Doors hung and ironmongery fitted, internal glazed and crittall style screens, wood and parquet floors laid, skirting, architrave, coving, window boards and boxing in. Second fix is the work everybody sees and nobody notices when it has been done properly, and it is where a house either looks finished or looks nearly finished.
Linings checked, hinges let in, doors eased to the frame and latches and handles fitted so they close with a click rather than a shove.
Internal glazed doors and screens fitted square into openings that usually are not, with the packing and the reveals done so they run true.
Herringbone and block parquet, engineered and solid boards, set out from the centre of the room so the borders land even.
Mitres that stay closed, scribed internals, and profiles matched into what is already in the house rather than close enough.
A straightforward door into an existing lining, hung and with the ironmongery on, is generally an hour or two. A set of doors through a house is usually a day or two depending on how square the linings are and whether the openings have moved over the years. Where the lining itself has to come out or be reworked, the time goes up, and it is worth us looking before you buy the doors.
Yes, and plenty of jobs come that way. What is worth checking before you order is the size, the thickness and whether the door is suitable for the opening, because oversized doors can be trimmed only so far and fire doors must not be trimmed beyond the manufacturer's limit. Send us the sizes and we will sanity check the order.
Yes, both solid block parquet and engineered herringbone. Parquet lives or dies on the subfloor and the set out. The floor has to be flat, dry and clean, the pattern is set out from the centre lines so the borders come out even at both walls, and it needs to be left to acclimatise in the room before it goes down. Rushing any of those three is how you end up with lifting blocks.
First fix is everything that goes in before the walls are plastered: studwork, joists, door linings, noggins and boxing. Second fix is everything after: doors hung, skirting and architrave on, handles, coving, window boards and the finishing details. We do both, and they are separate visits, because second fix cannot start until the plastering is dry and the decorating is at the right stage.
Usually. Most common profiles can be matched from stock, and where a house has an unusual Victorian or Edwardian profile it can often be run to match. In a period property it is worth doing, because a modern profile running into an original one in the same hallway is the sort of thing that quietly makes a room look wrong. We will bring samples before anything is ordered.
Yes. Coving and cornice fitted, mitred at the corners and made good ready for decoration. Older ceilings are rarely flat and walls are rarely straight, so a good coving job is mostly about how the joints and the scribes are dealt with along the way rather than about the length of cove itself.
Tell us the room and roughly what you are after, and we will book a free design consultation.
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