Getting to know us
Choosing a builder is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make about your home. You’re trusting someone with your property, a significant investment and something that will be part of your everyday life for months.
We understand that you’ll want to know who we are, how we work and what you can expect from us before making that decision.
That’s what this page is here for. We’ve tried to give you a clear and honest picture of how we approach our projects, the way we like to work and what it’s like to have us involved in your build.
Every project starts with a conversation. If you’re considering work to your home and think we might be the right people to help, we’d love to hear from you.
Taylors Cotswold Construction is a family business based near Burford. Founded by Zach and Steven Taylor the business has it’s roots in natural stone construction and has grown into a high end full project management business, which means we take a job from the first site visit all the way through to completion.
Roofing, carpentry, bricklaying and groundworks are done by our own team. For plumbing, electrics, plastering and decorating we use the same subcontractors we’ve worked with for seven or eight years. They’re all qualified, insured and known to us personally. Nobody works on your house who we haven’t worked with before.
Vicky runs the office, so there’s always someone here to answer the phone, while Zach oversees the construction side of the business and remains closely involved with all projects. We’re proud long standing members of the Federation of Master Builders.
We are passionate about period properties and so most of our work is in that niche, including Cotswold natural stone, heritage and listed buildings.
These houses don’t behave like modern buildings. The walls need to breathe, so they need lime mortar and lime plaster rather than cement. Floors slope. Nothing is square. Putting a modern kitchen, new wiring or underfloor heating into a house that’s been standing for a few hundred years takes a different approach, and using the wrong materials can cause real damage years later.
We’ve spent years learning how to do this properly. We know which materials suit these buildings. We’re used to dealing with conservation officers and listed building consent. And we make our joinery on site, so it fits the room it’s going into rather than the room having to fit the joinery.
That said we do also do new builds. But as you’d imagine we take a slightly different approach and most people who are asking us to take on new build properties do it because they want the convenience of a new build property with the character of period building.
We work within about 20 miles of Burford, across Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Warwickshire.
We run one main project at a time and fit other work around it. This is deliberate. It means the job you’ve hired us for gets proper attention instead of being squeezed in between five others.
A typical year for us looks something like this:
Large projects, £350,000 and up. Barn conversions, whole house renovations and new builds. These usually run 18 to 20 weeks or longer.
Medium projects, £100,000 to £250,000. Single storey extensions, kitchen extensions, knocking rooms through, and renovating part of a house.
Small works, replacement kitchens and bathrooms, minor renovations and hard landscaping.
Roofing. We do this with our own team and it doesn’t need to be part of a bigger project.
Every project is different, but there are certain types of work where our experience and the way we work are particularly well suited.
If some of this sounds familiar, we’ll work well together. Building or renovating your home should be exciting, and our job is to make sure you can enjoy the process as well as the end result.
We’re not at the cheap end of the market but nor will we be the most expensive. We like to think that we offer good value to people who want a quality finish to a home that is special enough to need a sympathetic touch.
The way we price
We price for the standard of finish we think you actually want. If another builder puts £10,000 in for a kitchen and we put in £20,000, we’re not more expensive, we’re being realistic about what we think you’ll end up choosing when you get to that stage. If we’ve priced a room with twelve downlights and they’ve priced it with one pendant light, those two quotes aren’t comparable at all. That said if you look at the allowances and decide this is not the spec you need we are always happy to talk it through.
Everything we include is written down in the quote. Any extras that come up during the build are listed separately with a running total, so you always know where you stand. On older houses we’ll usually suggest you set aside a small contingency, because on occasion issues can arise.
Some builders price low to win the job and add the extras later. That’s not how we operate.
Read our guide to comparing builders’ quotes.
1. We come and look at your property
We go through room by room, take photographs and talk about what you want. Where the sockets go. How you want to heat the place. What each room needs to do for your family.
2. You get a proper quote
A full specification, a timeline and a project schedule, so you can see exactly what you’re getting and when. If you decide to go ahead, a 5% deposit holds your slot in the diary and we set out when each payment falls due.
3. We build it
There’s a site meeting every week, usually on a Friday. You get access to an online portal with all the drawings, the schedule and the paperwork, so you can check what’s happening whenever you want without waiting for someone to call you back. We only ask for payment once a stage is finished. At the end you get every certificate and warranty.
When you need a builder who can read your drawings properly, who won’t be thrown by a conservation officer, and who won’t blame your design in front of your client when something needs solving on site, we’re absolutely the right fit.
We’ve got a separate page explaining how we work with architects.
