Flooring in Warwick, priced in writing before anything starts.
Floors in Warwick’s older buildings are usually the most altered part of the structure, because every trade for three hundred years has been through them.
A suspended timber floor in a post fire building will have been notched, drilled and patched by generations of plumbers and electricians, and the cumulative effect is a floor that bounces, squeaks or slopes. Levelling compound does not fix any of that. We look at why a floor is doing what it does before deciding what to put on it, because a beautiful covering over a tired structure is money spent on the wrong thing.
Sub-floor ventilation is the other historic issue. The air bricks are doing a job and in the centre of town they have frequently been covered by a raised pavement, a later render or a neighbour’s alteration. Block the ventilation and the joist ends go. We check before laying anything.
Original floorboards are worth more than most people assume, and in a listed building lifting or replacing them can be a consent matter. Where boards are sound we would rather lift, clean and relay than skip them.
Later housing has solid floors where flatness and moisture are the questions, and most need levelling before a hard covering. Our flooring page covers the preparation underneath the finish.
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 flooring page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Warwick 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 town centre house with one staircase we lay in sections, keeping a dry route from the front door to the stairs throughout.
Timber acclimatises in the house before it is fixed, and in a historic building with more seasonal movement that matters more than usual. It needs somewhere dry to stand for several days, which on a narrow plot is a real planning question.
Original stone flags and quarry tiles turn up under later coverings in the town centre buildings, and they are usually worth uncovering rather than replacing. They are also laid straight on the ground with no membrane, which means sealing them with something impermeable traps moisture and pushes it into the walls. Where a floor like that is being brought back, it has to be allowed to breathe.
Part of our wider building work in Warwick.
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.
