Drove out to a barn near Lamerton first thing on Tuesday. Client had a tidy set of drawings and a number they’d been quoted by someone else, and they wanted a second view.

The drawings showed 300mm wall build-ups throughout. On site, three of the walls measured closer to 450mm and one was effectively a granite-faced rubble core. The access lane is half a mile of single track which prices waste removal differently to a typical urban skip job. And the foul drainage was assumed mains on the design package; there is no mains. None of that is exotic — it’s the pattern of rural barn conversions across this patch.

By the time we’d walked the site I had a longer questions list for the designer and a fundamentally different feel for the number. The client left with a clearer view of what they were committing to. Worth the half-day.