Builder in Chorlton

The typical job here is a bay fronted Victorian or Edwardian terrace or semi: decent ceiling heights, a long narrow plot, a rear outrigger with a small kitchen in it, and a garden that is longer than it is wide. The pattern of what people do to them is almost standardised. The outrigger comes down or gets widened, the back of the house opens into the garden, and the loft becomes a bedroom with a shower room.

Because it is so common, it is also where corners get cut. The two that matter are the beam over the new opening, which has to be sized for what is actually above it rather than what was above the last one, and the junction where a new flat roof meets the old rear wall, which is where these extensions leak if they are going to.

Most of these houses have no side access worth the name. The side return is a metre and a half of dead ground, the back entry is shared, and the front is on a street where parking is contested from eight in the morning. That is the real constraint on a Chorlton job and it is why two identical drawings can be different money four streets apart.

It also decides sequencing. On a tight plot the order things happen in is half the job, and getting it wrong means double handling everything.

Part of Chorlton sits inside a conservation area, and the rules there bite on what the front of a house looks like more than on what happens at the back. Windows, doors, render and anything visible from the street are where the questions come.

Whether your particular job needs an application is the council's answer. What the quote gives you is a straight view on which parts are likely to be asked about, so you can find out before ordering.