Green oak frames designed, cut and raised by framers who have been doing it for decades, then closed in, glazed and finished as one managed contract. New houses, garden rooms, extensions to listed and period buildings, and repairs to frames that have been standing for four hundred years.
An oak frame bolted onto a period house without thought looks exactly like that. The frame is drawn to sit with the existing roof pitch, the eaves line and the window heads, so the new part reads as part of the building rather than an addition parked against it.
Frames are sourced and cut through a long-established network of specialist framers, jointed and pegged in the traditional way. You get a frame made for the drawing rather than a standard bay pattern that the drawing then has to be bent around.
Pad foundations, sole plates and the drainage all set out and checked before the frame arrives, because a frame is a bad thing to be adjusting on the day. Setting out is the part of an oak job that decides whether the raise takes a day or a week.
Crane, framers, scaffold and the weather all lined up so the frame goes up in one go. Somebody who answers for the whole job is on site while it happens, which is not the same thing as a supplier delivering a frame and leaving.
Encapsulation panels or infill, roof, and glazing set into the frame with the movement allowances that green oak needs. The oak will move as it dries and the detailing has to expect it, or the glass and the plaster crack in year two.
Scarf repairs, sole plate replacement and splicing into standing historic frames, done with new oak cut to match and worked in with the existing joints. On a listed building this is consent work, and the consent is handled as part of the job.
The frame itself is usually raised in a day or two. Everything either side of that is the real programme: design and any consent, then the framers cutting the frame, which is typically eight to twelve weeks from order, then groundworks, then closing in and finishing after the raise. A garden room or a modest extension is commonly four to six months end to end. A full oak frame house is a year or more, and anyone quoting much less has not allowed for the cutting time.
Yes, and it is meant to. Green oak shrinks across the grain as it seasons, the joints tighten onto their pegs and the surface checks and splits. None of that is a defect, and it is why the frame gets stronger rather than weaker. What matters is that everything fixed to the frame allows for the movement: glazing beads, plaster stops and infill panels all get detailed with that in mind, which is the difference between a frame that settles quietly and one that cracks the finishes.
Often yes, and it is work we have done repeatedly. Conservation officers are frequently more comfortable with a well proportioned oak frame than with a rendered box, because it is honest about being new and it uses a material the building already understands. The consent conversation still has to happen properly, with drawings and a heritage justification, and it is far better to have it before anything is ordered than after.
The frame is more expensive than studwork, and there is no point pretending otherwise. Where it earns its money back is that the frame is the structure and the finish at the same time, so you are not paying for a structure and then paying again to line it. On a managed fixed fee you see that trade-off in the numbers at the start rather than discovering it halfway through.
The whole build, and that is the usual reason people come to us rather than to a frame supplier. Design coordination, groundworks, the raise, closing in, roof, glazing, services and the internal finishes are all managed under one contract with one person answerable for the programme. If you already have a frame on order from elsewhere, we will take the job on from there.
New oak can be cut and worked to sit correctly alongside old, and over a few years the colour closes the gap considerably. It will never be indistinguishable on day one, and on a historic frame that is usually the right answer anyway, because repairs are generally expected to be readable rather than disguised.
Somerset, Devon, Wiltshire and Dorset, with the towns and villages in between covered as a matter of course. Work further afield in the South West is taken on where the project suits us and we can give it the attention it needs.
Every project starts with a conversation, long before it starts on site.