A paint job that became a Chelsea house

Every builder has a story about the job they nearly turned down. This is ours. It is the reason a lot of people first heard of NU.

When we started, we worked out of a small serviced office in Chelsea. The phone rang one afternoon and it was an Australian lady. She had a job, she said. Could we come and look at a commercial unit in Fulham?

She was a PA, that much was clear. She was working for someone with money, which was also clear. What was not clear was who. The unit was five thousand square feet and completely empty. Plain walls, plain floors, nothing in it at all. She wanted it painted and decorated with commercial carpet down.

It was not really our thing. We were trying to build a design and build practice, not a decorating round. But we needed the money, so we said yes.

The flight case

We won the job and got on with it. We painted, decorated and laid the floor. The whole time we tried to work out who on earth the client was.

Then one morning we turned up. There, in the middle of this empty unit, was an aluminium flight case. It was about a metre and a half high. Down the side of it, in plain letters, it said Kylie Minogue World Tour.

We looked at each other. Then, because anyone would, we opened it. Inside was her tour wardrobe.

We did not say a word to the PA. We carried on and played dumb. About a week later she rang. She said her boss would like to meet us at a house in Chelsea.

The meeting

We rang the doorbell and somebody let us in. They said Kylie is in the front room, she would like to meet you. We walked in and there she was on the sofa.

She looked up and said, I have heard all about you naughty boys. Then she sang us a little tune about NU. Neither of us had prepared for that.

That meeting turned into the full refurbishment of a house. It was four and a half thousand square feet. It also became a working relationship that ran for about two years.

Why the story matters, and it is not the name

It is a good story and we enjoy telling it. But the useful part is not the celebrity.

The useful part is how the work was won. We turned up to a job we did not really want. We did it properly. We said nothing when we worked out who the client was. Discretion was not a policy we wrote down. It was the thing that got us invited into the front room.

That is still how it works at the top of the London market. People with something to protect are not buying a brochure. They are working out whether you can be trusted in their house. That includes their staff and their family. They are also working out whether you will talk about it afterwards.

We mostly do not. Most of the houses we are proudest of will never appear anywhere named.

What a full refurbishment of a house like that involves

It starts with strip out and structural alterations. Then come the services the client never sees: heating, power, water and data. Then comes joinery made for the house rather than bought for it. Then come the finishes. Architecture, interior design, project management and construction sit under one contract. So there is one team. One person is accountable from the first drawing to handover.

What that costs per square foot depends on the specification. It also depends on how much structure moves. Our own rates are published by work type and specification. They are in the NU Build Cost Calculator. You can see the band before you speak to anybody.

One team. One contract. One standard. Only the area changes.

Planning a renovation in Chelsea or anywhere in prime London? Talk to us. Architecture, interior design, project management and construction under one contract. Call 020 7731 6841.