A local Leeds charity that has helped people in your situation for over thirty years. Their job is to take the worry out of home improvement work for people who shouldn't have to manage it on their own.

What they do for us:

• Visit and listen. They come to the house, sit down with you, and learn what you need. No pressure.
• Plan the work properly before any tradesperson is contacted.
• Find and vet tradespeople from a list they've worked with for years.
• Manage everything during Step 4. They coordinate the trades, check the work as it happens, and only release payment when we're satisfied.
• Help us claim VAT relief on the bathroom (saves around £1,500 to £2,000).
• Suggest a landscaper for Steps 1, 3, 6 and 7.

You will not have to chase anyone or argue with anyone. That's the entire point of having them involved.

Phone, website, and visiting times — to be added.

An OT is sent by the council for a free home visit. Their job is to spot things making daily life harder than it needs to be, and to recommend changes that would help.

What they look at:

• The bathroom — is the bath safe to step over? Is there room for a seat in the shower? Where would grab rails actually help?
• The stairs — are they safe? Is there a handrail on the right side? Are the edges visible enough?
• Lighting — bright enough where you need it? Easy to switch on?
• The kitchen — can you reach what you need without bending or climbing?
• Getting around the house — anywhere awkward, narrow, or hard to navigate?

It's advice, not orders. We don't have to do everything they suggest. Their recommendations specifically shape the wet room design in Step 4, plus socket heights, lighting placement, grab rails, and any doorway widening.

The OT waitlist can be 4 to 8 weeks, so we get on the list as soon as we agree to start.

Council OT booking line — to be added.

The landscaper does work in three different steps over three years (Step 3 in 2026, Step 6 in early 2029, Step 7 in late 2029). Using the same person for all of it has real practical benefits:

• They'll know from day one in 2026 that the patio is permanent, not temporary, and lay it accordingly. A different landscaper might cut corners knowing someone else will deal with it later.
• They'll be back in 2029 to refine and extend the work, so they design with that future in mind — path connections, patio edges, planted borders all work better when one mind has thought through the whole thing.
• You build a relationship and trust over time, rather than meeting strangers at every step.
• Pricing is more honest — they're committed to a relationship, not pricing each job in isolation.

Care & Repair will help us find someone who's happy to do a small ≈£10k job in 2026 with the bigger ≈£20k follow-on across 2029. It's a more attractive proposition for them than a one-off.

Specific landscaper — to be chosen in Step 1 (June – mid-July 2026).

The pattern of visits matches how the garden actually grows:

• Fortnightly in summer (April – September) — the garden grows fast and a fortnightly tidy keeps on top of it. About 12 visits.
• Monthly in autumn and spring — slower growth, less to do. About 4 visits.
• One or two visits across winter — just to clear leaves and tidy up after storms.

That works out to about 17 visits a year at roughly £40 a visit — around £700/year total.

What they do on each visit: mowing, weeding, edging the lawn, deadheading, sweeping the patio, tidying after wind or storms, cutting back where needed.

They start in spring 2027, after the patio is in. From that point on, the garden never slips back into a mess — which protects the work we did in Step 3.

Paid for separately from the project budget. It's an ongoing household cost, like a phone bill — small, predictable, and worth every penny.

Specific gardener — to be chosen in late 2026, ahead of spring 2027.

The whole of Step 2 (mid-July – mid-September 2026) is about you deciding what stays. Nothing gets touched until you've decided.

The pattern:

• One room at a time. Not the whole house in a day.
• Two or three hours at a time, never all day. We stop when you're tired.
• A couple of sessions a week so we get through it without rushing.
• Three piles in each room:
  • Keep — things that matter to you, things you use, things with memories.
  • Pass on — things someone else might want (charity, family, sold).
  • Let go — things that are broken or no longer useful.
• Nothing goes in the bin without you saying so.
• Photos taken of anything you're not sure about — so you have a record even if you decide to let it go.

A few specific safeguards:

• A “keep” sticker on furniture you want to keep. The clearance team in Step 3 will not touch anything with a sticker. Simple, foolproof.
• A special box for photos, letters, papers, anything sentimental. It comes out first and goes back last. Nothing in it leaves the house unless you say so.
• A proper opinion on anything valuable. If something might be worth real money, we get a qualified person to look at it before any decision is made.
• Photos of unsure items. Even if you decide to let something go, you have a record of it.
• A licensed clearance company in Step 3 — Environment Agency registered, proper paperwork, no fly-tipping. They only remove what's been agreed.

