Flooring in Northampton, priced in writing before anything starts.
Floors in the older parts of Northampton have often had a harder life than floors elsewhere, because in this town the ground floor of a house was sometimes a place of work.
Outwork was normal in the boot and shoe trade, which means a front room or a rear addition may have carried benches, materials and stock rather than furniture. Some of those floors were strengthened, some were simply used until they sagged, and many were patched repeatedly. Before specifying a covering on this stock we lift a board and look, because a floor that has been repaired in three different decades will telegraph every junction through a hard finish within a year.
Sub-floor ventilation is the routine check on any suspended floor. The air bricks are doing a job and the number rendered over, planted in front of or built up against by a later extension is remarkable. Block them and the joist ends begin to go, and a beautiful floor over a rotting one is money wasted.
On the estate housing the floors are solid and the questions are flatness and moisture instead. Most need levelling before a hard covering, and we test for moisture rather than trusting how a slab looks.
Timber acclimatises in the house before it is fixed. Our flooring page covers the coverings and the preparation under them.
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 West 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 flooring page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Northampton 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 terrace with one route through we lay in sections, keeping a dry way from the front door to the stairs throughout.
If underfloor heating is wanted, settle it before the build up is fixed. On a solid floor the choice between digging out for insulation and an overlay system that costs headroom at every doorway is a real one, and much cheaper made at drawing stage.
Acclimatisation needs somewhere dry to stand for several days, which in a small terraced house is a genuine planning question rather than an afterthought.
Where a floor has been patched by three different trades over a century we show you what is under it before you choose a finish, because a hard covering will telegraph every one of those junctions within a year of being laid.
Part of our wider building work in Northampton.
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.
