Bathrooms in Wellingborough, priced in writing before anything starts.
A bathroom is a question of where the water can go, and in Wellingborough there is a second question underneath it: how well the building sheds the moisture it already has.
In a valley town, where older buildings sit on ground that holds water, adding the wettest room in the house needs a bit more thought than elsewhere. Ventilation carries more weight, because the fabric has less spare capacity to dry out, and an extractor that discharges into a roof void rather than outside will find the timber considerably faster here than on a dry site.
Ground floor wet rooms deserve particular care for the same reason. There is no forgiving void beneath, the falls are tighter, and the tanking has to be right first time. They are good jobs when they are done properly and a persistent problem when they are not.
Floors upstairs bring the usual considerations. Joists were sized for a bedroom, not for a filled bath on a tiled floor, and where a waste run means notching or drilling them there are permitted zones we work to. We will move a fitting a foot rather than cut a joist where it must not be cut.
Tanking is not optional on a walk in shower, because tiles and grout are not a waterproof layer and never were. Our bathroom installations page sets out what a full refit involves.
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 North 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 bathrooms page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Wellingborough street to the next.
In a house with one bathroom the whole household is affected for the duration, so we plan the strip out and first fix inside the same week and leave the existing toilet connected as long as the plumbing allows.
Where a bathroom sits above a room that has a damp history, we look at the room below before assuming the problem is coming from the bathroom. It frequently is not, and replacing a perfectly sound bathroom is an expensive way to find that out.
Cast iron waste and lead supply pipe both turn up in the older stock, and both change the day if they appear unexpectedly.
Background ventilation matters as much as the extractor in a building that is already managing moisture. A trickle vent that has been painted shut, which is common on older windows, removes the slow air change the room depends on between showers, and no amount of extractor capacity substitutes for it.
Part of our wider building work in Wellingborough.
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.