It's much quicker than the house. One afternoon in Step 2 — we walk the garden together and:

• Tag plants and trees you want kept with ribbon. The clearance crew leaves anything ribboned alone.
• Map where the sun falls — mornings, afternoons, evenings. We need this to put the patio in the right place.
• Find the spot you'd most like to sit. This is the most important question for the garden.
• Notice shelter from wind. Some corners are sun traps; others are wind tunnels. We want the sunny one.

We don't need to mark “things to throw away” — anything not tagged can go. The system is opt-in for keeping, opt-out (by not tagging) for removing.

Because we're not building a cheap one to throw away.

Lots of people in this kind of project would build a temporary slab patio in Step 3 and rip it out three years later when the “real” patio gets done. That's wasted money and wasted time. We're not doing that.

The Step 3 patio is:

• Laid in mortared porcelain, not loose-laid
• Properly drained so water runs away from the house
• Joints filled, edges clean — the proper finish, not a placeholder
• In the spot you've chosen, with sun and shelter both worked out

When the landscaper comes back in Step 6 (Jan – Feb 2029), they don't dig it up. They:

• Clean and rejoint if needed (mortar joints sometimes need refreshing after a couple of years)
• Possibly extend it slightly — adding a metre or two — based on how you've actually been using it
• Add a planted border or low edging to define it against the lawn

The Step 3 spend isn't wasted. It's the foundation everything else gets built around.

Porcelain is the right material for a patio that needs to last and stay nice without fuss:

• Hardwearing — won't crack or wear under chair legs
• Easy to clean — a sweep and an occasional hose-down
• Copes with British weather — frost, rain, sun, all of it
• Doesn't need sealing — concrete and natural sandstone do
• Doesn't fade or stain like sandstone can
• Looks beautiful — choice of colours and finishes
• Lasts decades

Slightly more expensive upfront than concrete or sandstone, but cheaper over time because it doesn't need replacing or refinishing. For a patio you want to use for the next 20 years, it's the right choice.

Everything you need to actually sit on it from day one:

• Two comfortable outdoor chairs — properly chosen, supportive, the right height for you, weatherproof.
• A small outdoor table for a cup of tea, a book, a pair of glasses.
• A heavyweight parasol with a weighted base. You can tilt it to follow the sun or to give shade when you want it.
• A weatherproof cushion box so the cushions stay dry. You can grab them out and be sitting outside in two minutes when the sun comes out.
• A short paved path from the back door, in the same paving as the patio.
• A temporary handrail on the back door steps if you'd find one helpful (the permanent steps and handrail come in Step 6).

All of this is included in the Step 3 budget (~£10,500 total).

Step 4 is the noisy, dusty bit. It runs for 8 to 10 weeks (Jan – Mar 2028) with the trades in the house and you staying somewhere comfortable. Care & Repair coordinates all of it.

Structural:

• New electrics throughout (old wiring is a fire risk)
• Fresh plaster on all walls
• Repainted throughout — fresh, light, clean

Comfort & utility:

• Sockets planned room-by-room (doubles, sensible heights, USB)
• All-LED dimmable warm-white lighting
• Motion-sensor night lights to the bathroom
• Internet cabling to every main room (cabinet under the stairs)
• All new radiators with individual thermostats
• Towel rails in the bathroom and wet room

Major rooms:

• The wet room (rebuilt around the OT's recommendations)
• The kitchen (new doors on existing cupboards, new worktops, porcelain tiles, underfloor heating)
• Five new internal doors with lever handles
• New carpet on stairs, landing, and all three bedrooms
• The loft (rewired, plastered, new radiator, wood-effect floor)

Cost: ~£37,000 (range £35,000 – £40,000).

The boiler stays — it's working fine. The living room floor is assessed afterwards, no commitment yet.

Because the walls are coming off anyway, this is the moment to do all of these properly. Doing them later costs three times as much.

Sockets:

• Doubles, not singles, almost everywhere. No more squabbling over what gets plugged in.
• At sensible heights — higher in the kitchen, by armchairs, and by the bed, so you don't have to bend down.
• Not hidden behind furniture — we plan around how you actually use each room.
• USB sockets in key spots for phones and tablets — no need for plug adapters.

