Livermead takes the weather straight off the bay, and that sets the terms for most of the bespoke joinery we make here. The hotels and blocks of flats along Torbay Road face south-east across open water with nothing in between, and many of the houses up Livermead Hill are built to look the same way. Doors, balcony screens and window frames on those elevations get wind-driven rain and salt for months at a time. Inside, the work is different. Much of Livermead was built in the twentieth century, so we spend as much time modernising mid-century houses and refitting flats as we do on the seafront. Hotel bedrooms, bars and reception desks come up too, because this stretch has been taking in visitors for two centuries.
Tell us roughly what you have in mind and we will arrange a time to come and measure. A photo of the space on your phone is usually enough to start with.
The Joiner Behind It
Livermead's houses, hotels and flats take the weather straight off the water. Exterior joinery here gets wind, rain and salt with nothing in between.
Making timber cope with that isn't something you pick up from a textbook. Luke has been a joiner since childhood and the trade runs in his family. He and the team build with the sea in mind.
About Livermead
For a long time Livermead was the open ground between Torquay and Paignton, owned by the Mallocks of Cockington. In 1820 the Reverend Roger Mallock built a house by the sea here for his guests. Charles Kingsley stayed there in 1854 while his wife recovered from illness, and spent his days on the foreshore and in the rock pools collecting the sea creatures that ended up in his book Glaucus. That house, much enlarged, is the Livermead House Hotel, which served the RAF as a medical centre during the Second World War. Corbyn Head was a Mallock gift too: the council took it over in 1907, having let an earlier offer lapse.
Most of what surrounds them came later. In 1939 the town council, Torquay Corporation, bought a large slice of the Cockington estate and sold most of it on for housing, and the appraisal of Cockington records that houses went up in Livermead, Chelston and Preston as a result. So the streets above Torbay Road are mainly mid-century and later, with not much Victorian fabric left to protect: detached houses and bungalows built for the view, many with big picture windows and balconies, and blocks of flats, some purpose-built and some converted from small hotels on Livermead Hill. Where the original fitted bedroom furniture survives, it is getting on for sixty years old.
Services In Livermead
Hotels, flats and houses with a sea view all want slightly different things, but the jobs that come up again and again in Livermead are the three below. The common thread is exposure to the bay.
Reception desks, bar counters, bedroom furniture and wardrobes for the hotels and guest houses along the seafront. Made to survive guests, cleaners and wet coats, and to be repaired a panel at a time rather than replaced.
Read more about Commercial Joinery & Shopfitting
Front doors, French doors and balcony screens that face the bay. We use stable, durable timber and paint systems meant for coastal exposure, with deep drips on the bottom rails so rain is shed rather than held.
Read more about Timber Windows & Doors
Many mid-century houses here still have a narrow galley kitchen with the best window over the sink. We redesign the room around the view, often opening it into the dining room, with storage built into the leftover wall.
Read more about Bespoke KitchensWhy It Matters Here
Wind off the sea pushes rain upwards and sideways. Our sea-facing doors have weatherboards and drips cut properly underneath, and thresholds that drain outwards, because the bottom of a door is where Livermead weather gets in first.
Plated hinges and letter plates rust within a couple of winters this close to salt water. We specify marine-grade stainless or bronze on external doors, and list them on the quote so you know what you are getting.
Bedroom furniture for a seafront hotel is built in sections that come apart, with replaceable door fronts and edges. A damaged panel can be swapped in a morning between check-out and check-in, without the room coming off the booking system.
Working in a block means lifts, shared stairs and neighbours. We prefinish everything in the workshop, carry in components that fit through communal doors, and keep noisy work to the hours the managing agent has agreed.
Houses from the fifties and sixties often have good proportions hidden behind flush doors and hardboard panelling. We replace the doors, rebuild the built-ins and add proper storage while keeping the big windows that were the point.
South-east elevations take the morning sun all year. Dark stains and clear varnishes break down fastest under it, so we steer exposed work towards microporous paint in lighter colours that will hold up longer between redecorations.
From The Workshop
This is an outdoor bar we built from vertical timber boards with a stone top, set on a terrace beside a wood-fired oven with an estuary below. The site is not in Livermead, and we would not claim it was. What it shows is how we approach joinery that lives outside all year, in a spot that takes the weather head on. The boards have already weathered to a soft grey.
For homes in Livermead and the hotels along Torbay Road, the same thinking applies to terrace bars, garden screens and balcony joinery facing the bay: boards with room to move, raised off the ground, fixed with stainless steel, and allowed to weather to grey rather than fought with varnish. Where a hotel wants the timber to stay honey-coloured, we explain the upkeep that commits them to before we start.
Reassurance
Our Process
Every job goes through the same seven stages. In Livermead the first and last steps change most, because exposure to the bay and access to the building drive both of them.
