A two-person floor studio · Marchfield & the Fens
A floor should look like it was always there — and still look that way in forty years.
Services
Four things, done slowly
01
Pale floors, laid
Birch, ash and white-oiled oak — boards chosen for grain that reads quiet, laid wide and finished so the light in a Fenland room does the decorating. Two rooms a month, maximum.
02
Refinishing, quiet
Dustless machines run at low speed, plates instead of drums, three coats of waterborne or oil worked in thin. The point is a floor that looks unfussed, which takes the most fuss of all.
03
Repairs that vanish
A board replaced should be a secret between us and the subfloor. We keep offcuts of every floor we have ever laid, filed by job, which is why our loft is useless for anything else.
04
Advice & care plans
An hour at your kitchen table with the moisture meter and a care card written for your floor and your household. Sometimes the advice is to do nothing, which is free both times.
The Fens, 2025 — 2026
Recent quiet floors
Six floors from the studio's last two seasons, photographed at handover without a lamp moved. Pale floors are hard to photograph and easy to live with — the second matter is the one we were hired for.
How it goes
The slow version
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
The visit
Kitchen table, one hour
The meter, the sample boards and a conversation about how you actually live. The quote is written there and then, and it is the number you pay.
Week one
The boards arrive
They live in your rooms on stickers while we take readings twice a day. Fenland air is damp in ways that vary by the field your house sits in; the boards learn your house before they join it.
Week two
The work
Laid, or sanded, or both — plates and fine grits, thin coats, long drying windows. We are in the house the days the work needs and not the days a schedule would prefer.
The last coat
And then we wait
The final coat dries for a full day before so much as a sock crosses it. Patience here is the entire difference between a floor that photographs and a floor that lasts.
Handover
The care talk
Felt pads fitted to the six worst offenders, a humidity number for the winter, a card with the dates and the batch — and a jar of the oil, because one day a scratch will want it.
We had them quote a dark, fashionable floor and they talked us out of it in one evening — said the room faced north and would thank us for pale ash in February. It is February. The room is the warmest thing in the house and the floor has not a mark on it.
The studio, counted
Write to the studio
Tell us the room and what you hope it does for the house. We answer every message ourselves, usually within the day, and the visit is free — including the advice to leave the floor alone. studio@paletimber.example