Home Renovations in Tranent

Tranent houses of a certain age were laid out for a front room, a back room and a scullery, and most renovations here start by undoing that plan safely.

George Herkes & Son Joinery has worked across East Lothian since 1989, holds East Lothian Trading Standards Trusted Trader accreditation and is rated 5.0 from 62 reviews, and the team that runs a loft conversion service in Tranent is the same one doing the structural work and the finishing on a full renovation.

Send George the address and what you want changed, and he will come and survey the structure.

Home Renovation Services

The recurring problem in Tranent housing is a plan drawn for a different way of living. The interwar stock, including the 520 houses built by the town co-operative society, was laid out with a front room, a back room and a scullery, and the walls between them are doing structural work. Opening one up is a beam calculation, not a demolition. The span, the bearing at each end and the load coming down from above all have to be established before anything is cut.

A renovation here covers structural alterations, kitchens, bathrooms, joinery and finishing under one team. Steel or engineered timber sizing comes from a structural engineer where a wall is load bearing. Padstones are set on solid bearing. Everything downstream of that, the studwork, the linings, the doors and the skirting, is joinery, and it is done in house. That matters on programme as much as on quality, because the finishing trades are the ones most often waiting on somebody else.

Design and Build Approach for Tranent Homes

Design and build means the same team draws it and builds it, so the drawing is made by people who will have to fit it. That removes the commonest source of cost on a renovation, which is a detail that cannot be built as drawn and has to be redesigned on site while a squad stands waiting.

The survey records floor levels, wall construction, joist direction and span, the position of services and the condition of the damp course. Joist direction decides where an opening can go. Wall construction decides whether a wall is solid stone, brick or block, and each takes a different fixing. The same approach runs a bathroom remodelling in Tranent job. The drawing follows the survey. A layout drawn against a floor plan alone will meet a joist running the wrong way on the first morning of the strip out.

Kitchen and Bathroom Renovations

These two rooms carry most of the services in a house, so they set the sequence for everything else. Waste runs need a fall of a fixed gradient, and in solid floor construction that fall has to be found within the floor build up rather than assumed.

First fix

Waste, feeds and circuits go in before anything is boarded. The layout is fixed at this point because moving a soil connection afterwards means lifting a floor.

Second fix and finishing

Units, sanitaryware and joinery go in once the walls are true and the floor is level. Tiling is set out from the finished level rather than the existing one. That is the same sequence used by house renovation contractors in Elphinstone on comparable stock. Set out from what the floor will be rather than what it is, and the tile line lands where the drawing said it would.

Structural Alterations and Layout Changes

Removing a wall in a two storey house transfers load to whatever is left, and the calculation covers the beam, the bearing and the padstone. Temporary support goes in before anything comes out, on both floors where the wall carries a joist bearing above.

Common alterations in this stock are a knock through between front and back rooms, a widened opening to a kitchen, and a new opening for a stair on a loft job. Each is drawn, calculated and inspected. The rest of what follows is our renovation services, from the studwork through to the architrave. The structure is settled before the finishing starts, and the inspection is booked rather than assumed.