About NUFulham, since 2010
They called us the Gucci builders.
The name came from a client. So did most of what we know about this work. Here is how NU began, in three jobs.
i The paint job
A job we nearly turned down.
We were working out of a small serviced office in Chelsea.
An Australian PA rang about an empty commercial unit in Fulham.
She wanted it painted and carpeted. It was not really our kind of work.
We needed the money, so we said yes.
One morning a flight case stood in the middle of the unit. Down its side it read Kylie Minogue World Tour.
We said nothing and carried on. A week later we were asked to a house in Chelsea.
Kylie was on the sofa. She had heard all about us, she said.
That meeting became the full refurbishment of a 4,500 sq ft house. We worked together for about two years.
Discretion was never a policy we wrote down. It is what got us into the front room.
ii The coffee queue
Standing in the right queue in Fulham.
A café up the road from our office. A very tall man in front of us.
On the way out, Nick’s business partner asked who that was. It was David Gandy.
We sent him a message. He suggested a coffee, and two days later we had breakfast.
He was buying a house a couple of minutes from our office. Would we work with him on it?
It needed everything. A basement under the footprint, a kitchen extension and a full renovation.
We won the consents and built it. The relationship ran for over three years.
Somewhere in there we picked up a nickname. The Gucci builders. That one came from Kylie.
“A basement, an extension and a renovation is three projects wearing one address.”
What that house taught us about one team, one contract
iii The triple basement
Three floors down, and a new start.
Nick found an old block of flats in South Kensington.
He worked out it could hold two family houses. Each would go three floors down.
Planning came through. Then the borough paused new basements for a year.
The build took about two and a half years. It was hard on everyone.
Nick’s business partnership ended during it. What came out the other side is NU Projects as it runs today.
iv What we kept
One team, from the first call to the last snag.
Every one of those jobs ran better with one team holding it.
So that is how NU works. We draw the house, price it and build it, under one contract.
Our own quantity surveyor prices the work. Our MEP director runs the services.
The joinery is made by Cochrane Bespoke. Nick takes the first call.
Most of the houses we are proudest of will never carry a name.
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