We had a very similar experience with NUSpace, the loft conversion company based in Fulham that also takes on kitchen extensions. We had innumerable issues with both NUSpace and the builders they assigned to our project. They are very much a hard sales pitch company. We requested several quotes from different building companies, but we chose NUSpace because it was recommended by a friend who used them on her loft conversion (now she has structural issues and NUSpace is not taking care of solving them) and because it was the cheapest of all the quotes. There is fundamentally and morally something very wrong about how NUSpace operates. At the initial meetings the slick salesman promises that NUSpace would be taking care of everything, and they would manage the project end-to-end ensuring that all goes smoothly and that they will deal with everything till all building certificates are granted. Nothing further from the truth, they subcontract everything at apparently the cheapest price and make you deal with most of the matters. In the planning stages the architects NUSpace subcontracted made two considerable mistakes that had to be rectified at later stage at our cost. The worse was the team of builders they assigned to our project. They were also subcontracted and we had no input in the decision process. After the initial meeting between the NUSpace Project Manager, Luke Carroll, the builders and us, we were left to deal with them. When we wanted to express our concerns about any matters NUSpace Project Manager hardly ever took any notice or action and he hardly ever visited the building site. The builders were continuously complaining about the price agreed with NUSpace, and they were always increasing the amount we had to pay by adding extras, that we could not argue because they continuously threatened us with walking off. Actually at the final stages they did, they went into other projects and we were left for months with an unfinished kitchen extension and stuff all around the house. When finally we got almost all finished we were not happy with the results and we had weeks of endless discussions with the builders, the owner of the company and the project manager. When finally we got all the paper work and we thought we could forget about them and the experience, however started to have problems as a result as the builders cutting corners and using cheap materials. Graham Chappell, the owner of the company, excused all his responsibility behind a carefully worded contract, and blaming all the issues on the builders that they have selected on the only basis of reduced price. I am not surprised about Lyonel post. Shame on Graham Chappell, what a crook! He does not only prey on decent families that have saved for years, destroying their dreamt homes, he might also be endangering lives by NUSpace low quality works
