Insured and vetted
£5 million public liability insurance. Members of the Federation of Master Builders and TrustMark registered, which means independent vetting and inspected work.
Who you are dealing with.
Ray started this firm from a lock-up on Blackhorse Lane in 1998 with a transit van and a bag of tools. His sons run the day-to-day now, from a yard about two hundred yards from that first lock-up.
Ray Ashdown
Founder · quotes and surveysBricklayer by trade, forty years on London sites. Ray still does most of the surveying and every quote leaves with his name on it. If he says a wall can come out, it can.
Tom Ashdown
Site manager · your day-to-day contactRuns the jobs: programme, trades, building control, the Friday walk rounds. Tom answers his phone during working hours and admits it when something has slipped, which customers seem to find refreshing.
Danny Ashdown
Carpenter and joiner · the workshopCity & Guilds carpenter. Danny builds the staircases, sash repairs and fitted joinery in our workshop, and is the reason our lofts have handrails that match the originals downstairs.
Small on purpose.
We run two, occasionally three jobs at a time, with our own electricians and plumbers rather than whoever is free that week. We could grow. We tried it once in 2011 and the quality slipped within months, so we stopped. The waiting list is the trade-off, and we think it is the right one.
The boring bits, in writing
The paperwork side matters as much as the brickwork.
Fixed prices, staged payments
You pay in stages as work completes, never large sums up front. If we find a genuine surprise we show you, price the fix and agree it before carrying on.
Guaranteed and certified
10 year guarantee on structural work. Gas and electrical work is done by registered engineers and you get every certificate at sign-off, in a folder, without asking.
What customers say
Ray quoted what he said he would quote, the lads turned up at 7.30 every morning, and the loft was signed off a week early. Our neighbours have already booked them.Sarah and Mike Donnelly
We interviewed five builders. Ashdowns were the only ones who pointed out a problem with our drawings before we signed anything. That honesty ran through the whole job.Priya Raghunathan
A sixteen week refurb and the Friday walk rounds meant we always knew where the money and the programme stood. When they found a problem they showed us, priced it, and got on with it.James Okafor
Tidy, polite and completely unflappable. They found the leak two previous plumbers had missed and photographed everything behind the walls before tiling. Brilliant.Helen Csizmadia
Started with a £400 repointing repair four years ago. They have since done our bathroom and this summer they start the loft. That probably says it all.Tom and Ellie Bradshaw