Flooring Fitters in Duffield and Little Eaton

Two Derwent valley villages a couple of miles apart on the north side of Derby, both with an old stone-and-brick core and a good deal of later building around it. Duffield sits where the Ecclesbourne meets the Derwent, below the earthworks of what was once one of the largest Norman keeps in the country. Little Eaton is smaller, older in feel, and carries the remains of its own industrial past in the quarries and the line of the horse-drawn gangway that once ran down to the canal.

The flooring work here has a particular character, and it is less about the material than the programme. Houses in these villages tend to be renovated properly rather than patched, which means we are usually one trade among several and the order things happen in matters more than it does on a straightforward recarpet.

On a full renovation the floor is nearly always booked at the wrong point, and it is almost always booked too early. There is a sensible order and it is worth knowing before you build a programme around anybody’s availability, including ours.

Plaster has to be dry first. A freshly plastered room puts a great deal of water into the air and into the structure, and that moisture has to go somewhere. Lay a floor into a room that is still drying and it will be laid into conditions that no longer exist a month later. The same applies with knobs on to a new screed, which is measured rather than guessed at.

First fix, then floor, then skirting. Where a floating floor is going down, the neatest result comes from laying the floor first and fitting the skirting on top of it, because the skirting then covers the expansion gap without beading. Where the skirting is already on — which it usually is in an older house nobody wants to strip out — the gap is covered with a scotia or a bead instead. Both work; they look different, and it is worth deciding on purpose rather than by accident.

Doors come off after, not before. Internal doors get trimmed once the finished floor height is known, which is a job of minutes and impossible to do accurately in advance.

Decorating last, or protect properly. Most people want the final coat after the floor is in. If the decorator is coming back, the floor needs covering with something better than a dust sheet.

This one is worth its own section because it happens constantly and it is expensive to put right.

A floating floor should not run underneath kitchen units. Floating means exactly that — click-fit laminate, LVT and most engineered board are not fixed down, and they expand and contract with the seasons. Put a run of kitchen units and a stone worktop on top of one and you have pinned it. The floor can no longer move, so it buckles somewhere else in the room, usually across a doorway where it shows most.

The correct approach with a floating floor is to fit the kitchen first and bring the floor up to the plinth line, tucking it under the kick board. Glued-down LVT and tiled floors are different — they are fixed to the subfloor and can run underneath units perfectly happily, which is one reason people choose them in a kitchen.

If a kitchen fitter has told you the floor goes in first and you are having a floating floor, that is worth a second conversation before anybody orders anything. We are happy to speak to your kitchen fitter directly rather than passing messages through you.

The older cottages in both villages bring two related problems. The first is that a solid floor laid straight onto the ground is cold, and no floor covering on its own fixes that. Carpet and a good underlay feel warmer; LVT and tile do not. Genuinely dealing with it means insulation under the floor, which means digging out and rebuilding, which is a building job rather than a flooring one.

Which leads to the second problem: height. Old cottages have low door heads, shallow stair risers at the bottom step, and thresholds that were never designed with 25mm of insulation and screed in mind. Every millimetre added to the floor comes off somewhere, and in a room with a 1.9 metre door head it comes off your head.

The practical middle ground is usually an insulating underlay rather than a rebuilt floor — it will not transform the room but it takes the edge off, and it adds a few millimetres rather than fifty. Where there is underfloor heating in the picture the calculation reverses, because then you want the covering to conduct heat rather than insulate against it.

We measure door heads and the bottom stair riser as part of quoting in older property. It is the sort of thing that is obvious in hindsight and expensive on the day.

A lot of gardens in these villages have acquired a room at the bottom of them over the last few years, and they are a specific little job with a specific set of traps.

A garden room is a lightweight building with a big temperature swing and, often, an insulated timber deck rather than a slab. That combination invites condensation and movement, and it is the reason a floor that would be entirely fine indoors sometimes fails out there. Solid wood is a poor choice. LVT, sheet vinyl and a good click-fit product are all far more tolerant.

Check the deck before choosing anything. If the building has been up a couple of winters and the floor feels soft anywhere or smells at all damp, that is a building problem to solve before a covering goes over it.

Town Street in Duffield and the shops at Little Eaton carry the usual village mix — a couple of pubs, a salon, a cafe, small offices and consulting rooms above and behind the shopfronts.

Food premises want welded safety vinyl with coved skirtings. Salons want a floor that shrugs off tint. Small offices and treatment rooms are usually carpet tiles. In an older building the same moisture and height questions apply as in a cottage, and we will raise them at quote rather than on the day.

A matting well at the door of a village shop earns its money faster than anywhere, because on a wet day everything that comes in has walked across a pavement and a car park first.