Property Repairs in Harrow, London

Harrow is part of our regular West London coverage, so once we've surveyed the property we can usually confirm a start date quickly. Send the address and scope and we'll arrange the next step.

Yes. Harrow falls within the area Lian Construction serves across Greater London.

It varies a lot depending on what's actually wrong, whether it's a handful of slipped tiles, a valley gutter issue, or something more structural. Small repairs on a standard semi-detached roof are usually a modest job, while a full re-roof is a bigger outlay. It's worth getting someone out to inspect the roof properly rather than guessing from ground level, since interwar roofs in Harrow often have hidden issues around chimneys and valleys that only show up on closer inspection. Get a few quotes before committing.

Yes, we can provide photos of the defect before and after repair, which is useful for insurance claims, landlord records or reporting back to a freeholder or managing agent. For anything requiring a formal engineer's report, such as a structural insurance claim, we'll coordinate with the relevant specialist, since that kind of report needs to come from someone qualified to give it rather than from the contractor carrying out the repair itself. Keeping a simple photo record as work progresses, not just before and after, is also useful if a dispute ever comes up later about what condition something was in or what exactly was done to fix it.

Most cracks are cosmetic or related to minor, normal movement such as seasonal expansion and contraction, and can be repaired without structural work. Some, particularly stepped cracks, cracks wider than a few millimetres, or cracks that run through brickwork rather than just plaster, need a closer look and sometimes a structural engineer's assessment before repair, since filling a genuinely structural crack without addressing the movement behind it is only ever a temporary fix. We'll flag which category a crack falls into before quoting the repair. A useful thing to note yourself in the meantime is whether the crack is still moving, a simple pencil mark or piece of tape across it will show whether it's widening over the following weeks, which is useful information for us or an engineer to have.

We price what we can see and assess at survey stage, and flag clearly where the true extent of an issue, such as how far damp has tracked behind a wall, might only become apparent once we start opening it up. If more is found once work begins, we stop, explain what we've found with photos, and agree a price for the additional work before continuing, rather than proceeding on the original figure and adjusting the invoice at the end without warning. This is particularly common with damp repairs, where the visible staining might only represent a fraction of how far moisture has actually tracked behind the surface, so we build a sensible checking point into jobs like this rather than assuming the first impression is the full picture. It's a similar story with timber decay behind old skirting or floorboards, where the surface can look sound while the wood underneath has softened, and we'd rather flag that possibility upfront than let it come as a surprise once the job is underway. Where timber decay is found, we'll also check whether it's simple wet rot from ongoing moisture, which usually stops once the source is fixed and the area dries out, or something that needs a wider look, since the two are treated quite differently.