Restoration
French polishing, wood and floor repair, stone, glass, ceramic, metalwork and spot spraying: chips, scratches, burns and water marks taken out of the surfaces you already have, colour-matched and finished on site so the damage disappears and nothing needs replacing.
What we restore
01
Shellac built up by hand and cut back between coats, the traditional way, on tabletops, staircases, handrails and period panelling — a real polished finish rather than a wipe-on substitute, brought back to depth and shine.
02
Dents, deep scratches, burns and white water rings taken out of timber and the grain re-matched so the patch vanishes — floorboards, stair treads, skirtings and furniture put right where they sit, without lifting or replacing the piece.
03
Quartz chips, marble cracks, granite scratches and dulled porcelain filled with tinted resin, then honed and polished back to the original sheen — worktops, vanities and stone floors restored in place rather than torn out.
04
Light scratching, etching and limescale haze lifted out of glass with cerium-oxide polishing, so a shower screen, window, splashback or mirror clears up and stays in place instead of being ripped out and replaced.
05
Chips, hairline cracks and worn colour on enamel, ceramic and acrylic rebuilt and re-coloured on site — baths, basins, shower trays and wall tiles repaired where they are, with the new finish blended into the old.
06
Heat marks, knife scores and ring stains sanded out of solid-wood worktops, islands and dining tables, then re-oiled or re-lacquered across the whole surface so it reads as one — no sign of where the damage was.
07
Railings, gates, radiators, handrails and brass or steel fittings stripped back, primed and resprayed in a matched colour on site, so corrosion and chips are dealt with without unbolting and carting everything off.
08
Scuffed radiators, knocked door frames and small areas of damaged paint colour-matched and spot-sprayed, so a single mark disappears in an hour or two instead of turning into a full redecoration.
How it runs
A description and two or three photographs are usually enough to say whether a surface is a repair, a refinish, or genuinely past saving. One of the whole surface, one close in on the damage, and one taken at a low angle so the sheen reads. It means we turn up with the right resins, tints and abrasives instead of booking a second visit to fetch them.
Colour is the whole job in restoration. On stone, timber, enamel and sprayed finishes the tint is mixed on site against the surface it has to disappear into, so we work a small area first — under a unit, behind a door, somewhere nobody would see it if it needs adjusting. You look at that in daylight before we commit to the rest. A tint that is slightly out costs nothing at this point and a great deal once a whole worktop has been polished.
Each repair is priced on its own line rather than rolled into a single figure, because restoration is nearly always a comparison: this chip filled and polished, against this worktop replaced with the re-templating, refitting, plumbing and tiling that a replacement drags behind it. Priced separately, you can take some lines and leave others.
Floors sheeted, the room sealed off, and extraction on anything that sands or sprays. Most single repairs are a day or less. At the end we walk the surface with you in natural light rather than under a work lamp, because a work lamp flatters a blend and daylight does not. Anything that still reads as a patch gets reworked before we leave.
The honest version
Restoring a surface is cheaper and far less disruptive than replacing it, and on most of the jobs we look at it is the right call. It is not the right call on all of them, and you are better served by hearing that at the survey than three months after the invoice.
The classic is a cabinet base under a sink, or a bathroom skirting that has been damp for a year. Filler and paint will sit on swollen chipboard or MDF perfectly well for a few months and then telegraph every seam. Where the board itself has broken down we will say so, and the work moves to the carcass rather than the finish.
A worktop that has cracked at a cut-out, or a tile that keeps lifting, is usually reporting something underneath it: an unsupported span, a flexing floor, a fixing that was never right. Repair the crack on its own and it returns in the same place within the year. We would rather deal with what is moving first, even when that is the bigger job.
Enamel gone porous across a whole bath, foil doors delaminating along every edge, stone etched over its full surface — these are failures of the material rather than marks on it. Restoration can hide one bad patch convincingly. It cannot un-fail a finish that has failed everywhere at once.
Sometimes a kitchen is structurally fine and the honest answer is still to change it, because the layout is what is wrong and no amount of spraying fixes storage. Restoring something you were never going to keep costs you money and costs us a week. When we think that is the case, we say it before you have paid for anything.
Where restoration is the right call, our cost guide to surface restoration and repainting in London sets out what the work runs to, and the gallery shows finished jobs. If you want a straight answer on one specific surface, send us a photograph of it on WhatsApp and we will tell you which of the two this is.
Restoration questions
Coverage
Every London borough — 33 in total. Tap a borough to see its coverage page, with local postcodes, typical project types and the housing stock we work on most often there.
Each area has its own coverage page with local planning notes and the project types we handle most often there.
Report the damage
A photo speaks volumes on surface repairs. Attach one to the email reply once we're in touch and we'll usually quote same-day.
