From contemporary new-builds toward Birdham Pool to older houses out toward Bracklesham and Sidlesham — engineered walnut and oak over underfloor heating, matching timber staircase cladding, and careful parquet restoration by a family team who know the Manhood Peninsula.
30 minutes from our Bognor Regis workshop · Covering PO20 · PO18
Birdham is half an hour from our Bognor Regis workshop, out along the Manhood Peninsula where the lanes run down toward Birdham Pool and the water. The houses here are mostly large private detached homes — a good number of them recent, architect-led new-builds set in their own grounds, alongside older properties out toward Bracklesham and Sidlesham that have been extended and reordered over the years.
That mix shapes what we do in Birdham. The contemporary builds want new wood flooring done properly: wide engineered walnut or oak, fully bonded over underfloor heating, and — increasingly — a staircase clad in the same timber so the floor carries seamlessly up through the house. The older stock leans the other way, toward restoration: lifting and reviving parquet and board floors that are worth saving rather than tearing out.
Birdham sits at the edge of Chichester Harbour, so the neighbouring villages — Itchenor, Bracklesham Bay and the Witterings among them — have their own pages on this site. This one is for the private houses in and around Birdham itself, and the kind of new-build and restoration work we take on here.
The signature job in Birdham is the whole-house new-build floor: wide engineered walnut or oak, fully bonded to the subfloor over underfloor heating. Bonding matters over UFH — a glued floor sits flat and stable across the temperature swings a heating system puts through a slab, where a floating floor can lift or gap. We moisture-meter the screed, run the heating through a commissioning cycle before a single board goes down, and only then start laying.
Where a house has a feature staircase, we'll clad it in the same timber as the floor — treads, risers and strings faced in matching walnut or oak so the stair reads as one continuous run of wood with the floor around it, right down to a curved flight under a glass balustrade. It's precise, bespoke joinery, and it's what turns a floor into a whole-house finish.
In the older Birdham homes it's usually restoration rather than new supply — parquet and board floors lifted, repaired and brought back rather than replaced. And because we're this close to the harbour, we survey the subfloor for moisture before quoting on any of it; salt humidity out here is unforgiving on a floor that hasn't been laid with it in mind.
A luxury new-build in Birdham where we laid engineered walnut over underfloor heating throughout and clad the curved staircase in matching walnut — the Brightwater job, alongside the kind of parquet restoration we bring to the area's older homes.
The flagship of a Birdham new-build — a sweeping curved staircase clad in the same rich walnut as the floor, treads and risers faced to match, wrapped in a frameless glass balustrade with a walnut handrail and lit by copper pendants over the hall. The walnut plank floor flows unbroken around its foot and out to the full-height garden glazing.
The same engineered walnut carried through the open-plan kitchen — rich, dark, warm-toned boards fully bonded over underfloor heating, running past a white quartz island and on toward the curved staircase beyond. One continuous floor tying the living, cooking and stair space together.
The kind of parquet restoration we’d bring to an older Birdham home — an oak herringbone floor in a panelled period room, its worn blocks sanded right back and refinished so the herringbone reads warm and even again, the tones running from honey through to walnut around the fireplace. Saved and revived rather than replaced.
From fully-bonded engineered walnut over underfloor heating in the new-builds to matching staircase cladding and revived parquet in the older houses, we install and restore wooden floors across Birdham and PO20.
Real-wood top layers on stable cores — engineered for UFH and open-plan rooms.
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Engineered oak properly specced for wet and electric UFH — written commissioning log on handover.
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Herringbone, chevron and Versailles panels — modern installs and period restoration.
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Sanding, gap-filling, hand-finishing — tired boards brought back without losing the character.
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Solid oak, walnut, ash and maple boards — character grades and feature widths.
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Foyers, offices, retail and hospitality — traditional methods, delivered on schedule.
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Overnight and weekend phasing — slip-rated matt finishes and food-safe sealers.
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Reclaimed boards and beer-tolerant finishes for country pubs, coaching inns and gastropubs.
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Multi-room timber phased around occupancy — batch-matched corridor-to-bedroom, acoustic underlay.
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Grade I, II* and II floors — sympathetic species, reversible methods advised where a listing demands.
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Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses — pitch pine, baltic deal, oak, sympathetic finishes.
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Country estate programmes phased around residence — restoration and new install under one spec.
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French oak, English elm, antique pitch pine — sourced with provenance, laid with respect to age.
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European white oak in 180mm–300mm+ planks, random lengths to 2.5m, hand-finished on site.
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Barn weddings, country-house venues and marquee dance floors — Bona commercial-wear lacquer, seasonal install windows.
Read moreOur work in Birdham is anchored by the PO20 postcode — Large private detached houses and contemporary new-builds around Birdham Pool all sit squarely inside it, with regular jobs reaching out into the neighbouring PO18 where Engineered walnut and oak fully bonded over underfloor heating keep us busy. Around 30 minutes up from the Bognor Regis workshop — same craftsman every visit, flat-rate quotes by the job not the mile.
Whether the address reads PO20 or PO18, the Birdham brief is the same: Darren surveys on-site, sample boards stay with you for a fortnight under your own lighting, and the install runs in a single solid stretch rather than back-and-forth day trips. It matters in places like Matching timber staircase cladding, and parquet restoration in the older homes where the subfloors and the building fabric earn a slower pass. Family team since 1997, working across West Sussex from the same coastal base. Around 1.3k residents in the town centre, and we’ve quoted on hundreds of the homes within walking distance of it.
“The advice and execution of the job was exemplary in every way. Darren Forrestal was recommended to me and it now gives me great pleasure to recommend him. His work is superb and he ‘goes the extra mile’ to get things right. -I will most certainly use his services again when the opportunity occurs, I consider him to be honest, trustworthy and passionate about the execution of his trade.”
J
Every wood flooring pattern, character finish and construction Darren installs — solid hardwood, engineered oak, herringbone and parquet — laid out edge-to-edge so you can see real grain, real colour, real texture.
Darren will visit, measure up and walk you through species, finishes and lead times. No pressure, no hard sell — just specialist advice.
Forrestal Flooring is the trusted flooring partner to award-winning interior design studio LEIVARS. The accolades below were won by LEIVARS for their interior schemes — we're proud to have supplied and fitted the floors behind many of them.
