Flooring in Kenilworth, priced in writing before anything starts.
Floors in a Kenilworth villa are usually better than the owner expects, and that changes the sensible answer.
These houses were built with decent quality softwood boards over generous joists, and a large proportion of them are still there under whatever has been laid on top since. Before specifying a new covering we look at what is underneath, because lifting, cleaning and relaying original boards frequently produces a better floor than anything that could be bought to replace it, and costs less than a good engineered board.
Sub-floor ventilation is the thing to check first on any suspended floor. The air bricks are doing a job and on these plots they are regularly blocked by a raised patio, a later extension or fifty years of border planting. Block the ventilation and the joist ends begin to go, and a beautiful floor over a rotting one is money wasted.
On the modern estate housing the floors are solid and the questions are flatness and moisture. Most need levelling before a hard covering, because a floor out by a few millimetres over a couple of metres shows badly in large format tile.
Timber acclimatises in the house before it is fixed. Our flooring page covers the preparation underneath the finish.
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 flooring page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Kenilworth street to the next.
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 front door to the stairs throughout rather than closing the ground floor for a week.
If underfloor heating is wanted, settle it before the build up is fixed. On a suspended Victorian floor there is usually room to work between the joists, which makes these houses better candidates than most.
Original parquet and wood block floors turn up under carpet in these houses more often than people expect, and they are worth a great deal more than what would replace them. Before anything is lifted or covered we look at what is there, because a block floor that has been written off as beyond saving is usually just dirty and loose in places rather than finished.
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.
