Kenley — Carpentry & Joinery

Carpenter and Joiner in Kenley (CR8)

The large Edwardian and interwar houses across Kenley were built with the steep-pitched roofs common to that stock, and a roof like that is often a loft worth using. Getting up there properly is a carpentry problem before it is anything else, and the stair is the part that decides whether it works.

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The staircase is the hard part of a loft

A loft is easy to plan around the room at the top and hard to plan around the stair.

It has to land somewhere sensible, it has to keep headroom over every tread, and the rise and going have to meet the regulations rather than whatever will fit. The common answer is to run the new flight over the existing one, which keeps the footprint down but eats into the landing below and often means moving a door or giving up a corner of a bedroom. That trade-off is worth understanding before drawings are paid for rather than after. A staircase can be built to almost any shape once the geometry is settled, with winders, a half landing or a turn at the top, but the geometry decides the room rather than the other way round. Parts of Kenley also sit inside the Kenley Aerodrome Conservation Area, so where a loft needs a dormer the external side is worth checking early.

Storage in the slopes

A converted roof leaves an awkward triangle down each side where the ceiling meets the floor, and it is either wasted or it becomes the best storage in the house. Built-in units into the eaves, with doors set into the slope, use ground that no piece of furniture can reach. The same thinking applies to a dormer and to the odd corners a steep roof creates: shelving, drawers and hanging space made to the actual angle rather than a standard carcass packed out until it fits. All of it is measured off the finished structure, because the plasterboard line is never quite where the drawing said it would be. Doors into the eaves also have to open and close cleanly on a slope, which is a setting-out and hinge question rather than a supply question.

Second fix through the rest of the house

The timber work is ours from the stair to the last piece of architrave, because carpentry is an in-house trade here rather than one we sub out. Electrics and decorating are not, so we appoint and run those specialists ourselves, which is how lighting into the eaves units and the final paint get sequenced with the joinery instead of trailing behind it. A loft rarely stops at the loft, either. New internal doors are needed on the way up, existing ones sometimes have to change, and the skirting and architrave on the new landing has to match what runs through the rest of that floor so the addition does not announce itself. Where a conversion brings fire doors into a house, they are hung and made good as the regulations require rather than treated as ordinary doors.

More in Kenley

Everything we do in Kenley is on the Kenley area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the carpentry & joinery page.

Common questions

Q.01Where will the new staircase go?

Usually over the existing flight, because it keeps the footprint small. It normally costs you part of the landing or a corner of the bedroom below, and that is the decision worth making early rather than late.

Q.02Can you build storage into the sloping parts of a loft?

Yes, and it is normally the only way to use that space at all. Units are made to the actual angle once the structure is finished, because that is the point at which the real measurements exist.

Q.03Do you build staircases or buy them in?

Either is possible. A straight flight into a standard opening can be supplied and fitted, while anything with a turn, a winder or an unusual rise is better made to the opening you actually have.

Q.04Will the new work match the doors and skirting we already have?

That is the aim. The older profiles in these houses are heavier than most stock, so we either match the section or have it run, and we keep door and handle heights consistent along the landing.