Joaquin Gindre
2/5
This is a review of H&OB and not of the individuals who work on site.
We hired H&OB to build a 2-storey rear extension & renovate the existing house.
Communication throughout the build was poor unless it involved an invoice being paid. We now have a lovely home which took 20 months to build (should have taken 9-12 months), however this was only completed because we hired 6 different trades to complete the project. Extras came up through the build however these extras did not account for 8-11 months of additional work. External Render, plumbing, decorating, tiling, paving, roofer.
Before we hired H&OB we were promised that there would be a team of staff at our house every day. This could not be further from the truth. We found the biggest issue was that they were working on 15 projects at a time (this is what staff told us). Due to the number of projects they could not guarantee when certain trades would be available. And therefore, they would not provide us with a works program.
Getting H&OB to finish the contract was a long drawn out process. In the end we agreed to pay their invoice for “completing the contract” even though many things were not finished. We agreed to do this on the understanding that the remaining items would be covered when the snagging was completed. After sending the snagging list we waited for 3 weeks with no response. We were eventually informed by the director that they would not be carrying the snagging. We agreed to this on the assumption that their “10-year guarantee” would still apply for the work carried out. We contacted them months later with issues and they claimed that we terminated the contract or that the items were working fine when they left.
Snagging issues included incomplete loft hatch, Gas/ Elec metre boxes being damaged and not replaced, plumbing / tiling issues, general quality of finishing externally etc.
During the build important details such as vents, DPM's, and movement joints were missed so had to have some walls or floor broken out and re-fitted.
External Render:
The contract included rendering the entire property at a cost of £8k. After rendering the rear elevation and part of the side elevation H&OB informed us that they had under-priced the rendering and that it would cost £14k-£16k. We rejected this and hired a new company to complete the render and they matched H&OB’s original price.
Tiling:
H&OB were supposed to tile the bathrooms and Kitchen. Once they started fitting the tiles we found out that their usual sub-contractor was not available so they ended up going with a tiler that they had never worked with before. After 8 weeks 2 bathrooms were partially tiled. The tiler then walked off the job. As part of his work he cut two random squares in two tiles around the shower controls. H&OB then hired another tiler who would work in the evenings. This tiler walked off after a few days. We were then told that we would need to find a new tiler ourselves. Fortunately we were able to find someone on short notice but it ended up costing us more money.
Roof:
We had a 7sqm flat roof built. This took months to finish. Once it was finished we found it was not fit for purpose. At first we were told by H&OB that this was just condensation. We eventually had 3 roofers come out to inspect the roof. All of which condemned it and confirmed that it needed to be rebuilt. After waiting for over a month for H&OB to fix the roof we were left with no choice but to hire another company to rip out an entire brand new roof down to the joists and rebuilt it. H&OB agreed to pay half of the cost rather than the entire cost. This cost us £2500.
This is not personal review of the staff on site. Working with H&OB (the business) was arguably the most stressful experience of our lives. We feel that it is our responsibility to give an honest review of what we experienced.