Lighting:

• All LED, all dimmable. Lasts years, easier on the eyes, cheaper to run.
• Warm white, not cold blue. Like a normal lightbulb, not a hospital.
• Brighter task lights where you need to see clearly — kitchen worktops, by your reading chair, beside the bed.
• Softer ambient light for relaxing.
• Motion-sensor night lights in the hallway and on the way to the bathroom — lights come on automatically if you get up at night.
• Pull cord or motion-sensor switch in the bathroom — easier than a wall switch.

Internet:

• A proper cable to every main room — living room, kitchen, every bedroom, plus a spot for a Wi-Fi booster.
• A small cabinet under the stairs holds all the equipment.
• Wi-Fi strong everywhere — no dead spots in the back bedroom.
• Future-proofed for any equipment you might have later, including any health monitoring or alarm equipment if you ever need it.

It's a regular bathroom that just happens to be safer and easier to use:

• No step over the bath, no slipping — easy to use, easy to clean.
• Built specifically with your needs in mind, based on what the OT recommended in Step 1.
• Grab rails in the right places, fitted properly into the wall (not screwed in afterwards, which is weaker).
• A fold-down shower seat if useful.
• Wider doorway if needed for easier access.
• Slip-resistant floor that doesn't look medical — looks like a normal bathroom floor.
• A heated towel rail — warm towels.

Cost is around £8,000 – £10,000. Because it's a qualifying adaptation, the VAT is zero-rated, saving roughly £1,500 to £2,000.

Because it's working fine.

The radiators are being replaced — that gives you per-room temperature control, easier-to-turn dials (helpful if grip is harder than it used to be), and we can position them so they don't block furniture. But the boiler itself doesn't need changing.

We don't replace things just because we can — only what genuinely needs it.

The cupboard carcasses (the boxes behind the doors) are usually fine and don't need changing. Just replacing the doors and worktops gives you a kitchen that looks completely new at a fraction of the cost.

What gets done in the kitchen:

• New doors fitted to the existing cupboards
• New worktops
• New tiles on the splashback
• New porcelain tile flooring — hardwearing, easy to clean
• Underfloor heating under the new tiles — only a few pence a day to run, far easier to fit now than later
• Any appliances replaced if needed — we'll see what's working and what isn't

Same principle as the bathroom: freshen up where it makes sense, don't rip out things that are still working.

Carpets — once all the dusty work is finished, soft carpet goes back down upstairs:

• New carpet on stairs, landing, and all three bedrooms
• Best underlay we can put underneath — that's what makes a carpet feel comfortable and last for years
• Low pile — easier to walk on, easier to clean, no trip hazards
• Light edging strips on the stairs — small detail that makes the edge of each step easier to see, helps prevent slips
• Same carpet through landing and stairs — looks tidier, helps your eyes follow the way down

Internal doors — five new doors:

• Living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and the door to the loft
• Lever handles, not round knobs — much easier to use, especially if your hands aren't as strong as they used to be
• Solid doors for the bedrooms — block more sound, the house is quieter to sleep in
• Hinges and frames checked too — new doors don't help if the frame is wonky

The loft — lighter treatment than the bedrooms:

• Same fresh plaster and decoration as the rest of the house
• New wiring as part of the whole-house rewire — proper sockets and lighting
• A new radiator so it's warm enough to use comfortably year-round
• Wood-effect flooring rather than carpet — easier to keep clean, copes better with the temperature changes lofts go through (hotter in summer, colder in winter)

We're not committing to changing it yet. The current floor has more life in it than the kitchen one does.

The plan:

• Protect it carefully during all the Step 4 work
• Give it a proper deep clean afterwards
• Have a look — if it's fine, we leave it. If it really needs replacing, we decide then.

There's no rush, and no pre-commitment to spending money on it.

Step 4 is the only part where you can't be in the house — it takes about 8 to 10 weeks (Jan – Mar 2028).

We arrange somewhere comfortable for you well before it happens — with family, a short stay somewhere, whatever works best for you. We talk through the options long in advance, never sprung on you at the last minute.

If 8 to 10 weeks feels like too much, Option C in “Other ways” can roughly halve the time you're out by phasing the work — finishing upstairs first so you can live there while the kitchen is being done. Costs an extra £2,000 – £3,000 because trades have to come back twice, but the time fully out drops from 8–10 weeks to 4–5.

