Laying the right floor in our new business.

jordanchaos

We have been very very lucky, our landlady has offered us the shop below our flat for a very reasonable cost, after much planning and negotiating 2 months rent free to renovate, we have managed to get the previously ramshackle looking print shop in to a reasonably good looking joint! We have 2 friends that have been tattooing for 10 years at other studios and want to work together, so we provide the studio and get a steady income.

One thing HAD to go, an old oil and print ink stained carpet, which has suffered 10 years of cigarette burns and abuse.

Quotes for uplift started at £150. and even the carpet fitters didnt seem that keen. So I started last night myself

It wasnt an easy job to get up, I'm currently about halfway through removal. So, having got most of the carpet up now I can see we have.

A rectangular room roughly 40SQm - 953cm X 406cm

1. Bottom layer concrete floor, tile adhesive and I'm assuming some kind of patch filler,
2. Layer of thin brittle, but really tough composite tiles - these have broken up a bit around the edges, they are stuck down fast
3. On top of the tiles a layer of the carpet adhesive (across the whole floor) that stuck to the jute back carpet, absolute pig to get off.

We need an easily cleanable non porous studio floor. We looked at getting vinyl fitted and we are looking at between £600 and £900 for vinyl alone (which seems pretty steep)

IS there a way I can cover it in self leveling or similar hard ceramic and paint with a garage floor paint? is there another solution I dont know about? Im a total noob at this and internet research hasnt been very successful. Any economical help will be appreciated

ontrack

Subfloors are the main cause of problems with contract flooring, Firstly check for damp.This is essential as it will affect any new flooring installation.
Your vinyl costs work out at around £15 to £22 per square metre which is not outrageous
As you have found lifting the subfloor is the hardest, the thermoplastic tiles if they are stuck down with a bitumen (black) adhesive should be easy enough to get up with a spade or you can hire a tile lifter from a plant hire company for around £100.
Basically you need to get down to as near bare concrete as possible.
then you need a coat of primer P131 (I think) from F Ball
then screed with something like 3000 red bag screed from F Ball
this is a very tough self levelling screed.
then you have a surface you can apply the new floor to
you could possibly use Garage floor paint which will last about three years or go for an epoxy floor paint.
Look up F Ball and co on the net for specific advice and they have a technical help line which is useful.
If my company were flooring this area ( provided it was not damp and the flooring was lifted as described) we could prime, screed and cover in a contract vinyl with wielded seams for around £1200 plus VAT
Hope that helps!

jordanchaos

Ontrack, Thanks very much for your feedback and info, it also lets me know that the quotes I was getting were in the right ballpark (almost to the pound, but no mention of welded seams for anyone else) - I'll get on the F Ball website and give them a call later on today, If I get 6 months out of the floor before having someone in to lay a good quality one, I'll be happy, Possibly even 3 months, its about getting in as cheap as possible then using profits to renovate as we go, which is the nice thing about living downstairs, I've popped in every night for 2 weeks now and either, cleaned, prepped or painted. Its just the floor had me STUMPED. I was hoping for a win win industrial flooring solution (with the least work and cost) It looks like I have no option but to go GANGBUSTERS on this Mother and get down to that concrete (which looks in pretty good shape to be honest)

jordanchaos

update, if anyone reads this and needs to do similar.

Here are my tips

Garden gloves, carpet burns on the hands really suck.

A couple of friends makes it go a hell of a lot faster, 3 of us seemed ideal.

Cut the carpet in to long thin strips - an all over floor adhesive mean there is no weak spot, we found it faster to pull up thin strips about 20/30 cm wide.

Get a long handled and strong razor scraper ( like a broom handle with a giant razor blade on it)

The thermoplastic tiles were a real chore to remove, I found soaking them over night made it easier to remove, by that i mean once the carpet was up I poured a few buckets of cold water on the floor and left it - some of the edges lifted and it kept the dust level down at least a bit. Im about 50% there now a good 18 hours work I recon to finish it. and saved me heaps of £££

ontrack

One thing I should mention, which you maybe will be aware of if you have spoken to F. Ball and co. is that if you paint the floor you may have problems sticking down a contract floor in the future, often the paint reacts with the adhesive or breaks up causing the new floor to bubble.
There are some new loose lay contract vinyls on the market such as Altro Xpresslay which are a good way of getting round this they have fibreglass matrix in the backing to keep them stable and are just stuck at the seams and perimeter with double sided tape.

spacey2012

Floor fitters are great at telling you how to do their job, it is mainly a physical job so just ask one of them what you need, where to get it and how to fit it and you can save pounds.
No other trade will ever tell you the trade secrets like floor fitters will, must be the fumes From the glue they use .
No wonder they have no work, who needs one when they will talk you through the job step by step.