I'll start by apologising for the post being continually edited. My laptop keeps freezing, so I'll be hitting the post button frequently to avoid losing my work.
Day 1
Because I'd already laid 9mm plywood in the kitchen and the understairs toilet, they first laid 9mm throughout the lower floor. They said they usually only use 6mm as they can cut it with a knife and it's therefore quicker/easier to do the job. It's also cheaper. But we discussed the options and we preferred to go with 9mm throughout.
They didn't appear to have any problems when it actually came to do the job, though. They used builder's paper to create templates for the tricky bits.
We'd recently decorated the lower floor and the gloss skirting hadn't had a chance to fully harden. (Although it had had a couple of days, I find it takes a few weeks to be proper hard.) Some of the paint was chipped off when they dropped the boards, but I can easily sort it at a later date.
They nailed the boards thoroughly, by hand. This surprised me a little. If I did this day-in, day-out, I'd have a gun!
They then applied a screed over everything. I didn't ask what it was called, but they said it was not a cement and it dried within 2 hours. It filled any imperfections: the joins, knocks and nail heads.
Day 2
They started by sanding the whole floor, by hand.
They then started with laying the actual vinyl which is Polyflor Expona 4065 Brown Heritage Cherry.
They opened a few boxes and placed them in the hall, into doorways, etc, apparently calculating the pattern and their cuts.
We're quite impressed with how they've cut around skirting, door frames. It's a nice, neat finish. On the most part.*
Then they troweled on the adhesive in managable sections. Apparently, it remains sticky which allows tiles to be removed and replaced when damaged.
The kitchen floor is sloped. It's part suspended wood and part concrete and you can see some gaps between tiles where they slope in very small, but different, directions. *
It was all done by 1700. So that's 2 days. They quoted 2.5 - 3.
Complaints*
Whether through arrogance, or stupidity, on more than one occasion we saw one of the fitters (did I mention there were two) cutting tiles whilst leaning on top of other, already laid tiles! He also opened the boxes with a knife. Consequently, we have found a few scratches.
An edge in the kitchen could be better. It was the end of the day and I think they were starting to rush.
All these points have been brought to their attention and they have agreed to come back on Monday to sort them.
This leaves us with a prediciment - there was one full, unopened box and one with just a couple of tiles remaining. We thought, great, we can return it for a refund. But we're wondering if they're assuming they can use the tiles from the unopened box to replace the tiles that were damaged during installation. We don't think they should. We think they should bare the cost of their installtion errors, not us. I mean, even I know not to cut a tile on top of another, already laid, tile or open a box with a knife!
One final thought - my word does will it need constant attention! We're used to carpets and admit to sometimes leaving it a day or two between vacuuming. But I vacuumed not 30 minutes ago and already it looks dusty!
I'm also on the lookout for a steam mop. So if anyone has got any recommendations?
I'll sort the pictures out now.
