Carpenter and Joiner in Horley (RH6)
A lot of Horley is recent housing, from the estates around Langshott and The Acres to the newer streets spreading out towards Gatwick. Fitting joinery into a house built in the last few decades is a different job from fitting it into a Victorian one, and the difference is what you are screwing into.
Stud walls, plasterboard and where the timber is
In a modern house most internal walls are timber studs with plasterboard over, and some are board dot-and-dabbed onto blockwork.
Either way the surface itself will not hold anything heavy. A run of fitted wardrobes, a shelf that will actually get loaded, or a wall-hung television has to find the studs, and where the studs are not where the design wants them, noggins go in behind before the board is made good. That is a small piece of work that decides whether the finished unit stays solid or slowly pulls away from the wall. Dot-and-dab needs its own approach, because there is a void behind the board and a fixing that only grips plasterboard is carrying nothing at all. None of it is visible once the job is finished, which is precisely why it gets skipped.
Upgrading what the developer fitted
Where a house was built to a budget, the second fix is usually the first place it shows. Hollow-core internal doors, a shallow skirting and a minimal architrave are what building to a price tends to produce, and none of it is structural, so all of it can be changed without touching the fabric of the house. Heavier doors change how a room sounds as much as how it looks, and a deeper skirting and architrave with a proper profile lifts a hallway more than most things costing the same money. It is worth doing a whole floor at once rather than a room at a time, so the heights and profiles stay consistent and the joins land where they should.
Media walls and boxing in
Modern layouts usually have one wall that everything points at, and a media wall is the piece of joinery that tidies it.
The build is the easy part. What makes it work is running the cabling, the sockets and any ventilation before the face goes on, and leaving access to anything that will need reaching again. The same applies to boxing in a soil pipe, a boiler pipe run or the tangle in an airing cupboard, all of which should be removable rather than sealed shut. Get that first stage right and the finished wall is flat, quiet and has nothing trailing down it. Get it wrong and somebody is cutting a hatch into a painted panel a year later, which never looks like it was meant to be there.
More in Horley
Everything we do in Horley is on the Horley area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the carpentry & joinery page.
Common questions
Q.01Can you hang a television and build storage on a stud wall?
Yes. The fixings go into the studs, and where there is no stud in the right place we put noggins in behind the board first. That is what carries the weight, not the plasterboard.
Q.02Who runs the job if it needs an electrician too?
We do. The carpentry is on SG's own books, so the joinery is built and fitted by our people. Electrics and decorating are brought in, but they are brought in by us, priced by us and programmed by us, so the cable is run before the panel goes on and you are not holding two diaries together.
Q.03Are our internal doors worth changing?
If they are hollow-core, most people notice the difference immediately in weight and in sound. It is a second fix job that does not touch anything structural, so it is one of the cheaper changes with a real effect.
Q.04Can you fit wardrobes in a smaller estate bedroom?
That is usually the room where fitted storage earns its keep most, because it uses the full height and can be planned around the door swing and the window rather than around a wardrobe's own dimensions.
Q.05Will a media wall hide all the cables?
That is the point of it, but only if the cabling and sockets are set out before the panel goes on. We also leave access to anything that will need to be reached again later.
Thinking about carpentry & joinery in Horley?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.