What actually happens between the first meeting and moving in

A full home interior of two to three thousand square feet takes about six months in Pune, from first meeting to the day you move back in. People are usually told four. The gap between those two numbers is almost entirely procurement and drawing time, and it is the part of the process nobody describes properly, so here it is week by week.

Weeks 1–2: survey and scope

A free first conversation, then a chargeable site visit with a full measured survey. We measure everything, including the things that turn out to matter later — slab-to-slab heights, beam positions, where the drainage stack actually runs rather than where the builder's drawing says it does. You will be asked for a real budget number in this fortnight. You come out of it with a scope note, an outline programme and a fee proposal.

Weeks 3–5: concept and sign-off

Two space-planning options, presented once, in person, with everyone who has a say in the room. One round of revision is included. This stage ends when you sign off a layout, and it should not end any other way — everything downstream is priced against that plan, and a layout that is still moving in week nine is a project that will overrun.

Weeks 6–13: drawings and procurement

This is the quiet stretch, and it is where clients get anxious. Nothing visible is happening. Your house looks exactly as it did in week one and you are two months in.

What is actually happening is the entire project being resolved on paper: elevations and sections through every piece of joinery, shop drawings a fabricator can build from without ringing us, lighting and electrical setting-out dimensioned from finished surfaces rather than from bare walls, and a specification priced line by line. Samples come to you for physical sign-off. Long-lead items are ordered — stone, imported hardware and specialist glass run eight to fourteen weeks, which is precisely why they are ordered now and not when the site is ready for them.

Time spent here is the cheapest time in the project. Every question resolved on a drawing is a question that does not get resolved on site by a carpenter making a judgement call.

Weeks 14–26: site

Demolition, then services, then surfaces, then joinery, then finishes, then loose. Roughly in that order and with more overlap than that list suggests. We are on site weekly and you get a written report every Friday saying what was done, what is next, and what is late and why.

Expect at least one genuine surprise. An old building always has something behind a wall that nobody could have surveyed. What matters is not whether it happens but whether it is priced and approved before the work proceeds, in writing, rather than appearing on a final invoice.

Weeks 27–28: handover

We walk the space with you and write the snag list together, then work it to zero before asking you to confirm practical completion. You receive warranty documents, direct supplier contacts and a written care note for every finish. The defects liability period runs twelve months from that date.

The two months where nothing appears to be happening are the two months that decide whether the last two go well.