ABOUT

Renoviva is Paddy + Xuan, and all of you!

Paddy is a Harvard Law School graduate who worked as a lawyer for many years in a top global law firm. Xuan (pronounced Swan) is a Central Saint Martins graduate and spends most of her time working as a visual artist and copywriter.

We’re fellow renovators.

When we first started, we wasted a phenomenal amount of time and effort trying to find what we needed to know.

There’s a lot out there about loft conversions, extensions, refurbishments and other renovation projects. Some is helpful. A lot is not. There’s an incredible amount of clickbait, there for search engine optimisation purposes and to lure you to a website to sell you a product or service.

Confusing, disorganised, frustrating. That’s before the works even start. When the project really gets going, costs spiral, timelines shift, people prove unreliable and stress levels rise.

Like most people, we blindly stumbled from one stage to the next, needlessly stressed, tired and wasting money. The excitement for adventure giving way to just trying to get to the end. Any end.

There’s a better way.

There are many fellow renovators who’ve already experienced the renovation journey and can provide some light and direction.

It’ll still be a wild adventure but realising your renovation dream will be easier and more enjoyable.

Use our experience and knowledge to transform your journey from confused to confident, from chaos to in control.

The Reno Info Hub is much of our knowledge and experience made available to you, for free and long-form.

Use the Reno Info Hub to discover key things you need to know. In one place. Ordered.

If you’re looking for super high level, snappy top ten lists type information, this probably isn’t the website for you. Those are tempting to flick through but not very useful.

We provide detail where we think it’s helpful. We’re not keen on rewriting things just for the sake of it though. Where there’s good information out there that we think is more useful than what we’d create for you, we just refer you to that. It’s about you getting the information you actually need, not about us.

Renoviva is for UK renovators. Where legal or regulatory landscapes come into play (i.e. the Party Wall Act), the focus is on England and Wales because different frameworks often apply in Scotland and in Northern Ireland and those are less familiar to us.

The Reno Info Hub is an in-depth resource for navigating a loft conversion, extension, or refurbishment where professionals are engaged to undertake the usual key roles and activities.

It’ll still be of some use to those who can throw money at whatever problems arise and can afford to outsource everything to professionals and but it’s intended for those of us who take a more hands on approach.

It’s not intended to be a core resource for those self-building though, nor for those taking a DIY approach for all of the works stage.

This way to the Hub homepage.

We ultimately want Renoviva to be about you, not us.

The reality is that renovation plans and experiences can differ enormously and the tips, advice, information and recommendations from fellow renovators can be a lifeline in the rough seas of renovating. The hive mind is better than the individual mind in other words.

The more renovators exchanging ideas and experiences, the better. Think of it as a reno club.

This way to the Forum.

As we’re new, Renoviva is entirely paid for by Paddy and Xuan currently.

If you’d like to support us and help us grow this community, please leave us a tip / make a donation.