The Insider's Guide to Hiring A Builder

The Insiders' Guide to Hiring a Builder & Extension Contract Toolkit

Practical knowledge from 42 years in construction

You'll only hire a builder for your extension once or twice in your life. Most builders have done it hundreds of times. That gap is where things go wrong — not usually because someone's dishonest, but because nobody wrote down what was supposed to happen, so when it doesn't, there's nothing to point back to.

This isn't a generic legal pack written for any renovation, and it isn't a free spreadsheet template that tells you nothing about payment or disputes. It's the missing middle: how to vet a builder properly before you sign anything, a plain-English scope of works and contract specific to extension work, a staged payment schedule that protects both sides, how to tell a genuine defect from normal settlement, and exactly what to do — in order — if something goes wrong.

Written from the trade side, not the solicitor's side, by a bricklayer who's spent over four decades on site and been called in more than once to finish jobs where the payment or paperwork went wrong first.

What's included:

• The full builder vetting and red-flag checklist — what to check before you even ask for a quote, and the real patterns seen over 20+ years (including the "while I'm here" escalation and the vanishing deposit)
• An extension-specific scope of works and plain-English contract clauses — not a document written for any renovation, but for extension work specifically
• A five-stage scope-of-works template
• A staged payment and retention schedule, with the reasoning behind it explained
• The defect vs normal settlement guide, with real worked examples from site — including how to tell thermal movement from a genuine structural problem
• The dispute-resolution flowchart — the order to work through it, and why Step 1 is the one people skip
• Free updates if this guide is revised

Scope: England. Correct as of July 2026.

This toolkit is based on practical, real-world experience and is intended as a plain-English working agreement and reference — not a substitute for formal legal advice.