Home Renovations in East Lothian

Most houses around Tranent and Prestonpans have been altered at least once, and it’s rarely been done well. A boxed-in chimney breast, a dropped ceiling hiding a pipe, a waste run the short way.

George Herkes & Son Joinery has worked across East Lothian since 1989 and holds East Lothian Trading Standards Trusted Trader accreditation, rated 5.0 from 62 reviews, and the same team also works as loft conversion builders in East Lothian when a renovation goes up into the roof.

Send through what you want done and George will come out and look at what’s behind the plaster.

Home Renovation Services

A renovation in this county usually starts with a house that’s been altered once already, badly. Somebody’s boxed in a chimney breast, run a waste the short way, or dropped a ceiling to hide a pipe. It’s all still there behind the plaster.

What gets opened up

Internal walls, floors and ceilings come back to something honest before anything new goes on. That’s where the surprises live, so that’s where we start. You don’t design around a wall until you know what’s holding it up.

What the survey looks for

Damp at the foot of a solid wall. A floor that’s been notched for a pipe. A lintel that isn’t there over an opening somebody widened. None of it shows with the plaster on, so it’s looked for before the drawing, not after the strip-out. That’s the difference between a change and a surprise.

What gets built back

Joinery, kitchens, bathrooms, stairs, doors and windows. It’s the same team through all of it, so there’s no gap where one trade’s finished and the next hasn’t started. Nobody hands the problem on.

Kitchen and Bathroom Renovations in East Lothian

These are the two rooms that carry the services, and they’re where a renovation either runs to programme or doesn’t.

Older burgh and coastal stock

Around Haddington’s Georgian centre and the older streets in Prestonpans, the walls are solid and the runs are original. You’ll find a soil stack that decides the bathroom layout and a chimney breast that decides the kitchen. We work outward from where the services already are.

Commuter-town and newer housing

Out towards Wallyford and the newer estates it’s the opposite problem. The rooms are square and the layout’s the thing that’s wrong. That’s easier to fix and it’s still settled on paper first, the same way a house renovation company across Elphinstone would do it.

Project Timelines and Costs

Here’s the honest shape of it. What sets the time and the cost isn’t the finishes. It’s what’s structural. Whether a wall’s coming out. Whether the floor’s coming up. Whether the services move at all. Finishes are the predictable end of the job, and they’re the part people ask about first.

So does that mean nobody can tell you anything before they’ve been out? No. We can tell you the order the work runs in. We can tell you who’s on site at each stage. And the quote will name the scope, not just a list of fittings. The rest comes from the survey, and it has to. It’s the same for house renovation companies in Tranent and everywhere else in the county.

Materials, Finishes, and Craftsmanship

There’s a reason old timber in this county lasts and new timber sometimes doesn’t. It’s moisture. A board comes off a cold van at one moisture content and the room it’s going into sits at another. Cut it before it’s settled and it’ll move at the joints. So new timber’s brought inside and left to reach the room first.

On the coast it matters more. Property out towards Yellowcraigs and the shoreline under Bass Rock takes wind off the Forth and salt with it, so external timber’s specified for that. End grain gets sealed before a piece goes together. Painted work’s sprayed in the workshop, not brushed in a room somebody’s living in. That’s true across all our renovations work.

Design and Build Approach

Around the older streets in Cockenzie and Port Seton you’ll see the same three alterations again and again. A knocked-through ground floor. A bathroom moved upstairs. A back door blocked up. Each one left something behind for the next person to find, and that’s usually us.

The thing that goes wrong on a renovation isn’t usually the workmanship. It’s the coordination. Three firms, one house, and each one’s waiting on the last. That’s how a six-week job becomes a four-month one.

We don’t run it that way. The sequence is fixed at the survey. Core work stays with the same family run team. And the drawings the workshop reads are the ones taken in the room, not a set redrawn by somebody who never stood in it. If the strip-out finds something, it’s reported and priced then rather than absorbed quietly. You’ll be dealing with George from the first visit to the last day. That’s the whole of the accountability, and it’s why the sequence holds. Nobody’s diary but ours decides the programme.