Products for the inside storey
Art Select Wood flooring
Karndean
If you’ve any tissue-box surfers in your feline team, they’ll initially be in heaven with Art Select Wood vinyl tiling throughout your space. Here in new Storm Oak, but also in 26 further wood designs, 21 stone designs, and tile options in plank (1219mm by 178mm), parquet (228mm by 76mm) and basket weave (305mm by 76mm or 114mm by 114mm); it will be a simple matter to specify to your exact taste and layout. But even if Tiddles has the ingenuity to convert his tissue box into a Cresta Run toboggan, he’ll be disappointed; this floor’s as slip resistant as a cat’s tongue.
Allura vinyl planks
Forbo
‘Anechoic’. Now there’s a word (and an experience) to boggle the brain. Forbo’s Allura planks aren’t quite so effective at making a car door’s closure sound like a symphony, but they’re certainly good enough to have been chosen by audiologist Leightons for the common areas of its new Reading fit-out by SKK. Consulting rooms feature 23dB reducing Tessera carpet tiles, by the way. Even quieter, yet you could still sneeze in there without the use of tranquilisers – or suddenly requiring hearing aids.
Office partitioning
CR Laurence
Oh! To hear once more the ‘Bok! Bok! Bok!’ of wrist-snapping racket on bijou rubber ball! The clarion ‘Boff! Boff! Boff!’ of rubber ball on dystopian cliff-like walls of white! Alas and alack! For shall I hear those so-sweet sounds no more? Apparently not, thanks to the 42dB insulating properties of CRL’s 28mm thick partition glass. That, plus of course the fact that those miserable you-know-whats upstairs have banned us from playing squash in the office during working hours.
Underfloor heating system
Gaia
Ecclesiastical under-floor aquatics have improved since my Sunday school days, when inner peace was once skewered utterly by the sight of a great parquet panel being lifted to reveal a kind of filthy sheep-dip: a sacrificial receptacle for the devout, apparently. Indeed, Beechcroft’s conversion of this Pugin chapel into four dwellings at Fitzroy Gate is positively enhanced by Gaia’s low-temperature hot water system, installed between original joists to retain the floor level, and reflected by Autron aluminium plates. They’ve also dispensed with shell art and tambourine tutorials. Refreshing!