What type of floors can you lay, finish, sand and restore?
We can sand, restore and finish ANY wooden floor including:
Newly laid floors, modern floors, all hard wood floors, wooden plank floors, board floors, strip floors, wood block floors, parquet floors, engineered floors, veneered floors and most especially period floors including Edwardian pine, Victorian pine, Georgian pine and ancient timbers up to 600 years old (elm, oak and pitch pine) sometimes completely by hand preserving all the original patination.
We can lay any timber from reclaimed, period and ancient timbers, wood block and parquet in herringbone, straight or basket weave pattern (versailles parquet by special arrangement) solid plank, random length strip or engineered. We prefer, from a sympathetic viewpoint to install native timbers where we can, mostly being English or French FSC certified oak. For larger jobs you can go and view and choose the tree your wood comes from before your floor is milled from one of our suppliers in the South East. They are wood enthusiasts too and mostly fell large mature trees that have been deemed unsafe by forestry or other authorities. Oak is one of our national treasures, will last for generations and this way incurs less road/sea mileage which seems sensible. Return to top
I would like a reclaimed floor, what type of timber can you lay?
We can lay any suitable timber you can get hold of. If you wish us to source your timber it may take us a little while as being a small company we do not hold large stocks. The upside is that with our reduced overheads we are considerably cheaper, sometimes by a factor of two or three than some of the larger reclaimed timber companies which have to cover large overheads. Pine board up to 100 years old is normally easily available in widths up to 6 inches. Wider boards up to 10 inches typically from 150 to 200 years old may take a while to procure. Older boards are very hard to verify. Most pine would have been seriously damaged by pest attack over 300 years old although some early pitch pine blocks survive. Old oak or elm is available up to 200 years old, older than this it is very hard to verify and not worth the premium that some charge if the provenance cannot be verified. We prefer to use original floor boards rather than cut beams as the cutting process if not carefully carried out can release stresses built up over time.
I have a very old floor, can you preserve its character? I don't want it damaged
We have completed many hundreds of Edwardian, Victorian and Georgian floors and several Tudor floors and interiors over 500 years old by hand, some in very poor condition, these are really a labour of love, please see our gallery.
We have invested heavily in the latest German and Japanese hand held sanding, polishing and dust extraction systems as used in the automotive, marine and aerospace industry to enable us to restore old timbers delicately without damaging their colour or dimensional patination.
Our machines are capable of sanding to a mirror finish even on glass, and can sand wood much finer than the human hand. We also make extensive use of cabinet scrapers which is the way floors have been stripped for hundreds of years.
As a rule of thumb I machine sand most turn of the century and later floors unless requested or particularly outstanding. I only ever sand early Victorian, Georgian and earlier floors by hand.
I worked for 3 years (during the summer recess) at the Palace of Westminster (restoring the deputy Prime Ministers' office myself along with much else) I have also worked at a number of other important listed buildings which include:
The office of the Head of the English bar at the Royal Courts of Justice; The British Museum; including all the wood maintenance and refinishing at The Law Society (c.1832) in Chancery lane in addition to the Presidents' residence at 60 Carey street (c.1731) where we restored all the woodwork and historically important antiques. I have also advised architects (including the Royal architects Carden and Godfrey) and project managers and providied specifications to major refurbishment projects at The Honourable Artillery Company, The Victoria and Albert Museum and Harrods amongst others.
I have restored historically important pieces that are irreplaceable, including chairs by Chippendale, furniture by Sheraton, clocks by Benjamin Vulliamy (King's clockmaker and Pugins first choice to design the Big Ben clock) as well as the original tables in the library which Karl Marx studied in and floors in a 500 year old house that Oliver Cromwell's son lived in. I also restored and gilded the 13 "British Lions" on the railings outside the Law Society donated from the British Museum to them back in the 1830's. Your floors and woodwork could not be in safer hands. Return to top
Some areas require repairing, how do you do this?
Where applicable we will normally use reclaimed wood of similar age and use our French polishing skills to carefully blend the repair with the rest of the floor by applying layers of semi translucent colours over the top, this is a very artistic job and if done well can make the repair almost invisible.
We make up all our own colours from our palette of traditional pigments and dyes like artists and French polishers have been doing for hundreds of years. We are one of the few who can offer this service, please see our gallery.
We will remove all inappropriate fixings and refix either with traditional cut floor brads, rose head nails, ring shank brads or German high tensile wood screws as required. We use high performance two part resin which we self colour for larger holes and splits and a flexible sawdust/resin mix for smaller gaps.
We take more time than most to secure the floor correctly before we start sanding, this allows us to sand finer, helps any filler to stay in, reduces noise and wear meaning your floor will last longer, feel firmer and sound less creaky.
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I would like my floor stained but I am not exactly sure what I want, help!
Worry no more, we offer staining and colour matching services that are second to none. We will advise you on what looks best, show you examples from our 6,000 image portfolio and provide free samples to match any photograph or item.
We ALWAYS provide a sample in situ on the floor or item in question sometimes adjusting this several times to get the exact look before we will agree to stain. We feel it is partly the responsibility of the tradesman to offer their advice and guidance to ensure the correct result is achieved as it benefits no one to be able able to say at the end of the job, "well, it was your choice". We see a lot of problems where correct advice was not given and the customer ended up with a result that was not to their liking as they were not fully aware of the options available.
We do not use stains from DIY shops, we mix our own, the fact most companies have to use off the shelf products is simply because they have little idea about staining, to them mahogany is a name on a tin, to us it is a thousand different shades waiting to be mixed. The main problem with using off the shelf products is that all wood is different and the base colour of the wood has a massive effect on the final colour and overall look ahieved.
Quite simply you can have any colour you like as long as you appreciate that some of the deeper and more unnatural colours will obscure some of the natural beauty of the wood. We utilise the whole spectrum of colouring technology both old and new to get the exact look you desire.
Our staining process is more sophisticated than most, we make most of our stains to order by hand the traditional way, sometimes staining three, four or more times using different stain systems to build up a natural looking effect, please see our gallery for examples, this article which I authored goes into some detail about the process The definitive guide to wood finishing. Return to top
I worked for 3 years (during the summer recess) at the Palace of Westminster (restoring the deputy Prime Ministers' office myself along with much else) I have also worked at a number of other important listed buildings which include:
Where applicable we will normally use reclaimed wood of similar age and use our French polishing skills to carefully blend the repair with the rest of the floor by applying layers of semi translucent colours over the top, this is a very artistic job and if done well can make the repair almost invisible.
We take more time than most to secure the floor correctly before we start sanding, this allows us to sand finer, helps any filler to stay in, reduces noise and wear meaning your floor will last longer, feel firmer and sound less creaky.
