Flooring in Stratford-upon-Avon, priced in writing before anything starts.
Floors in Stratford’s older buildings are the place where modern flooring practice does the most damage, and the reason is simple: these floors were never designed to be sealed.
A traditional solid floor, brick, flag or lime based, sits directly on the ground with no membrane and works by letting ground moisture evaporate from its surface. Lay an impermeable modern floor over the top and the moisture does not stop arriving, it simply leaves somewhere else, which is usually the base of the walls. In a timber framed building that means it leaves through the bottom of the frame, which is the most expensive possible outcome. A significant number of the damp problems we are called to in old Stratford properties date from the year somebody laid a new floor.
Where an original floor survives it is generally worth keeping and worth uncovering. It wants cleaning and repointing in lime rather than sealing, and it will always feel cooler underfoot, which is a fair trade for a floor that has already lasted centuries.
Original boards over historic joists are worth the same consideration, and in a listed building lifting or replacing them can be a consent matter.
On the modern estate housing the floors are conventional solid slabs where flatness and moisture are the questions. 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 Stratford-on-Avon 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 flooring page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Stratford-upon-Avon street to the next.
Where a modern floor genuinely is needed in an old building, it has to be designed with the walls in mind rather than in isolation. We will set out the options honestly rather than laying the easy build up and leaving you the consequences.
Timber acclimatises in the building before it is fixed, and in a historic property with more seasonal movement that matters more than usual. It needs somewhere dry to stand for several days.
Flooring is the last trade in and the easiest to ruin, so we programme it late, protect it once down and lay in sections where the building is occupied.
Where an original floor survives under a later covering we tell you it is there and what it would take to bring it back, and let you decide, rather than simply laying over the top of it.
Part of our wider building work in Stratford-upon-Avon.
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.
