I built SafeRen because I lived the nightmare.

We hired a builder for what was meant to be a kitchen renovation — knock the kitchen and dining room through, put a beam in, fit a new kitchen, add a downstairs toilet, and build a porch out front. He sat down with me at the start, we went through everything properly, and he seemed genuinely nice. The job was quoted at six to seven weeks.

It took twenty-two weeks. And he still hadn’t even touched the porch.

I work from home, so I saw it all. Some days he’d turn up at eleven instead of half eight, and be gone again by two. Three hours on site — so of course nothing was getting done. And when they were here, half the time they’d realise they were missing materials they should’ve had ready, and vanish for hours to go and get them. I’d be upstairs working, hearing them down in the kitchen on TikTok, laughing at videos, thinking: you’re supposed to be working. At one point a labourer poured concrete down a drain and blocked it, so the washing machine waste started overflowing out into the driveway and the side access.

And look — I’m not heartless. The main guy had genuine things going on: caring for his mum, an uncle who died so he flew to Italy, his main worker — the one who’d done most of the actual work — ending up in hospital. Any one of those, you understand. But that’s the problem: when it’s one thing after another and you’ve got nothing written down, you can’t tell what’s real from what isn’t. No record. No visibility. Just the horrible feeling that you’ve handed over your own home and lost control of it.

The breaking point was the day he said he was popping out for materials, never came back, then rang the next morning — “Hi Dan!”— like nothing had happened. That’s when I lost it: a screaming match on the phone. That’s not me. The whole thing dragged me out of my own character.

The worst part wasn’t the money

It was watching what it did to my family. My wife was stressed out of her mind. The kids kept asking when they’d get the kitchen back — when we’d be able to just sit down and eat together as a family again. Coming home from school to dust and mess, week after week, for twenty-two weeks. It’s horrible to even relive it now.

So I started writing everything down

Around week nine, when it was clear nothing was really moving, I took back control the only way I could — I started keeping a record of everything.

When they turned up and when they left. What actually got finished each week. I started holding a meeting with him every week: what’s the programme of works? What’s getting done by Friday? Because I couldn’t trust it to just happen on its own.

And I tracked the money carefully — what I’d paid, and what wasn’t getting paid until specific things were actually done. That mattered more than I realised. One evening he stayed late, making a show of looking busy, trying to get me to release the next milestone payment. My wife ended up in tears, because she knew the second he had that money the progress would slow right down. And she was right — that’s exactly how it goes. They end up paid sixty or seventy percent when they’ve only done thirty or forty, and after that it feels to them like they’re working for free, so your job drops down the list.

That mess of notes became SafeRen

The scraps of paper, the spreadsheets, the attendance log, the milestone tracker I cobbled together just to survive my own renovation — that’s what became SafeRen.

It’s the tool I wish I’d had on day one. One place to keep every job, every cost, every photo and every promise on the record. So you’re not guessing. So you can spot the problems early, while they’re still small. So you feel in control of your own home again.

If you’ve been through something like this, you know the exact feeling. And if you’re about to start — don’t go in blind like I did.