Renovations & Refurbishments in Coventry, priced in writing before anything starts.
Renovation in Coventry divides sharply by the age of the house, and the dividing line is the war.
On the Victorian and Edwardian terraces in Chapelfields, Stoke and Earlsdon you are working with solid walls rather than cavities, lath and plaster in places, and floor structures sized for the loads of the time. Solid walls are the recurring issue, because almost every energy improvement anybody suggests for them has a moisture consequence if it is done without thought. Internal insulation in particular changes where the dew point sits inside the wall. We would rather explain that once at the start than deal with the mould two winters later.
On post-war stock the question is construction type. Coventry was rebuilt fast and at scale, and a proportion of what went up was system-built rather than traditional brick and block. Some of those systems are entirely sound and some have known issues, but all of them behave differently when you start cutting into them. We identify what we are working with before committing to a layout.
If the house is in a conservation area or under one of the city’s fourteen Article 4 directions, the front elevation is where the control bites. Replacing windows or removing a front boundary wall can need permission where it would be automatic elsewhere. Behind the building line there is usually far more freedom.
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 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 renovations & refurbishments page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Coventry street to the next.
A full strip out generates more waste than any other job, and on a Coventry terrace that usually means a skip on the road under a Coventry City Council licence, arranged by the skip company. We agree the waste route before the first room comes down, because a strip out that outruns its skip stops dead.
One warning specific to Coventry’s post-war stock. Anything built or refitted between the 1950s and the early 1980s may contain asbestos, most often in textured ceiling coatings, cement sheet in outbuildings and garages, and around old boiler flues. It is not dangerous while it is undisturbed and sealed. It becomes dangerous when somebody puts a multi tool through it. We do not disturb suspect material, we get it identified, and where it needs removing that is a licensed job rather than one for a general builder with a mask on.
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.
