Flooring in Corby, priced in writing before anything starts.
Nearly every ground floor in Corby is a solid one, which makes flooring here a preparation exercise rather than a structural one.
The two questions on a solid floor are flatness and moisture, and both get skipped more often than they should. Most of these slabs need levelling before a hard covering goes down. A floor that is out by a few millimetres over a couple of metres looks perfectly fine to the eye and shows badly in large format tile or engineered board, and there is no way to correct it once the covering is on.
Moisture is the one that causes the expensive failures. A slab of this era may have a membrane, may have one that has been breached by a later alteration, or may have one that was never especially effective. We test rather than trust the look of it, because a slab can appear completely dry and still be wet enough to lift an adhesive within a year.
There is one specific caution on this stock. Floor tiles from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the black bitumen adhesive under them, can contain asbestos. They are not a hazard while they are intact and covered. Taking a scraper or a grinder to them is another matter, so we check before lifting rather than afterwards.
Timber acclimatises in the house before it is fixed. 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 North Northamptonshire 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 Corby street to the next.
If underfloor heating is wanted, decide it before the build up is fixed. On a solid floor the choice is between digging out to get insulation underneath, which is a real excavation, or a low profile overlay that costs headroom at every doorway. Both work and they are very different jobs.
Flooring is the last trade in and the easiest to ruin, so we programme it late and protect it once down. In an occupied house we lay in sections, keeping a dry route from the door to the stairs throughout.
Acclimatisation needs somewhere dry to stand for several days, which on a Corby plot with a garage is usually straightforward to arrange.
Part of our wider building work in Corby.
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.
