A kitchen and dining room, mid-renovation

This is the point in a renovation where a room looks worse than it did before you started, and where every important decision is still reversible for nothing. The old kitchen is out, the chimney breast is exposed, the floor is bare and the radiators are off the wall.

It is also the last cheap moment. A socket moved now costs a length of cable; the same socket moved after plastering costs a chase, a patch, a repaint and an argument. So this is when we walk the room with you and settle where the light falls, which way the door swings and where the furniture is actually going to stand.

Everything after this is sequence: first fix, board, plaster, second fix, decorate, floor. Done in that order, by one team, it is a calm few weeks. Done in the wrong order by six firms, it is the reason people say never again.