Renovations & Refurbishments in Stratford-upon-Avon, priced in writing before anything starts.
Renovating a timber framed building in Stratford is mostly a matter of letting it breathe again.
A traditional frame survives because moisture that gets into it can get out. The panels between the timbers were originally lime based and permeable, and the whole assembly was designed to take up water and release it. Over the last century a great many of those panels have been replaced with cement render or modern brick, and the frame sealed with impermeable paint or coatings. The result is that water still finds its way in, at the joints, from the ground, from a failed gutter, and then cannot leave. It sits against the timber, and the frame decays quietly behind a wall that looks perfectly sound.
That is why work on these buildings uses lime and breathable materials rather than modern equivalents, and why we will argue for it even when a cheaper option is available. It is not authenticity for its own sake, it is the difference between a repair and an accelerated failure.
Frames also move. Nothing in these buildings is square, floors slope, and the sensible approach is to work with that rather than to force everything level and crack the finishes within a year.
Where a building is listed, and here it very often is, internal work needs consent as well. There is more about how we phase this kind of work on our renovation and refurbishment page.
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 Stratford-on-Avon 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 renovations & refurbishments page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Stratford-upon-Avon street to the next.
Lime work is weather dependent in a way cement is not. It cannot be carried out in frost and it needs protecting while it cures, so the programme follows the season rather than the diary. We would rather tell you that in February than start and cover it up.
We record before we open up. On a frame that has been altered repeatedly, a photographic record of what was there is worth a great deal both to you and to the conservation officer.
Where we find decay in a frame we will tell you the honest extent of it, including when the answer is a specialist rather than us. Timber frame repair at that level is its own trade and we would rather bring somebody in than improvise.
Part of our wider building work in Stratford-upon-Avon.
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.
