find anyone else who was prepared to rectify the problem.

The new bathroom was another challenge: so many men, so much effort and such a lot of money for such a tiny space. It is, however, now my pride and joy.

I am pleased with almost all my decisions about the design. Early on, I went to the top-end kitchen people Poggenpohl to pick their brains about how to get their look for less. They recommended that I go for mid-range appliances but invest in a composite worktop that would lift the whole kitchen. I followed their advice and find it a real pleasure to use something all the time that is understated but looks and feels so good.

Six months on and my younger son and I - (the older son, at university, is pleased to have a room when he’s back, too) - are looking forward to our first summer exploring the area as the canal-lined trees burst into colour and the houseboat owners start to sun themselves on their decks. It has been a long journey but it’s good to have a home of our own again.

—

Cast list

Architect/consultant: Furnell Associates. Bathroom: World’s End Tiles (which also suggested its own tiler, John, and Ben the Mastik man); C.P.Hart (which offers a design service); Burge and Gunson.

Beds: Vi-Spring. Blinds: John Lewis.

Glass: Fusion Design.

Lighting: Forbes and Lomax, Lumino (Lithoss), Freedom of Creation, London Lighting. Paint: Farrow&Ball.

Radiators: Bisque; Brighton Designer Radiators. Wallpaper: Jocelyn Warner. Worktop: Expert Marble and Granite.

The Times, June 13, 2008
- Ginny Dougary

If your own search for a flat proves futile, it can pay to turn to the professionals

This time last year I was renting an open-plan flat high up in a mustard-coloured tower next to Tate Modern and thinking of writing something AbsoLoftly Fabulous about the renting life, with its bank of 24-hour porters and fishbowl windows. After my decades in Wandsworth’s Nappy Valley, it was more like the glamour of Sex and the City (without the racy bits).

The stint of renting was an experiment - a bridge between one life and another. We had just packed up and struggled to sell the family home - moving home is stressful - up there with divorce, bereavement and losing your job. Little did I know that my hunt for a more permanent home would entail such stress that I would eventually need professional help, in the form of a search agent.

From the start, it was dispiriting dealing with estate agents. They were too busy to talk; phone calls were not returned. What made it particularly galling was the shift from being pestered daily when my husband and I were selling the family home to being sneered at for having only half-a-million at my disposal as a prospective buyer.

I made forays into the area where we had lived before our separation to see what I could afford. I was looking for two bedrooms and perhaps some sort of outdoor space. One low point was looking at a lower-ground flat: it had a landscaped garden and a light, open-plan living-dining space. However, the street-level master bedroom was opposite a busy school entrance, and the other bedroom at the back looked out on to a brick wall. Like all the other flats I looked at, the entrance hall was dingy, with a stained carpet and a heap of discarded mail.

This vision of reduced circumstances in an area steeped in memories persuaded me to go for something completely different, hence the inner-city loft. Frustrated by unhelpful estate agents I resorted to more unorthodox means. One day, I saw men working on the balcony of a council flat with views of St Paul’s Cathedral and wangled my way inside - but it was too small and had been sold anyway.

Across the river, Clerkenwell seemed appealing, with its pretty squares and historic churches - but the prices were even higher. At one point, I considered buying a new-build in the area. The developer was a woman - rather unusually - and we met on site to look at plans, with an architect friend who asked questions such as about the height of ceilings, for instance, which are often low in new developments. My flat would have had a view of an old oak tree and, beyond it, a beautiful church and gardens but it was surrounded by three big roads. What made me particularly anxious was the unfamiliar idea of buying something which I hadn’t seen - and that at £630,000 I would have been in a permanent state about the mortgage.

As the months went by, I cast my net more widely. Nearly everything in my price range was grim in some way. In Bloomsbury, some agents I spoke to made it clear that it was hardly worth their while to register me.

There was one fabulous flat - the top two floors of a building in Kennington. The owner had transformed the roof into a wonderful decked garden. The flat was in one of those little pockets of pretty streets in Kennington that are surrounded by huge neglected council estates. When I called the local police station to ask about the area, the friendly copper said: “Let’s put it this way, I wouldn’t buy there if you paid me, and I’d give your son five months at the outside before he got mugged.” That settled that.

My mortgage broker joined in the search and lobbed internet details my way every day. On one of these phonecalls, the agent suggested that he could moonlight as a search agent for me - meaning that he would tip me off about a property and I would pay him a finders’ fee. I’m still not quite sure whether this meant that he would get double-dibs.

This was when I decided that what I needed was a bona fide search agent - the drawback being the extra expense of their fees. The plan was to set up three search agents covering different territories and provide them with my list of requirements. But the moment Lucy Russell from Quintessentially Estates walked in, my problems were over. Even in the course of that initial meeting, she seemed genuine, with-it and determined to come up with the goods.

Unlike her competitors, Lucy kept in touch and within a couple of weeks had three properties for me that we whittled down to two. One was back in my old neighbourhood: it had a huge living room, vast rooms in the basement but too dark for my taste.

The flat I ended up buying was a real find, and it took Lucy to find it. It ticked all the boxes and more: exceptionally light, communal gardens at the back, a lovely park at the front, terrific shops and restaurants near by, two Tube stations within a five-minute walk, and millionaire views of Regents Canal… all for £550,000.

But Lucy’s job did not stop there. She hold my hand through the negotiations, soothing and firm in turn, and then was a real ally in round two - how a hapless hack became an interior decorator.

FACT FILE:

The main advantages of using a buying agent are the savings in time and money - they can often get you a deal, too - and access to properties not available on the open market.

Costs vary but there is usually a registration fee (between £500 and £2,500) and then a percentage of the purchase price (usually between 1 per cent and 3 per cent).

Buying agents will go to any lengths to find their client the perfect home - meeting requests for helipads, music studios, dog showers or even built-in tunnels.

CONTACTS:

Quintessentially Estates

Property Vision

Stacks Property Search and Acquisition

Garrington Home Finders