Eaves & Acre is a partnership between Phil and Jen.
We started the business out of a frustration with the kind of development we saw around us: off-the-shelf schemes from large housebuilders, and good buildings left to rot because they were too awkward to work with while complex sites lay empty. We wanted to do it differently: to bring real thought to each site and shape a scheme that not only suits it but is deliverable.
It started with an apprenticeship, an old car, and a lot of back shifts, and grew year by year into what it is now.
I left school and took an apprenticeship. Using the skills I picked up there, I started buying properties to refurbish and rent or sell, running the jobs out of my Peugeot 207.
The projects grew: from basic flat refurbishments to full house renovations, often working on my own properties by day and back shifts to pay for the materials. As the business grew, I left full-time employment to concentrate on it.
Jen and I moved to London — living on a houseboat while the projects grew bigger and more complex, and the work shifted from renovation toward development: complex structural jobs, planning applications, and a growing professional team.
We made the biggest decision yet: to move into development properly, we sold the property portfolio I'd spent my entire working life building.
These days we spend more time in meetings and reading planning policies than filling skips: finding the opportunities, working out whether a deal actually stacks up, and pulling together the right team to get it over the line.
Between us we bring over forty years' combined experience: twenty years in construction for Phil, and twenty in project management for Jen. That hands-on background means a real understanding of how a building goes together, how to sequence a job, and how to keep a grip on cost and risk.
Our current scheme in Hackney is the most comprehensive project we've taken on: full site appraisal, planning strategy, coordinating a professional team, and the financial modelling behind it all. It's the foundation we're building the next chapter on.
Heavy structural work on one of our projects, and finished rooms from another. Built by Phil, interiors by Jen.
If you have land or a building you're unsure about, we'd be glad to talk through what it could become.
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