Hello world, this is another recap to the lighter and brighter days, and my second time working in a shop.
Most of my customers are non-commercial, but one of them opened up an alternative health and beauty shop in East London. She hired me to do the flooring over two storeys, toilet plumbing, bi-fold door, upstairs basin and worktop, service counter, and outside rendering to the plinth.
This is the shop front, and if you are local I do humbly recommend that you visit, great Christmas presents. The following video shows the flooring being laid.
The process of laying #laminateflooring is important. One aspect that most customers miss out on, as they are usually keen to complete the work, is to #acclimatize the boards. They should be left unwrapped in the area they are to be laid for one week before laying. During this time excessive sources of humidity should be avoided, such as drying plaster. Next we need a flat sub floor, to within 5mm over 6ft, free from obstructions and debris; and suitable underlay. A good quality underlay specific to the sub floor is best. Manufacturers provide underlay for all kinds of sub floor, and the installer should choose and recommend the right one. When clicking the boards together its best to have a knocking block, but if you don't, you can use an off-cut. The downstairs floor was a diamond shaped room, with brick columns. this made the end of the runs more laborious to cut; as an angled cut was necessary, and the #angle was changing across the room.
The basement storey was divided by other tradesmen, leaving a corridor leading to the toilet. I plumbed the toilet in, and installed a bi-fold door. The door the customer ordered was too big for the frame by a long way, and it was the only #bi-fold available within reason. That left me stuck, I had to employ a method to modify the door, that I learned on site.
This method of re-making a door involves cutting off the side stiles, scraping or planing off the laminate, scraping off the glue from inside the door, cutting back the locking block, and gluing the side stiles back into the door laminate. In the case of a bi-fold door it is made more complicated. Bi-fold doors have pivot points, and fixing positions drilled into the head and the toe. The amount I had to cut off removed these points so I had to transfer the positions and #re-drill them. I did this using a template.
Finally here is a picture of the #counter before it was painted by the customer;
Finally, here are the final sweep shots of the shop, provided by the customer.
It's great to see shops like this opening in London, whilst high streets seem to be decaying slowly, alternative and niche shops are thriving. I am always keen to help them flourish.