Derby Grammar School

A school in Littleover, Derby was looking to replace worn carpet tiles across two of its teaching spaces with something more hardwearing and easier to keep looking sharp between terms. The brief was straightforward on paper — uplift the old flooring, prepare the subfloor properly, and lay a smarter, more durable finish — but getting it all done without disrupting the school calendar took careful planning.

Our team began by uplifting and disposing of around 126m² of ageing carpet tiles, clearing the way down to the original subfloor. From there, the real groundwork started: a full screed and priming pass across the exposed areas, plus twenty sheets of 6mm plyboard laid to level out problem spots, giving the new floor a flat, stable base to bond to.

In went roughly 140m² of gluedown LVT — Balsan Elite Gluedown 55 in a Ballet Brown herringbone pattern for the main teaching spaces, paired with Tarkett Standard Plus 2.0 in Brown Grey for the remaining areas. The herringbone LVT in particular gives the rooms a far more considered, finished look than the carpet tiles it replaced, while standing up to the daily traffic a working school floor has to handle.

The whole job — uplift, subfloor prep and installation — was scheduled over the summer holidays, running across roughly a week in August. That timing meant no lessons to work around and no disruption to pupils or staff, with everything cured, settled and ready well before the new term began.

It's a good example of the kind of turnkey refurbishment DCTUK does for schools up and down the country: old flooring out, full subfloor preparation included, and a durable new finish in, all timed to fit around term dates rather than the other way round.