General building
Groundworks, footings, walls, roofs and everything that has to happen in the right order in between.
What it involves
Most of what we do sits under this heading. It is the work that decides whether the rest of the house behaves itself in ten years’ time, and it is the part a homeowner sees least of. We would rather spend an extra day on a footing than come back to a crack.
Where we do this work
A lot of general building work in Basingstoke is remedial before it is anything else. The estate housing from the 1960s and 70s was built quickly and to the standards of the day, so it is common to open something up and find a lintel that was never right, a cavity bridged with mortar droppings, or a roof spread that has been quietly moving for forty years. We price for what we can see and we tell you the same day if we find something we could not.
Basingstoke pageIn Hook the general building work splits neatly between the old village and the estates. On a 1930s cottage on London Road the questions are solid walls, damp and matching brick. On an 1980s estate house four hundred yards away none of that applies and the job is simply about doing a clean, well-sequenced build on a sound structure. Two completely different quotes, from the same street.
Hook pageGeneral building in Winchester almost always starts with a conversation about consent. On a solid-walled Victorian terrace in Fulflood you are dealing with lime mortar, no cavity and a party wall on both sides; in a conservation area you are also dealing with what the council will accept on the elevation. We do the drawings and the application first, properly, because starting work on a Winchester property and finding out afterwards is an expensive way to learn.
Winchester pageTadley is home ground. The yard at Calleva Park is five minutes away and more of our recent work has been here than anywhere else we cover. Most of the town went up between the 1950s and the 1970s as the Aldermaston site grew, which means a place largely built in one push to the standards of the day — shallow foundations, thin cavities, and a great many houses still on their original services. We have opened up enough of them locally to know what is usually behind the plaster before we quote.
Tadley pageWe will come out, look at the property and put a written quote together. No charge for the visit.
Yes. Not everything needs a project manager and a six-month programme. If it is a couple of days’ work we will tell you that and price it as a couple of days’ work.
Fully insured, and we will send you the certificate before we start rather than after you ask for it.
We have our own trades for the bulk of it — brickwork, carpentry, groundworks. For the specialist certificated work, electrics and gas, we use the same people we have used for years.
Staged, against work that is actually finished, and set out in writing before anyone starts. We do not ask for large sums up front.
More of what we do
Get in touch
Tell us what you are planning and we will come out, look at the house and put a written quote together with the costs set out.
Six quick fields. We answer every enquiry ourselves.
