Bathrooms in Kettering, priced in writing before anything starts.
A bathroom is a question of where the water can go, and in Kettering the answer depends on which grade of house you are working in.
On the smaller Victorian houses the upstairs joists were sized for a bedroom and nothing more, and a filled bath on a tiled floor is a considerably heavier load than the original design contemplated. Where a waste run means notching or drilling those joists there are permitted zones, and on a marginal floor we will strengthen rather than cut. This is the single most common place where a bathroom on this stock goes wrong.
On the larger houses the floors are heavier and the rooms bigger, which brings a different problem: a bathroom in a big Victorian room needs heating designed rather than a towel rail chosen, because the volume and the external wall will beat an undersized radiator every winter.
The soil stack runs externally on the older stock, and on a street facing elevation inside a conservation area, moving it is a permission question rather than a site decision.
Ventilation and tanking are not optional. An extractor discharging into a roof void puts moisture straight back into the building, and tiles and grout are not a waterproof layer. Our bathroom installations page sets out what a full refit involves.
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 bathrooms page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Kettering street to the next.
In a house with one bathroom the whole household is affected for the duration, so we plan the strip out and first fix inside the same week and leave the existing toilet connected as long as the plumbing allows.
Water here is hard, which shortens the life of a shower valve and furs up a rainfall head until the pattern goes patchy. Fittings that can actually be descaled and serviced are worth more over ten years than the difference in purchase price.
Cast iron waste and lead supply pipe both still turn up in the older stock, and both change the day if found unexpectedly. We would rather find them at the survey than on the first morning.
On a marginal upstairs floor we would rather add a joist or a pair of noggins than take a chance with it, and the cost of doing that is small enough that it is never worth an argument.
Part of our wider building work in Kettering.
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.
