Joiner in Heswall

Heswall runs down a sandstone ridge towards the Dee, and the houses are built into it. Split levels, half landings, a garage under the house, a room that is two steps down from the one next to it: these are normal here and they are rare almost everywhere else on the Wirral.

That changes the joinery. Staircases are not a single straight flight; they are winders, half landings and short flights between levels, and a balustrade job becomes several balustrades that have to read as one. Fitted furniture in a room with a step in it has to be set out from the finished floor level of that part of the room, not the room as a whole.

It also means skirting runs meet at heights that do not match, and getting those junctions right is the thing that makes a sloping-plot house look deliberate rather than patched.

Most of Heswall, Gayton and Barnston is detached, built from the thirties through to the seventies, on generous plots. The seventies houses in particular have the big picture windows and the wide openings that suit a run of fitted storage, and they are usually blockwork behind the plaster so fixings are not a problem.

Pensby is tighter and a bit later, with more semis and more postwar estate housing, and the work there looks more like Upton: kitchens, wardrobes and doors rather than level changes and balustrades.

Driveways are generally good and most houses will take a van on the plot. The complication is the gradient: on the steeper roads a long carry uphill with sheet material is slow, and on some of the split-level houses the room you are working in is two flights up from where the van can stand.

We would rather factor that in than find it on the first morning, so a word about where the van goes and how many steps there are is genuinely useful when you enquire.