On the seafront we look at which way the opening faces and how much shelter it gets, because a door under a balcony and one on an open terrace need different detailing. We check the sill, the threshold and the brick or render around the frame for salt damage. In a hotel or a block of flats we also ask about access times, lifts and where a van can wait.
You get a drawn elevation and a plan, with real dimensions on them, before anything is priced as final. Door swings, drawer positions, where the sockets end up. It is much cheaper to move a shelf on paper than after it has been cut.
We agree the species and the grade, and where it matters we pick the actual boards. Oak with heavy medullary rays looks completely different from quarter-sawn stock. The quote names the timber, the finish and the ironmongery, so you are comparing like with like against anyone else you ask.
The timber sits in the workshop and settles towards the moisture content it will live at. BS EN 942 puts joinery for a house heated to between 12 and 21 degrees at 9 to 13 per cent. Skip this and the piece will do its moving after it is installed, in your hallway, rather than on our racks.
Cut, moulded and jointed, then dry-assembled on the bench so we find out about any problem while it is still in our building. Carcasses go together, doors are hung, drawers are fitted and adjusted. Nothing is finished until it has been put together at least once.
Sprayed, oiled or hand-painted in the workshop, including the backs and the edges you will never see. Sealing five faces and leaving the sixth bare is how a panel takes up moisture unevenly and bows. Finishing off site also means no spray dust through your house.
External doors and screens are fitted with sealed, drained thresholds and the gaps packed and sealed against wind-driven rain. Hotel joinery is fitted around bookings, often room by room. For flats, we protect the communal areas on the way in and clear them on the way out. We come back after a winter on the coast to check seals and adjust doors.
Local
The best of Livermead is at sea level. These three are all on the shoreline, within a stroll of each other along the coast path and the promenade.
A stretch of red sand below the sea wall on Torbay Road, reached by a flight of steps and completely covered at high tide, so check the times before you go. Dogs are allowed all year, there is a water-ski area offshore, and the nearest toilets are up at Corbyn Head.
Learn more about Livermead Sands on Google Maps
A grassy red sandstone headland, wave-cut on three sides, that the council took over in 1907. Local legend ties the name to a hanged pirate, though nobody has proved it. Look for the remains of an old stone landing pier just off the beach, once used by Torquay fishermen. The council has put plenty of seats along the top.
Learn more about Corbyn Head on Google Maps
Torquay's gasworks stood here from the early 1860s until production stopped in 1968. The ground was landscaped and the park opened in 1979, and the South West Coast Path runs through it. Walk under the railway bridge to reach Hollicombe Beach, known locally as the old gasworks beach.
Learn more about Hollicombe Park and Beach on Google MapsFeedback
Rated 5 out of 5
“Our bedroom is in one of the old Warberries villas and the back wall bows by about an inch and a half across four metres. Two national firms measured it, quoted, then went quiet. These came, measured, and said it needed scribing rather than filling. The wardrobes go right into the corner and there is no gap anywhere. My husband keeps running his hand down the join.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We run a bar on the harbourside and needed the counter and back fittings replaced without losing a summer weekend. They built the lot off site, came in on a Sunday night and had us trading by Tuesday lunchtime. Knowing the whole thing was made before they ever shut our doors is what sold it.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Sash windows on the front elevation, and we are in a conservation area so it had to be timber and it had to match. They took a profile off the original, made new boxes in accoya, and the planning side went through without a query. From the pavement you genuinely cannot tell which is which.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Two alcoves either side of the chimney, and they turned out to be 40mm different in width, which explains why the flat-pack ones we tried first never sat right. Made as a pair but to two different sets of measurements. Small thing, but it is the difference between looking fitted and looking bought.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We let our place out over the season so everything gets hammered. I asked them to over-specify the drawer runners and they did, and told me exactly which ones so I can order spares. Three summers in, nothing has sagged. The last kitchen we had did not last two.”
Budget
External joinery facing the sea costs more than the same door on a sheltered street, mostly in the timber, the paint system and the stainless fittings. Hotel work is priced by the room or by the piece, and fitting outside the busy season keeps it simpler. Flats add time for lifts, stairs and protecting communal areas. Parking is easy on some roads up the hill and very hard on Torbay Road itself. For outside work, our guide to outdoor timber joinery in Torbay explains where the money goes.
Guide ranges only, VAT included. Your figure comes from the measured visit and the drawing you sign off.
What moves the priceQuestions
Coverage
Most of our work sits inside Torbay, because fitted joinery needs at least two visits and often three. Further out we go as far as the drive stays sensible - Newton Abbot and Totnes are routine, and we have taken work down to the South Hams when the job justified it.
Send a photograph and tell us which direction the door or window faces. For hotels, send a list of rooms. We will come and look, then quote with the timber, finish and fittings named so you can see exactly what you are paying for.
