Creating a Forever Home Without Losing Sight of the Budget
The owners had found the home they wanted to enjoy with their children and grandchildren for years to come. The challenge was turning an ambitious £800,000 proposal into a buildable scheme much closer to their £450,000 construction budget.
The customer story
The Problem
The owners had bought a substantial Heswall property for its potential: a large garden, an excellent location and open views towards North Wales. Their intention was for this to be their final home — somewhere they could enjoy themselves and continue bringing their children and grandchildren together.
The house itself, however, required extensive work. The architectural proposals developed by Condy Lofthouse included extensions, major internal alterations and a comprehensive refurbishment.
The difficulty was commercial. The proposed route to deliver the project with another local builder was coming in at around £800,000 — significantly beyond what the owners wanted to spend on the building work. When the client approached OPB, he was open with us: his construction budget was around £450,000.
Rather than simply telling him the project couldn't be delivered, we went back through the design to understand which elements were driving the cost and where changes could be made without losing the purpose of the scheme.
What We Changed
Our review identified opportunities to simplify and reduce parts of the proposed extension while retaining the spaces that mattered most to the owners.
We proposed reducing the size of the rear extension and altering the side garage extension, bringing the scale of the construction much closer to the client's available budget.
After OPB was instructed, we worked alongside Condy Lofthouse to incorporate those changes into the architectural design.
This was not an OPB Design & Build project — Condy Lofthouse remained the architect — but our early commercial and buildability input helped reshape the proposed scheme into something the client could realistically proceed with.
What We Built
The completed project combined extensions with a comprehensive refurbishment of the existing house.
Internally, the property was brought up to modern standards and reorganised to create generous family living spaces, including a large open-plan area designed around the way the owners wanted to enjoy the house with their wider family. The project also included the garage, balconies and substantial internal alterations.
Outside, the works continued into the garden and approach to the property, including extensive hard landscaping, a large rear patio, driveway and brick entrance.
Rather than treating the extension, refurbishment and external works as unrelated jobs, they were delivered as one coordinated construction project.
How It Improved the Way They Live
The finished house became what the owners had intended when they bought it: their final family home. It gave them generous spaces for everyday life, but also somewhere their children and grandchildren could return to and enjoy with them.
The relationship went well beyond completing the building work. They became very special customers to the OPB team, and long after the project was finished we would find reasons to call in, sit with them in the garden and catch up.
For us, that remains as much a part of this project's story as the extension or refurbishment itself.
How we got there
An ambitious design, but the wrong price
The architectural scheme had already been developed when the owners first spoke to OPB.
The proposals were ambitious and appropriate for a substantial forever home, but the anticipated construction cost of around £800,000 was well beyond the client's intended building budget. The client told us he wanted to spend approximately £450,000.
That gave us a clear commercial brief: understand whether the design could be adapted to protect the important parts of the project while bringing the construction cost much closer to the figure the client was comfortable investing.
Analysing the design
We reviewed the proposed scheme from a construction and commercial perspective rather than simply applying lower rates to the same drawings.
The rear extension and side garage extension were two areas where changes to the size and configuration could produce meaningful savings without undermining the overall purpose of the project.
This allowed the conversation to move away from 'How cheaply can we build this design?' towards the more useful question: 'What should we change so that the design and the budget actually belong together?'
Working with the architect
Once instructed, OPB worked with Condy Lofthouse to develop the agreed changes.
The architect retained responsibility for the design, while OPB contributed construction, buildability and commercial input to help the revised scheme remain aligned with the client's budget.
That collaboration allowed the architectural intent and the commercial realities of construction to be considered together before the revised works progressed.
Building the forever home
The resulting project extended and comprehensively refurbished the property, creating the home the owners intended to remain in and enjoy with their family. The scope included the main living areas, garage, balconies, internal alterations and extensive external works.
The objective was not simply to modernise an ageing property. It was to create one coherent home, inside and out, suited to the next chapter of the owners' lives.
Delivering against the budget
The client's stated construction budget was approximately £450,000. After reviewing the original proposals and working with the architect to amend the design, OPB was able to deliver the project with a final account of approximately £455,000.
Against the client's original budget, the final position was therefore around £5,000 higher — approximately 1% — despite the scale and complexity of a major extension and whole-house refurbishment.
The comparison with the original £800,000 proposal is not about claiming that exactly the same scope was delivered for almost half the cost. It wasn't. The design was deliberately changed.
That is precisely the point: the budget became an input into the design rather than a problem discovered after the design had been fixed.
- Original proposal
- ~£800,000
- Original design, quoted by another builder
- Client budget
- ~£450,000
- Final account
- ~£455,000
- Revised design — around 1% over budget
More than a completed project
Some projects stay with you for reasons that have very little to do with construction.
The owners became firm favourites with the OPB team. Even after the work was complete, we continued visiting them simply to sit in the garden, have a chat and see how they were getting on.
The building project ended. The relationship didn't.
Gallery
Inside the finished home
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