Before you call us

Five minutes with a tape measure and a phone camera usually gets you a price the same day instead of a site visit in three weeks.

Have these five to hand

None of them need to be exact. We are working out whether it is a three-day job or a three-week one.

The room, corner to cornerIn metres, longest each way. If it is an L shape give us two rectangles rather than trying to be clever about it.
Two photographsOne standing in the doorway showing the whole floor, one close enough to see the joints and the worst flag. Daylight, no flash.
What is on the stone nowPolish, paint, carpet glue, a layer of vinyl, a screed. If you genuinely do not know, say so; we can usually tell from the close-up.
Whether a wall is showing dampBlown plaster, salts, a skirting that has gone soft. It changes what goes under the floor and it is the single most useful thing you can tell us.
Your postcodeSo we can be honest about whether we are the right people. We work out of Frome and most jobs are inside an hour of it.

What a useful photograph looks like

We get sent a lot of pictures of one corner taken at night with the flash on. Here is what actually tells us something.

Whole kitchen floor photographed from the doorway in daylight — **The wide one.** From the doorway, daylight, whole floor in frame. Shows us the size, the pattern, the traffic lines and where the room drains.

Close view of stone joints and a threshold — **The close one.** Kneel down. We want to see the joints, the edge of one flag and the threshold, which is where a floor tells you what has been done to it before.

What we will ask you

Is the room on the ground floor, directly on earth?Almost always yes with flagstones, but a flagged floor over a cellar is a different job entirely.
Is there underfloor heating, or is there going to be?It can be done. It needs deciding before the base goes in, not after.
Has anyone been at it already?Cement pointing, a patch of screed, a bit of quarry tile where a range came out. All fixable, all worth knowing.
When do you need it finished?If the answer is before Christmas and it is late November, we will tell you it will not be. Limecrete does not care about your plans.
Is the room empty, and can it stay empty?It is out of use for the whole job and for a fortnight after. Kitchens are the difficult ones.

When not to ring us

If the floor is modern riven sandstone laid on concrete five years ago and a few joints have failed, that is a tiler's morning, not a fortnight of ours. If the whole job is under £950 we will say so rather than dress it up, and if you are more than about an hour from Frome the travelling makes us the wrong answer even when we would like the work.

We also do not do patios, driveways, or new sandstone from a merchant. Not out of snobbery: we are set up for old floors in old houses and we are slow and expensive at anything else.

Ring 01373 450166

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