Renovations & Refurbishments in Leicester, priced in writing before anything starts.
Renovation is the trade most affected by Leicester’s Article 4 directions, because the work people most want to do to an older house is exactly what those directions control.
In Stoneygate and across most of New Walk, replacing windows and doors requires planning permission. That reshapes a renovation budget and a renovation programme. It also frequently changes the answer, because a sash window that has been written off as beyond saving is very often repairable, and repair is both what the council will want and, over the life of the building, the cheaper option. We look at what can be saved before pricing replacement.
Behind the frontage there is much more freedom, and that is where most of what people actually want sits: better layouts, a rebuilt kitchen or bathroom, proper insulation.
Solid walls are the recurring technical conversation on this stock. Almost every energy improvement suggested for them has a moisture consequence if done without thought, and internal insulation in particular moves where the dew point sits inside the wall. We explain that once, at the start.
Where a larger house has been divided into flats, the structure is shared and so are the decisions. Structural alterations are inspected under the Building Regulations and we arrange and meet those inspections through to sign off. There is more about how we phase this 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 Leicester 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 Leicester street to the next.
A full strip out generates more waste than any other job. On a terraced street that means a skip on the carriageway under a Leicester City Council licence, or bagged removal through the house, and we agree which before the first room comes down.
Asbestos is worth naming. Anything built or refitted between the 1950s and the early 1980s may contain it, most often in textured ceiling coatings and cement sheet in outbuildings. We do not disturb suspect material, we get it identified, and removal is a licensed job.
In a conservation area we photograph the frontage before anything is disturbed, which settles later questions about what was original far more quickly than memory does.
Where a sash window can be repaired we say so, even though replacing it would be worth considerably more to us.
Part of our wider building work in Leicester.
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.
