Garage Conversion Specialists - Are they a good alternative option for engaging your own house extension designer or architect?

Yes, but only if you are willing to lose a little bit of the control. Most garage conversion specialists need a firm commitment from you on price and engagement early on before spending too much time with you on what is essentially a ‘speculative punt.’

Therefore, they and you will not be able to resolve all of the finer details of the design or what you are getting for your money and what is, or is not included until a bit further down the line - perhaps even during the build itself. Both parties usually need to take a degree of faith that their expectations generally match without the time spent upfront formulation a set of design plans and specifications.

However, provided the homeowner asks the right questions and the garage conversion specialist is proactive and helpful, then a lot of the potential ‘fall out’ issues can be mitigated.

Employing a garage conversion specialist who is local, well known, highly respected, with good customer care and quality control will usually be a very safe bet for the homeowner. You may have to pay a higher price for employing a garage conversion specialists of such high regard but the premium may be money well spent for a smoothly run fully compliant project. There is a saying that for a client only having ‘one arse to kick’ is a great simplifier for any potential dispute situation.

Personally speaking, the garage conversion specialists to avoid would be the National Operators. These usually employ a series of ‘smooth talking’ sales agents simply to get the order where the scheme is then switched to an area manager where another on site agent employs local trades or other known trades willing to travel long distances.

This is usually a recipe for losing control of the job with little attention paid to the proper scheduling of materials, plant and labour and never knowing what is to happen next. Not all companies will operate this way and I am sure many are great at what they do but I do believe you cannot beat keeping things local and dealing direct with the actual people involved on the job all the way through.