When a bungalow gets a staircase
Most of the carpentry we are asked for in Rustington starts with a loft conversion in a 1950s or 60s bungalow. A bungalow never expected a stair, so one has to be fitted in: out of a hall cupboard, the end of a bedroom or the corner of a living room. A new staircase has to meet the Building Regulations for rise, going, pitch, headroom and guarding, and in a bungalow the headroom is usually the tightest. We set the stair out full size on the floor before it is made, so the first time you climb it is not the first time anyone has checked it.
Once the stair is in, the space beneath it is worth fitting out properly: deep pull-out drawers rather than a cupboard you have to crawl into, a coat rail, shelving shaped to the slope. Upstairs, the loft rooms have sloping ceilings and low knee walls, and the space behind them is the best storage in the house if it is fitted with wardrobes scribed to the slope and drawers that run in under the eaves. All of it is made to your measurements in our own workshop at Middleton.
Doors and doorways for the long term
With well over a third of the village aged 65 or over, a lot of Rustington carpentry is about making houses easier to live in. Doorways widened for a walking frame or a wheelchair, with new linings and architraves so they look original. Lever handles at a sensible height. Thresholds taken out or ramped. Internal doors rehung to open the other way, so a bathroom door cannot be blocked by someone who has fallen behind it. Our price guide puts hanging a door in an existing lining from £156 per door, and a door with a new lining and ironmongery at £360 to £660, both including VAT.
Cottage joinery in The Street
Rustington's conservation area, about 4.7 hectares around The Street and North Lane, holds the village's seventeenth- and eighteenth-century flint cottages, some thatched, among fourteen listed buildings. Their joinery is small and plain: timber casement windows, boarded doors on strap hinges, simple stairs. In a listed cottage those are part of the listed fabric. We repair them with matching timber, replace them only with listed building consent, and make new pieces by hand to the old pattern rather than buying in something that nearly fits.
Arts and Crafts on Sea Lane
The finest house in the village is Knightscroft on Sea Lane, designed by Norman Shaw in 1879 for Sir Hubert Parry, who lived there until his death in 1918. It is Grade II* listed: red brick on the ground floor, tile-hung above, with a five-sided bay. Rustington has a number of other houses with Arts and Crafts touches of that kind, tile-hanging, leaded lights and heavy boarded doors, and joinery repairs on them are made to the same character. The parish's 2013 survey recorded thirty-five locally valued Structures of Character as well as its thirty-eight listed buildings.
Windows that meet the regulations
A replacement window has to meet Approved Document L: 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating band B, and no worse than the window it replaces. Slim timber casements can do that with the right glazing; the thinnest heritage profiles sometimes cannot, and on a listed building the conservation officer's view comes first. We check before we quote.
Outside, near the sea
The seafront roads and the Sea Estate get the wind and salt off the Channel. Gates, porches, fascias and doors there are fixed with stainless steel, sealed at the end grain, and painted with a primer and two coats. Galvanised fixings in that air rust through new paint within a few winters.
What we are asked for in Rustington
- Staircases for bungalow loft conversions: softwood straight flight £3,000 to £6,600, oak or with a winder £6,000 to £12,000
- Fitted wardrobes and eaves storage, £1,680 to £2,880 per linear metre
- Alcove units either side of a chimney breast, £960 to £5,760
- Doorways widened and doors rehung for easier access
- Cottage casements and boarded doors repaired to match
All prices include VAT. The trade in full is carpentry and joinery; next door is carpentry in Littlehampton, and the loft that usually comes first is on loft conversions in Rustington. The village is on builders in Rustington.
Send a photograph of the space, the door or the window, and James will tell you what it would take and what it would cost. Ring 07470 078236. Every item on its own line, two years' guarantee on our workmanship.