Flooring in Coventry, priced in writing before anything starts.
Flooring is the part of a job people think least about beforehand and complain about most afterwards, and in Coventry it comes down to which of two constructions is under you.
The older terraces 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 the ventilation and the void stops breathing and the joist ends begin to go. Before anything is laid we check the ventilation still works, because a beautiful floor over a rotting one is a waste of your money.
Post-war housing has a solid floor, and there the questions are flatness and moisture rather than air movement. Most of these need levelling before a hard covering goes down. A floor out by a few millimetres over a couple of metres looks fine to the eye and shows badly in large format tiles or engineered board.
Timber needs to acclimatise in the house before it is fixed, particularly in an older building with more seasonal movement. We allow for that in the programme rather than fitting boards out of the van on the day they arrive. Our flooring page covers the coverings we fit and the preparation underneath 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 Coventry City 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 Coventry street to the next.
Flooring is the last trade in and the easiest to ruin, so we programme it late and protect it once down. In an occupied terrace with one circulation route that matters more than usual: if the only way to the kitchen crosses the new floor, it stays boarded until the job is finished, and we lay in sections so there is always a dry route from the front door to the stairs.
If underfloor heating is on the wish list, it belongs in the conversation before the floor build up is decided rather than after. On a solid post-war floor the choice is between digging out to get insulation underneath, which is a proper excavation, or a low profile system laid over the top, which costs headroom at every doorway. Both work. They are very different jobs and very different money, and the decision is much cheaper to make at the drawing stage.
Part of our wider building work in Coventry.
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.
