Interview with the owner: refurbishing The Wood
With their vision for their holiday home, Martin and Ursula set about making plans to refurbish The Wood to make it their own, and in doing so enlisted the support of REFURB. Here, Ursula tells us more about her experience.
Why did you choose REFURB to help with your refurbishment?
Our Property Manager at Pebbles introduced me to Katherine Spencer, and it felt like a very strong team. We had been very happy with the property management services they had provided, and their maintenance team had done a few bits for us so we had already started to build a good relationship. Again, we liked that the team as a whole knew the house, and then when I met Kat I immediately liked her. I felt very comfortable with her and she understood what we were trying to do with the house.
How do you feel having REFURB involved added value to the experience?
It added value by making it easier. I might have been able to do it myself but Kat is able to do it much better because it’s her job. She does it well, she has good relationships with the different contractors, and she’s there when we’re not, which is crucial. We also know that if she’s going to use her contractors again then it’s in everyone’s interests for the project to go well. So the extra cost of having her project management team involved felt like money well spent.
What were you really pleased with about the process?
She was empathetic and sympathetic to what we wanted to achieve, but she was also super organised and incredibly efficient which was wonderful. Everything was well documented, she always got back to me and she was happy to organise the things I suddenly threw at her. Like when I wanted to change the Aga which meant getting a crane in to remove the old one.
Kat was also very helpful in going out to tender with people rather than just sticking to people she always uses, which made me feel really comfortable with the process. She was open minded and sensitive to getting the best person and the best price we could.
I think overall it worked really nicely as I felt as though I was involved and organising the project from afar but I didn’t have to worry as Kat was taking care of all the details. In the end I was really pleased with the results, and even where there were very minor problems, Kat dealt with them sympathetically and diplomatically. She was never afraid to say if something needed to be done better, but she always handled everything and everyone very well and very sensitively.
