Extension Brickwork and Blockwork in Bournemouth

Extension brickwork is the part of a build most people think about last and look at first. The footings end up buried and the inner blockwork gets plastered over, but the outer skin is the bit you see from the garden every day afterwards. It is worth having it laid by a bricklayer who cares whether it matches the house.

Below ground it is blockwork rather than brick. Blocks go into the trenches once the concrete has gone off and come up level to damp course, so the walls above them start square. That stage gets looked at before it is covered up, which is a good reason not to rush it. Come up out by a course and the whole build is correcting for it all the way to the roof.

Above the slab, a domestic extension is normally a cavity wall. An inner leaf of blockwork, a cavity, and an outer skin of facing brick tied back to it. The inner leaf takes the load, the cavity keeps the weather out, and the brick is the part anyone ever comments on. Most of the difference between a good job and a poor one sits in the setting out and the pointing, which is unglamorous and matters enormously.

Matching the brick is the question we get asked most about brickwork for an extension. On a 1930s semi or an older terrace around Bournemouth or Poole the original brick often is not made any more, so the work is finding the closest thing that is, then getting the mortar colour and the joint right. Do that and the extension reads as part of the house. Get it wrong and the new work announces itself from the end of the garden.

We do not publish a starting price for a blockwork extension, because a single-storey rear extension and a two-storey side return are not the same job, and a headline figure would only mislead you. What moves the cost is the size of the extension, how much of it is blockwork and how much is facing brick, the ground conditions, the access for materials, and whether you want a detail like a soldier course or an arch over the openings. We price on how long the work will take, the figure comes to you in writing after a visit, and it does not move afterwards. We do not claim to be the cheapest, and we would rather tell you that now than have it surprise you later.

A fair bit of extension work reaches us through builders rather than homeowners directly, and we are happy either way. If you already have a main builder and just need an extension bricklayer for the shell, we subcontract on domestic projects and work to your programme. If you are managing the build yourself, we will tell you plainly where our part starts and stops, so there is no gap between us and whoever is doing the groundwork or the roof.

We work across Dorset and into Hampshire, up to about an hour from Ferndown. That takes in Bournemouth, Poole, Wimborne, Christchurch, Broadstone, Ferndown, Ringwood and the towns around them.