What You Can Actually Change In A New Build

Somebody will tell you not to touch anything for a year. They are half right, and the half they are right about is not the half most people worry over. Nails are fine. It is the floor, the joinery and anything on the outside that reward patience.

There are three groups. What you can change this week, what you need to ask about before you start, and what is worth leaving until the house has stopped moving.

Change it this week

Everything soft is yours and always was. Blinds, curtains, rugs, lamps, cushions, the things that stop a room sounding like a car park. None of it needs anyone's permission and most of it is the reason the house still feels like a viewing rather than a home. We do this for a living as interior designers in Bristol, and it is where we would start too. If the windows are still bare, that is normal, and we wrote about why that happens and what to do about it a few weeks ago.

The one thing worth knowing before you start drilling is what your walls are actually made of. Upstairs, and on internal walls, you are usually into plasterboard on timber studs, which means a stud detector and a fixing that finds the timber. Downstairs, on an external wall, the plasterboard is often dabbed onto blockwork with a gap behind it, which is why a standard plasterboard plug will spin uselessly when you hang anything with weight in it. You want a fixing long enough to reach the block, and a drill that will go into it.

That matters most above windows. A curtain pole wants to go higher and wider than the window, which takes the fixings off the lintel and into the wall either side, and a loaded pole in a plasterboard plug will come away with the curtains attached. Mirrors, floating shelves and a wall-mounted television are the same problem in a different shape.

Light fittings are easier than people expect. Swapping the pendant on an existing ceiling point for something with more presence is a small job and it changes a room more than paint does. Adding wall lights or sockets where there are none is a different job, because it means chasing into walls and an electrician, and it is far less disruptive before carpets go down than after. We have written separately about the one light in the middle of the ceiling and why it is doing too much work on its own.

Paint is the exception in this group. It is the decision most people make first and it is better made last, after the furniture is in and you know which way the light moves through the room.

Ask before you start

Anything on the outside is a different conversation from anything on the inside. New plots usually come with conditions attached to the property itself, and on an estate still being built those often reach the front of the house and the shared parts of the street. What they cover varies from site to site, so the answer for your house is in your own paperwork rather than in what a neighbour tells you. Your conveyancer's report, or the transfer deed behind it, will say.

If there is a management company looking after greens, paths or parking courts, they are the people to ask about anything beyond your own boundary. On an apartment, the same applies inside: work that touches the structure, the fabric or the services generally needs the freeholder's consent, and the lease will say so in plainer language than people expect.

The other thing to ask about is time, and it only applies if you have not completed yet. The developer's own choices list, kitchen doors and worktops, tiles, flooring upgrades, extra sockets, closes at a build stage rather than on a date you pick. Once the kitchen is in, a different worktop stops being a choice and becomes a replacement. If you are still waiting on a plot in Bristol, Bath, Keynsham or anywhere the site is part way through, ask the sales adviser which stage yours has reached and what is still open. It is the cheapest hour you will spend on the house.

None of this is a trap. It is simply that the decisions sit with different people at different moments, and the only mistake is finding out which after the fact.

Worth waiting for

A new house arrives with water still in it. Screed, plaster and timber all give that up over the first heating season, and as they do you get hairline cracks at plasterboard joints, around door linings and where the ceiling meets the wall. This is the house settling rather than anything going wrong, which is why builders expect to come back and make good. Your handover pack will tell you how to report them and how long you have, and it is worth reading that before you reach for the filler. Doing the work yourself in November means doing it again in March.

Flooring is the one most people rush. Carpet and hard flooring are both easier to choose once you know where the furniture has actually landed, which rooms get used for what, and where the sun comes in during the afternoon. If you are still working out what the smallest room is for, we wrote about the rooms that came without a name and why they stay empty longest.

Anything built in wants the same patience. Fitted wardrobes, alcove shelving, a media wall, a window seat. Measure those after a season in the house and you get joinery that fits how you live in it. Measure them in week two and you get joinery that fits a guess.

Structural work sits on its own. Removing an internal wall in a new build is not the same job as removing one in a Victorian terrace, because timber frame and modern panel construction put load in places the thickness of the wall does not advertise. Get it looked at properly, and check what it does to your warranty before anyone picks up a bolster.

So what does that leave

More than you think, and in a better order. The things that change how a room feels, light, texture, window coverings, what sits where, are all in the first group and none of them need permission. The things people lie awake about, walls and floors and built-in storage, are mostly in the third, where waiting improves the result rather than delaying it. Very little of this house is fixed. It is just that some of it is fixed until spring.

Send us the doorway shot

Design Seven is a Bristol studio. Most of our work is show homes for housebuilders, which means we furnish empty new builds for a living. We take on private projects too, whether that is a single room, a whole house, or curtains, blinds and lighting measured and fitted properly. We are based between Bristol and Bath, and work across the South West and further afield where the project warrants it.

Stand in the doorway of the room you are least sure about, take one photo from there, and send it to us. Tell us three things: whether you have completed or are still choosing, what the floor is currently doing, and which wall you want to hang something heavy on.

We will tell you which of the three groups your list falls into, what the wall behind that spot is most likely to be made of, and what we would leave alone until the house has had a winter.

Call 0117 450 6707, email info@designseven.co.uk, or use the form on our contact page.