Builders in Redhill, next door, and always have been.

Redhill is a railway town, and you can still read that in the streets. When the London to Brighton line arrived in the 1840s the junction pulled the town into being, and the housing followed the tracks. That history left Redhill with one of the most mixed housing stocks anywhere in the borough: tight Victorian terraces within walking distance of the station, post war and 1960s semis spreading south, and the newer lakeside homes at Watercolour on the old sand workings at Holmethorpe. Each one wants a different approach, and after nearly thirty years working here we usually know which is which before we have opened the front door.

The terraces around Hooley Lane, Linkfield Lane, Frenches Road and the streets running off Brighton Road are the classic Redhill project. Narrow frontage, long rear garden, a dark galley kitchen at the back and a side alley doing nothing useful except collecting bins. A rear extension or a side return turns that into one bright kitchen and dining room, and a loft conversion adds the bedroom the house was never built with. What catches people out in these houses is what sits behind the plaster: shallow footings, solid walls with no cavity, a rear outrigger that has settled over a century, and a party wall to agree with the neighbour before a single brick moves. None of that is a problem when it is found early, and finding it early is exactly what our first survey is for.

Head south and the picture changes completely. Earlswood, Whitebushes and Salfords are mostly post war and 1960s semis and detached houses on wider plots, with garages, side space and generous back gardens. These homes carry bigger work comfortably. Wraparound extensions, double storey extensions, garage conversions, or a full refurbishment that reworks the whole ground floor and brings the insulation, wiring and heating up to a modern standard in one hit. Because the plots are wider there is normally room for a skip, a welfare unit and a materials store on site, which makes the build quicker and cheaper to run than the same job squeezed into a terrace.

Then there are the newer homes: Watercolour, and the houses and flats that have gone up around the town centre over the last twenty years. Structurally they are sound, so the work here is about finish and layout rather than repair. A proper kitchen instead of the developer specification, a better bathroom, a loft turned into a fourth bedroom, a garden room at the end of the plot. St Johns and Meadvale sit on the rising ground between Redhill and Reigate, where the houses are older and larger and often want careful period restoration alongside a sympathetic extension rather than anything dramatic.

Whatever the house, the planning route runs through Reigate and Banstead Borough Council, whose offices are a few minutes from our own base in Reigate. We deal with them constantly, so we can tell you early whether your job is permitted development or a full application, and we work alongside architects and designers we have known for years to get drawings that can actually be built to a sensible budget. From there it is one team and one point of contact: from the soil in the ground to the keys in your hand.