We first invited Loftplan to quote in 2018, and since then we have had nothing but admiration for the company & their employees. They work tirelessly throughout the process & there is no hard selling from day one. The designer who visited us was clearly very knowledgeable about loft conversions & had done this many times before over a long career. With his help we had a number of different options to choose from with respect to the design of the roof, staircase & general layout of the rooms. At that time we were not ready to make the investment & we did get many other quotes in the interim period, but something about Loftplan stuck out. The company is a specialist in loft conversions & this is clear from the planning & professionalism experienced since. Managing all the specialist trades themselves (many in direct employment), we knew that this would be necessity during the Covid pandemic!
You are assigned supervisors throughout the project, one for the structural construction (ours was Bob) & the second for the latter finishing stages (Kevin). There is also a customer manager (Nicola) assigned in the head office, should you have any non-build related questions! The supervisors were easily accessible via phone calls & text messages, any questions we had were dealt with promptly & efficiently throughout the process; From planning permission through to final snagging, we were kept informed, with excellent project management working behind the scenes in head office to arrange & deliver materials to site, just be ready to have somewhere to put it all!
When planning is complete & the scaffolding goes up, the company continues to impress with how they try not to disrupt the lives of the incumbents. Taking a few hours on day one to rig up power & knock through the roof, the team of two (led by Richie in our case) let themselves in from the scaffolding for the whole build period. You can visit them to discuss progress & make minor design decisions, but until they need to knock through for the stairs later in the build, they just get on with it! The noise is keep to a minimum but obviously they do have a job to do & you only have plasterboard between you, so don’t expect not to hear them, although I was rarely disturbed enough to not be able to converse in conference calls.
When the main structure is complete & the dormers built, the roofing is professionally completed (any broken tiles fixed), windows & all trim in place, then the stairs go in, the scaffolding comes down & the trades begin to enter via your home. This is not a problem as they always give notice prior to visiting & lay down sheets or plastic to protect your existing home to create a path up to the new loft! They also tidy up every evening before they leave, so you don’t know that they’ve even been there!
Different trades visit throughout to prepare the loft for electricity (Dave & team) & plumbing (Alan), again there is interaction & consultation with regard to positioning of light switches/fittings & sockets etc. as well as the layout of the fittings in the shower room. Your existing house below the loft may dictate some of the positioning but Loftplan know what to recommend as all their tradesmen have done many conversions before.
The plastering team were excellent & dealt with some difficult angles & surfaces around the stairs & dormer windows with precision. Where the floor below had to be altered to fit a waste pipe, these surfaces were boxed in, plaster-boarded & made good.
All of the trades we had were very friendly, knowledgeable & professional; the one that impressed us the most was Mark, he is an excellent carpenter & turns a blank plaster canvas into what really starts to look like the finished article. He has a vast array of skills & goes above & beyond his own speciality to provide a beautiful finish by dealing with some of the snagging.
Throughout the pandemic, Loftplan were able to continue working on our property, with some minor delays due to material availability & staff illness, both totally understandable in the current climate! They remained in constant communication throughout to keep us informed of the new dates & plan to finalise the build.
Our children have now lived in the two loft rooms for over a month & they love it. They have far more space & their own shower room making them far more independent as they enter their teenage years.
Looking back on the whole experience, it was the perfect time to expand & Loftplan was the ideal company to partner with. The agreed cost of our build even went down a little when Loftplan gave us a rebate when we didn’t need as many fire alarms as they initially calculated! We did not request this, they just did it through honesty, integrity & good will!
We have no hesitation in recommending Loftplan to friends & family & strangers!
David Bland, Southampton,
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