About the studio
Groundwork Interiors is Cait Redfern and Tomas Brill. We started it in 2013 with one project and a shared irritation, and we have kept it at two people on purpose.
How we got here
We met in 2011 on a job neither of us enjoyed. Cait was the designer, working for a practice two counties away, and Tomas was running the site for the contractor. The drawings said one thing, the building said another, and the two of us spent four months in the middle translating.
What became obvious over those four months is that most of the waste in a small project is not in the materials or the labour. It is in the gap between the person who designed it and the person who built it, and on a job of this size that gap is completely unnecessary. There are only two of us. There is nothing for information to fall through.
Cait studied interior architecture and spent eight years in two practices, in Birmingham and then Manchester, working mostly on residential and small retail. Tomas trained as a joiner, which is still the most useful thing he knows, and then spent nine years running sites for a regional contractor before moving into project management.
We started Groundwork in 2013 with one kitchen and no website. The loft conversion in a 1930s semi was our second year. The office for a surveying practice was this spring. Between them, about sixty projects.
Because that is the number two people can do properly, and because we both go to site. When we say Tomas will be there weekly, there is no version of that where a junior turns up instead, and when we say Cait chose the paint, she stood in the room with the boards.
The consequence is that we sometimes cannot start for months, and we will tell you that on the first phone call rather than stringing you along. It also means we occasionally turn work down, usually because it is the wrong kind of project rather than the wrong size.
That how a room is used comes before how it looks, and that getting the first right usually solves most of the second. A beautiful kitchen you cannot cook in has failed at the only test that matters.
That numbers should be said out loud and early. Every project on this site has its cost range and our fee printed next to it, and every range has an honest explanation of what sits at each end. The reasoning behind that is in how to budget a renovation without lying to yourself.
That you should be able to look after what we specify. Finishes that need professional maintenance, or a part only available from one supplier in Italy, are a liability we are handing you and calling a feature.
And that old buildings deserve to be understood before they are improved. Roughly a third of what we do is undoing a well intentioned modernisation from the 1980s.
Shropshire, the Welsh Marches and north Herefordshire, from a studio in Shrewsbury. The first visit is free anywhere within 25 miles of the town, which covers most of the county and a good stretch either side of the border.
We go further for the right project, and we charge travel at 45p a mile and nothing else. What we will not do is run a job remotely, because half of what Tomas is paid for is noticing something on a Tuesday morning that nobody would have put in an email.
The two of us
Cait does the survey, the brief, the layouts and every specification decision from the joinery down to the paint. She is the person who will ask you how many pans you own and then actually count them, which sounds eccentric until you see the kitchen.
Her particular interest is old buildings and the materials they need, which is why the studio does more lime plaster than most. She writes the colour, lighting and kitchen entries in the journal.
Tomas prices the work, runs the tender, holds the programme and is on site every week. He reads a quotation the way a joiner reads a cutting list, which is how the missing items get found before they become variations.
He is the one who will tell you that the thing you want is possible but not for that money, usually within about ten minutes of meeting you. He writes the money, site and consent entries in the journal.
Where to go next
What the studio does, how it works and what it costs.
