Kitchens in Leamington Spa, priced in writing before anything starts.
Kitchens in Leamington often sit where the servants worked, which is to say at lower ground floor level with a lightwell for daylight, and that is a different job from a kitchen on a modern estate.
The first question in a lower ground floor room is moisture. These spaces are partly below external ground level, they were built without a damp proof course as we would understand it, and they were designed to be ventilated rather than sealed. Fitting an airtight kitchen into one without dealing with that produces mould behind the units within two winters. We would rather sort the wall out first and fit a kitchen that survives.
Structurally, most kitchen jobs here are really openings: taking a wall out between a kitchen and a rear room. In a building of this age the beam has to be sized for what is genuinely bearing on it and the bearing checked rather than assumed, and in a converted house there may be several floors of load above rather than one. That is a Building Regulations matter and we arrange the inspection and see it signed off.
Services in an older Leamington house are rarely where the drawings suggest, and runs from a lower ground floor to a soil stack can be long and shallow. We establish that before the units are ordered rather than after.
We do not sell kitchens. You buy the units wherever the deal is best and we take the room back to sound walls, level floors and services in the right places. Our kitchen work page covers where our part starts and stops.
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 kitchens page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Leamington Spa street to the next.
New circuits and consumer unit work are notifiable under Part P of the Building Regulations, and gas work must be done by a registered engineer. You should finish holding certificates for both, and in a listed or converted building a buyer’s solicitor is more likely than average to ask for them.
Getting units down to a lower ground floor through a narrow Regency stair is its own problem, and a range cooker frequently will not go at all. We check the route at the survey rather than on delivery day.
Part of our wider building work in Leamington Spa.
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.
