Loft Conversions in Kettering, priced in writing before anything starts.
Kettering lofts are the clearest illustration of the town’s two grades of Victorian house, because the difference is written directly into the roof timbers.
On the artisan terraces the rafters and purlins were sized to do the job and no more. A conversion is often perfectly possible, but the structure almost always needs strengthening rather than simply adapting, and where a previous owner has cut a purlin to fit a hatch or a tank the roof has been quietly weakened. That gets found at the survey, not when the floor goes in.
On the larger houses the roofs are generous, the timbers are heavier, and the head height is frequently there without argument. Those make some of the better conversions in the area.
Head height needs measuring either way, because floor build up and insulation take more out of a roof than anybody expects, and being a hundred millimetres short along the walking line is the difference between a bedroom and an expensive loft.
The permitted development volume allowance is forty cubic metres on a terrace and fifty on a semi or detached house. A dormer facing the road is not permitted development anywhere, and in the intact Victorian conservation areas here anything altering the roofline the street can see will be looked at hard. Our loft conversion page goes through the structural options and the order the work happens in.
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 loft conversions page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Kettering street to the next.
Where new floor beams bear onto a wall shared with a neighbour, the work is notifiable under the Party Wall Act and notice has to be served before anything starts. On the terraced streets that applies to most conversions rather than a few, and the notice periods are fixed.
Steels that will not go up the stairs come in through the roof, needing a lift and a part day road closure arranged with the council. On the larger plots there is usually room to stand the lift on your own ground instead.
Escape, fire separation and stair position are all Building Regulations matters, and all considerably easier to solve on paper than after the joists are down.
We measure the head height ourselves rather than taking a previous quotation at its word.
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.
