Case Study: A £100,000 Refurbishment With No Written Contract

Some case studies are success stories. This one is a horror story — and it's shared for exactly the reason Ashton gives in his book: "I offer these horror stories only to help you — I'd hate to see you make the same mistakes!" It appears as the second case study in Your Seven Step Home Extension Plan, under a title that says it all: a verbal contract is not worth the paper it's written on.

The background

A client called about her friend, who was buying a two-bedroom apartment in London's Earls Court that needed internal refurbishment. Ashton met Gabby and her friend Clara at the apartment and discussed the requirements in detail — modernisation and minor structural alterations. Then the sale fell through, and Clara didn't buy the property.

Several months later, the phone rang again: could Ashton call Clara? She had found and purchased another two-bedroom apartment in Earls Court. This one was in better condition, and — in her judgement — didn't require the services of an architect.

That judgement is where this story turns.

Some context on Clara: her father was a retired builder, so she knew a little about the contractor business. He lived in Devon, too far away to support her on the ground, but gave sound advice from a distance. The estate agent who sold her the apartment highly recommended a local builder, and Clara felt confident with the scope of the £100,000 internal refurbishment.

What went wrong

When Ashton called Clara as requested, she broke down in tears as she explained her situation.

The builders had requested an extra £15,000 for additional works. She was being asked for cash payments, and she didn't get receipts. And there was no written contract to confirm what was allowed for in the price — and what was not.

Think about what that combination means in practice. When a builder says "that wasn't included", you check the contract. Clara had no contract to check. When you dispute what you've already paid, you produce the receipts. Clara had no receipts. Every safeguard that a well-run project takes for granted was missing, and she felt — her words reached us through tears — helpless and out of control.

Here is the most painful part. Ashton offered his services again, and she declined. Not because she doubted the help, but because she was afraid: any pressure from a professional on her side might cause the builders to walk off and leave the property in dispute. She continued with the works, completely in the hands of the builders.

That's what the absence of a contract really costs you. Not just money — leverage. By the time things go wrong, the homeowner with no paperwork is negotiating from a position of fear.

Where did she go wrong?

The book breaks this down into six mistakes. None of them is exotic; all of them are common.

1. Failure to value professional support. Typical architectural and project management fees are based on around 10% of the cost of the building works — in this instance, about £10,000. Retrospectively, it's clear that professional support may have reduced the £15,000 of "additional costs" — and there's nothing to say further extras weren't incurred before the end of the job. On a simple internal refurbishment, the support could even have been limited to just design and procurement, or just site management, at £5,000 or less. She avoided a five-figure fee and walked into a five-figure extra — with no protection attached to it.

2. Failure to check and qualify recommendations. Clara never obtained references for the recommended builders. A recommendation — even a confident one from the estate agent who sold you the property — is not good enough. We've set out exactly what checking looks like in how to find a good builder: references, previous projects, and evidence, not charm.

3. She didn't obtain competitive builders' prices. Three or more competitive quotes would have let her compare not just the prices but the method of pricing and the contractual form — or lack of one. A builder who won't be compared is telling you something.

4. Failure to define the scope of works clearly. A builder's quote is seldom detailed enough to manage a building contract. A specification of works gives builders a common, detailed, elemental basis for pricing — which makes quotes genuinely comparable and, just as importantly, prevents the misunderstandings and omissions that later come back as "additional works".

5. No written contract of any kind. Without a written contract or written agreement with clearly understood terms and conditions, it is incredibly difficult to manage and control a building project. Every dispute becomes your word against theirs — and they're standing in your half-finished home.

6. Cash payments without receipts. In Ashton's opinion, the biggest challenge on residential projects is VAT — or "Vodka and Tonic", as he calls it in the book. That extra 20% can make or break a project budget, and the temptation to chase a non-VAT-registered builder or pay cash is real. But cash-without-receipts doesn't just carry risk in itself — it strips out the paper trail you'd rely on to manage your builder.

What you should do differently

Reading the six mistakes together, notice something: every one of them happens before the builder starts. Clara's project was lost at procurement stage — the weeks where a specification, a comparison of quotes, reference checks and a signed contract would each have cost her little and protected her enormously.

The contrast with a properly set-up project is stark. On our Hook Road house-to-flats conversion, the client paid only for work completed, against a contract, with weekly independent inspections — and when tender prices came in over budget, the scheme was re-tendered rather than patched with extras. Same industry, same city. The difference is process, not luck.

If you take one action from this story, make it this: get the paperwork right before anyone starts. A defined scope, competitive prices against that scope, checked references, a written contract, and traceable payments. If you take two actions, add this: price professional support honestly against the cost of not having it. On this project the comparison was roughly £5,000–£10,000 of fees against £15,000 of extras — before counting the stress, and whatever came after.

This is the foundation of how we run home renovations today: specification and procurement handled as a professional process through our architectural and planning service, so that the builder's price means something and the contract protects you when it matters. The full story — and the chapter on paperwork it belongs to — is in Your Seven Step Home Extension Plan.

About to appoint a builder?

If you're at the point of choosing a builder — especially off the back of a recommendation — that's exactly the moment a second pair of eyes is cheapest and most valuable. Book a free consultation and we'll look at your scope, your quotes and your paperwork before you sign anything.