Closeboard is the strongest and longest-lasting style of wooden fence:

• Vertical timber boards — looks tidy
• Copes well with wind — no gappy panels to blow out
• Treated softwood, properly stained — looks smart

Concrete posts and gravel boards (rather than wooden ones) look the same from a distance but last 20+ years instead of 10. It's the single biggest difference between a fence that lasts and one that doesn't.

Standard six-foot height for privacy and security.

This is the most expensive part of Step 6, but doing it once and properly is the right answer. The alternative is repainting and patching wooden posts every couple of years, then replacing the whole thing in a decade.

The bones (steps, patio finishing, fences, lawn) go in first in Step 6 (Jan – Feb 2029). Then you live with the garden for spring and summer 2029.

You see how the garden looks and feels with the structure done. You notice things — what gets sun in the morning, where you'd like a bit of colour, where you want a seat or a bird feeder, whether you actually go down to the lower terraces or just look at them from the patio.

Then Step 7 (Sep – Oct 2029) plans the planting with all that real-world knowledge, rather than guessed in advance.

Two more reasons:

• Plants are expensive. Splitting the work spreads the cost.
• Autumn planting is better than spring planting for most things. So Step 7 hits the right time of year naturally.

Currently the access from the sliding doors to the garden isn't great. Step 6 fixes that properly:

• Proper new steps from the sliding doors — wide, even, comfortable depth, built to last (not a quick fix).
• A sturdy permanent handrail alongside the steps — properly fixed, the right height, the right grip.
• A landing area at the bottom so there's space to pause, take stock, and then carry on.

The temporary handrail from Step 3 gets replaced as part of this.

The permanent path connects the new steps to the patio in the same paving — no mismatched surfaces, no level changes that could trip you up.

Then we stop, talk about it, and adjust. Each step ends with a decision question precisely so you can opt out.

Nothing happens until you agree — that's the central rule of the whole plan.

If you say no, the options are:

• Stop the project entirely. That's allowed. Money already spent is money already spent; no further commitments.
• Pause for as long as you want. A few weeks, a few months, a year. We pick up when you're ready.
• Change the next step. Maybe you want to skip something, or do something different. We replan.
• Talk it through. Sometimes “no” is “I'm worried about something specific” — once we've talked, you might say “OK, let's do it differently.”

At any point. If something feels wrong while a step is happening, we pause.

• If a tradesperson is in the house and you're uncomfortable with something — we stop, discuss, fix it, or find a different way.
• If a sorting session is going faster than you want — we slow down or stop.
• If a decision you made earlier no longer feels right — we revisit it. The plan is meant to change.

The whole structure of pauses, decision points, and step-by-step approval exists for this reason. Nothing is locked in until it's actually been built or thrown away — and even then, we adjust.

Three reasons:

• No interest, so the project costs less overall. A £15,000 loan over 2 years would add £1,500 – £3,000 in interest depending on the rate.
• The next step is always fully funded before we start it — no risk of running out mid-build, no surprise scramble for cash.
• No pressure to rush. The pace and the funding are designed to fit each other. Going faster costs more in interest; going slower costs nothing.

Borrowing would add interest costs and timing pressure. It's not impossible — Option B in “Other ways” covers the borrowing route if we ever wanted to consider it (about 18 months to 2 years for the major work, +£1,500 – £3,000 interest). But the default is no borrowing, and we'd have to actively choose otherwise.

Adaptations to the bathroom that meet HMRC's qualifying criteria are zero-rated for VAT. That means we don't pay the 20% VAT we'd normally pay on the work.

On a wet room costing £8,000 – £10,000, that's roughly £1,500 to £2,000 saved.

Care & Repair will help us:

• Confirm eligibility
• Make sure the paperwork is filled in correctly
• Make sure the contractor zero-rates rather than charging VAT and then refunding (which is messier)

The relief applies to:

• Adapting a bathroom into a wet room
• Installing grab rails, fold-down seats
• Widening doorways
• Other adaptations the OT recommends

Because it's an ongoing household cost, not part of the renovation.

The project budget (£64k – £70k) is one-off spending: clear, do the work, done. The gardener is recurring — like a phone bill or a window cleaner. Small (£40), predictable, repeating forever.

Lumping it into the project total would:

• Make the project look more expensive than it actually is
• Disguise that this is forever-spending, not one-off spending
• Make it harder to think about “we have enough for the next step”

It's spending you'd want to keep doing for years after the project ends. Better to think of it as part of running the house, not part of doing it up.