Carlton Academy Trust

Carlton Academy Trust asked us to replace the worn vinyl in the dining hall at a Primary School in Bradford. A school dining hall takes a lot of punishment, with hundreds of pupils, chairs scraping and spills every lunchtime, so the trust wanted a hard-wearing, easy-clean floor that would also look warm and welcoming.

We surveyed the site in early October and planned the work for the October half term, so the hall could be out of action without disrupting a single school lunch. The first job was to uplift the old vinyl across the full 106m² of the hall, with everything taken away by skip so the school had nothing left to clear.

With the old floor gone, we turned to the concrete subfloor. The whole area was primed and then given a full smoothing screed. It's the part of a project nobody notices afterwards, but a properly levelled base is what stops joints opening and stops the outline of old repairs showing through a new LVT floor.

We then laid Forbo Allura Decibel LVT in Weathered Serene Oak, glued down across the hall. The wood-effect planks give the room a much warmer feel than the old sheet vinyl, and the Decibel range has an acoustic backing that helps take the edge off the noise of a busy dining hall. To finish, we fitted 48 metres of sit-on skirting around the perimeter for a neat, wipe-clean edge where the floor meets the wall.

The work ran across the half term holiday, with the job signed off at the start of November and the hall ready for pupils when they came back.

It's a good example of the kind of school work we do all year round: a busy, hard-used space, planned around the school calendar and handled from uplift and subfloor prep through to the final finish by one team.

Interested in flooring for your school or workplace? Get in touch with our commercial team for a quote.