Flooring in Lutterworth, priced in writing before anything starts.
The floor is the part of a job people think least about and complain about most afterwards, and in Lutterworth it comes down to which of two constructions you have.
Older houses generally have a suspended timber ground floor over a ventilated void. The air bricks feeding that void are doing a job, and the number of them that have been rendered over, planted in front of or built up against by a later extension is remarkable. Block them and the void stops breathing and the joist ends start to go. Before we lay anything we check the ventilation is still working, because a beautiful floor over a rotting one is a waste of your money.
Post-war and modern houses have a solid floor, and the question there is flatness and moisture rather than ventilation. Most of these floors need levelling before a hard covering goes down, and a floor that is out by a few millimetres over a couple of metres will show in large format tiles or in engineered board even though it looked fine to the eye.
Timber needs to sit in the house before it is fixed, particularly in an older building with heavier seasonal movement. We allow for that in the programme rather than fitting boards out of the van on the same day they arrived.
Our flooring page covers the coverings we fit and the preparation that goes under them.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Harborough District Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our flooring page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Lutterworth street to the next.
Flooring is the last trade in and the one most easily ruined by the ones before it, so we programme it late and we protect it once it is down. In an occupied Lutterworth house with a single circulation route, that matters more than usual: if the only way to the kitchen is across the new floor, it gets boarded until the job is finished.
Acclimatisation also needs somewhere dry to stand for several days, which on a small terrace is a genuine planning question rather than an afterthought. Where the house is lived in throughout the job we lay in sections, so there is always a dry route from the front door to the stairs rather than a ground floor closed off for a week.
Part of our wider building work in Lutterworth.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
