Bathrooms in Kenilworth, priced in writing before anything starts.
A bathroom is a question of where the water can go, and on a Kenilworth villa the answer is usually generous, with one exception.
These houses have room, which means a bathroom can often go where you actually want it rather than where the plumbing dictates. The exception is the frontage. Inside the conservation area an external soil pipe appearing on a street facing elevation is a problem, so we route to the rear even where the front would be a shorter run.
Floors are the second constraint. Victorian upstairs joists were sized for a bedroom, not for a filled bath on a tiled floor, and on the larger villas the spans are longer than average. Where a waste run means notching or drilling we work to the permitted zones, and we will move a fitting a foot rather than cut a joist where it must not be cut.
Water pressure is worth checking before a suite is chosen. A large rainfall head on a gravity fed system will disappoint every morning for years, and in these houses a gravity system is exactly what is often still there. The specification should follow what the house can deliver.
Ventilation and tanking are not optional. Our bathroom installations page sets out what a full refit involves.
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 Warwick 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 bathrooms page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Kenilworth street to the next.
In a house with one bathroom the whole household is affected for the duration, so we plan the strip out and first fix inside the same week and leave the existing toilet connected as long as the plumbing allows. On the larger villas there is often a second cloakroom, which makes the programme considerably kinder.
Cast iron waste and lead supply pipe both still turn up in the Victorian stock here. Neither is a disaster, both change the day if found unexpectedly, and we would rather find them at the survey than on the first morning.
Original sanitaryware and wall tiling in a Victorian bathroom is occasionally worth keeping, and it is always worth looking at properly before it goes in the skip. A cast iron bath that has been written off as stained will very often re-enamel for less than a good replacement costs, and it will still be there in fifty years. We will tell you honestly which of it is worth saving and which is not.
Part of our wider building work in Kenilworth.
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.
