Soft strip out

A soft strip is everything that is not the structure. The kitchen and the bathroom, the fitted wardrobes, the carpets and the floor coverings, the ceilings down to the joists, the stud partitions, the old wiring and the pipework the builder does not want to keep, and every bag and box left behind by whoever was there last. It is the first job on a refurbishment and the one that decides how cleanly everything after it goes, because a builder walking into a bare shell can measure, quote and start, and a builder walking into half a fit-out cannot. We strip it, carry it out and take it away, and the property is left swept back to the brick and the boards. A whole property starts from £1,499, quoted in writing from photos, a video or a visit, priced by the load rather than by the day. Anything load-bearing waits for the engineer, and anything that might be asbestos waits for a survey. The structure: the walls that hold the building up, the joists, the roof. Anything load-bearing is left alone unless your engineer's design and building control say otherwise. In an older building, an asbestos survey comes before the strip out. Asbestos is removed by a licensed specialist, and we do not take it. Anything that can be used again goes to local charities and to people who are homeless, and what can be recycled is recycled.