Karndean flooring

gabyjane

I have aquired some flooring from work, i wasn't sure what it was until i went into the flooring shop yesterday to enquire on just fitting it. The lady after i described it got a piece which is the stuff and said it needs a specialist fitter which she wasn't sure if hers would do, she is going to ring me with a number of a private fitter and go from there.

Is it a lot more than normal flooring to fit due to it being this stuff? It will be in a downstairs loo so not a huge room.
thanks

SuzieSue

I am looking at having Karndean flooring. The reason it costs more to fit is that there is a lot of preparation involved before it can be fitted. I have been quoted £50 per square metre to supply and fit, so the fitting works out at around £30 per square metre.

andrew-b

You could try fitting it yourself. I'm not convinced it's as difficult to fit as the flooring shops or karndean make out. I wouldn't have thought that there's much more to it than cutting to size and sticking down? It's just a vinyl really with a brand name being used to cash in on IMHO! Preparation doesn't seem any more difficult than any other vinyl floor to me.

Have a look at http://www.karndean.co.uk/site/installation_guides.cfm where you can download an installation guide. Looking at it most of it seems to be about the floor prep. They also insist on you using their adhesives ...whether just a marketing ploy i'm not sure! For a small room like a downstairs loo i guess it could be a bit fiddly (especially around the pedestal of the loo). I wouldn't have thought there would be that much prep for you to do and damp (RH readings above 75%) really shouldn't be a problem in a fairly new build property.

To get someone in your talking £50 before they even cross the threshold. I bet you can do it for less than £50 without compromising the installation. Be interested how you get on if you do attempt yourselves as we've been living with concrete floor in our bathroom for about 2 years now and i'm still undecided what to floor to lay down!

Just looking at the FAQs page on that website it looks like the warranty only applies if you get someone to fit it ...but as you didn't buy it in the first place that's irrelevant. It also mentions it's not a DIY product...but i see no explanation why!

pjran

We have some Karndean flooring, my husband bought their adhesive and fitted it himself. I am really pleased with the results and it has been down a couple of years.

I remember the tiles being in the room for several days - hubby insisted they had to acclimatise and he wasn't being lazy :rotfl:

Pj

Paul_the_Painter

With any such floor, the key is it being dry and flat. Very few (if any) new houses have flat enough floors. A new house has a concrete slab that will take some months to dry enough to glue anything to.

adam_ironside

We bought Karndean ourselves from an online retailer, and two tubs of Karndeans own adhesive.
A handyman we know fitted it (he had never fitted it before) and its a cracking job!! Would fully reccomend it.
Just make sure your floor is level (we screwed half inch ply over all our floor boards).
We ran out of adhesive about 3/4 of the way through the job and bought some basic B&Q stuff to finish the job - and it was easier to work with than the much more expensive karndean stuff!!