Nine of us, working out of EH16 since 2013.
Ross Aitken started the firm after fifteen years on the tools. It has grown slowly and deliberately, because the work only stays good if the people doing it are the people we know.
The firm
- Founded
- 2013
- Team
- Nine
- Base
- Edinburgh, EH16
- Area covered
- Duddingston, Willowbrae, Liberton, Craigmillar, Portobello, Newington, Marchmont, Musselburgh and Corstorphine
Who you deal with
-
Ross Aitken, owner
Runs the firm and is on site most days. If something goes wrong on your job, Ross is who you end up speaking to, and he would rather that happened early than late.
-
Lorna Baird, contracts manager and estimator
Visits, measures and prices the work, then keeps the job running once it starts. Most of the written quotations you receive from us are Lorna's.
-
Karen Rennie, office administrator
Part time. Invoicing, paperwork and the diary.
On the tools
Two joiners, one plumber, one tiler and plasterer, one general builder and one apprentice. Everyone is employed rather than brought in by the day, which is why the same faces come back if you have us again.
We take on an apprentice because the trade is short of them and because somebody did it for Ross.
How we work
We stay inside a small patch of the city on purpose. Covering the whole of the Lothians would mean an hour in traffic before anyone lifts a tool, and it would mean saying no when somebody needs us back to look at something.
We price after a visit, never over the phone. We put the job in writing, broken into its parts. We agree changes in writing before we carry them out, so nobody finds a surprise on the final invoice.
Most of our work comes from repeat customers and from their neighbours. In a city of tenements and terraces that is not a coincidence: one job done properly in a stair tends to lead to the next one.
Older property
Nearly everything we touch was built before anyone thought about insulation, damp proofing or level floors. That shapes how we quote. We look at access, at what is behind the plaster and at what the neighbours' agreement will be needed for, then we price what we actually expect to find.
Where a building is listed or in a conservation area, materials and method are not a matter of preference. We tell you at the first visit if consent is going to be part of the job.