Our client wanted a proper gym they could use year round, without giving up a bedroom or reversing the car out of the garage every time they wanted to train. The obvious space was the bottom of the garden — which meant a new insulated garden building, power run down to it, and the ground around it made good so it didn’t sit in a sea of mud all winter.

We started in December. Building through the wettest part of the year is nobody’s first choice, but the client wanted it ready for the new year, so we worked around the weather rather than waiting for it. Groundworks and the base went in first, the structure followed through mid-December, and the fit-out and landscaping ran into February.

Because the building, the electrics and the hard landscaping were all ours, there was no waiting on a third party between stages. That is the main reason a winter build like this one holds its schedule at all.