Flooring in Burton Latimer, priced in writing before anything starts.
Most ground floors in Burton Latimer are solid, which makes flooring here a preparation exercise, with one local complication worth knowing about.
The two ordinary questions on a solid floor are flatness and moisture. Most slabs need levelling before a hard covering goes down, because a floor out by a few millimetres over a couple of metres looks fine to the eye and shows badly in large format tile or engineered board. And we test for moisture rather than trusting the look of a slab, because one can appear perfectly dry and still be wet enough to lift an adhesive within a year.
The local complication is the shape of any unevenness. On ground that was placed rather than naturally formed, settlement can be localised rather than general, so a floor may have a distinct dip in one area rather than a consistent slope across the room. That distinction is worth noticing before it is screeded over, because a general slope is a levelling job and a localised dip is worth understanding first.
On the older terraces the ground floors are suspended timber over ventilated voids, and there the air bricks are the thing to check. Block them and the void stops breathing and the joist ends begin to go.
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 Burton Latimer street to the next.
If underfloor heating is wanted, settle it before the build up is fixed. On a solid floor the choice between digging out for insulation and a low profile overlay that costs headroom at every doorway is a real one and much cheaper made at drawing stage.
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.
Where a slab shows a localised dip we will say so and explain the options rather than filling it and moving on.
Where a floor build up changes the finished level, the doors, the thresholds and the skirtings all have to be dealt with rather than left. We allow for easing doors and reinstating trims as part of the job instead of handing you a new floor and a set of new problems at every doorway.
Part of our wider building work in Burton Latimer.
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.
