Which stainless steel should be chosen by the sea?

A4 / 316L, alloyed with molybdenum, resists appreciably better than A2 / 304 in a marine atmosphere. Within five hundred metres of the shore, the atmosphere falls within corrosivity categories C4 to C5 of the ISO 9223 standard: the choice ceases to be an ironmongery detail. For galvanised work it is the thickness of the zinc coating that governs service life. These decisions do not show at handover; they read after five years.

Can an old moulding or plasterwork be restored exactly?

Yes, provided it is recorded before being taken down. Decoration is restored to the model — profile recorded, counter-mould made, material recomposed — and never reconstituted from memory afterwards. That is why a service run crossing a moulded cornice destroys in one morning what no one will then know how to remake: services are drawn before partitions, never the other way round.

Polished concrete or marble: how does one choose an exceptional floor?

By use, light, maintenance and available thickness, before aesthetics. Polished concrete is a coating a few millimetres thick whose hold depends entirely on the substrate: a substrate that moves cracks the finish, and a crack is not repaired, it is begun again. Marble is a limestone: it fears acid far more than scratching. Where every centimetre taken on a screed is paid for in ceiling height, the first has an argument that solid stone does not.

Craftsmanship

Bespoke finishes and interiors

Marble, fine woods, plasterwork and metal: detail elevated to an art form and shaped by hand.

The finish is the only part of a work that shows, and it forgives nothing. Marble, fine woods, plasterwork, metal: these are the most demanding materials, and their success is decided before laying — at the survey, at the setting-out, at the choice of the block. A slab of veined stone is chosen on the block and laid in the order in which it was sawn; a moulding is restored to the model and not to the catalogue.

Bespoke work is not an extra: it is what an old fabric imposes, where no dimension is the one on the drawing. We survey, we draw the work, we have it made, we install it. The director checks every finish, and handover is accepted only when perfect.

What salt imposes on materials

Within five hundred metres of the shore, the atmosphere falls within corrosivity categories C4, high, to C5, very high, of the ISO 9223 standard: airborne salinity degrades a work there as surely as damp and heat. It is not the stone that salt attacks — it is the ironmongery, the threshold sections, the fixings, the hardware and the metalwork.

From this follows a rule of selection, not a precaution. In a saline environment, A4 / 316L stainless steel, alloyed with molybdenum, resists appreciably better than A2 / 304; and the service life of galvanised steel depends directly on the thickness of the zinc coating. A faultless marble threshold set on unsuitable screws will be marked by rust runs within two winters: the work is lost through what fixes it.

The decorative registers of the coast, and what they ask

Each family of building fabric has its finishing vocabulary. The interior decoration of bourgeois buildings belongs to plasterwork and moulded plaster, to parquet, to marble chimneypieces and small-paned joinery. The villégiature villas add stucco, matched marbles and wrought ironwork. The Provençal register holds to lime render coloured through the mass, to the canal tile and to wood.

Each imposes its own constraint on making good, and the most useful to know early is this: on lime render coloured through the mass, a local repair shows. The finish is then reasoned by whole elevation panel, never by touch-up. It is a brief decision, taken at the survey — not a discovery at the end of the works.

Survey, draw, install

A successful stone installation is judged on three things. Setting-out first: the position of the cuts, decided on the drawing and not as the laying goes, so that thresholds, door axes and patterns fall true. Vein matching next: slabs from a single block are laid in the order of sawing, book-matched or run-matched, so that the figure crosses the room. Calibration last: on solid stone, a millimetre of flatness error reads against the light, and the raking light of a window over the sea forgives nothing.

The choice of a finish — honed, polished, brushed — is not only aesthetic: it sets the way the room will age. A honed finish conceals use; a polished one shows it. Neither is better; they do not address the same use. We put the question early, while it is still only a line on a drawing.

Our services

Marble & fine stone
Bespoke joinery
Plaster & gypsum work
Fine metalwork

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