A small builder, doing a small number of projects at a time.

I’m James. JAG is the company I started after fifteen years working for other builders. The work was usually good. The clients were usually happy. But the way we worked left things on the table — finishes that didn’t get the attention they deserved, snag lists that ran on for months, projects that took on more rooms than the team could properly look after at once.

I wanted to build the company I would have wanted to work for. So I did.

We are a small team. We work on a small number of projects at a time — usually no more than three or four running concurrently, depending on size. The same faces are on your site from the first day to the last. If you call me on a Sunday because you’ve changed your mind about the kitchen island, I’ll pick up. If the plasterer needs another morning because the skim isn’t quite right yet, I’ll tell you, and we’ll wait the morning.

Most of our work is in the Victorian and Edwardian terraces of East and North London. The same kind of houses we live in ourselves. I know where these houses fall down, what hides behind the lath and plaster, which corners the previous owner cut. I know the joiners who can match a Victorian cornice properly. I know the brick merchants who’ll sell us a pallet of London stocks that actually look like London stocks.

We work to a single standard. We take every project on as if we were going to live in it. That sounds like a phrase — it isn’t. It is the operating principle. Every choice on every project is made the way we’d make it for our own homes. The brand of paint. The grout colour. The brass push-plate on the cistern enclosure. The way the skirting meets the architrave. We notice these things because we’d notice them in our own homes, and we’d mind them.

That’s the work. The detail is the work.