Floors and blinds we have finished
Our own photographs of our own installations, not stock images. Look at the edges, the thresholds and the way the boards run — that is where you can see whether a floor was fitted properly or just laid down.
Two of these are the same product in different colours, which is the most useful comparison on this page. A colour choice changes a room far more than most people expect, and a swatch on a screen will not tell you that.
Series 200 Linen Oak, room by room
A photograph shows you one corner in one light. Walk through the house instead and you see how a floor actually behaves — how the tone shifts from a sunlit room to a passage, and how the boards carry through the doorways.
Worth noticing on this one: there are no skirtings. The floor is finished straight to the wall, which leaves nothing to hide a bad edge behind. It is the least forgiving way to lay a floor and the reason the cutting has to be right first time.
Somfy motorised sunscreen rollers, in black
Solar screen roller blinds in black, running on Somfy motors. The fabric cuts the glare and the heat while you keep the view straight through it — and a black screen does that better than a pale one, because it reflects less light back into the room.
This is the case for motorisation in one clip. Blinds this size are a real effort on a chain, and a blind that is an effort to move is a blind you stop moving.
Classroom floors at Hermanus Primary School
Kalahari 2.5 mm quartz vinyl tiles, laid in a basketweave through the classrooms. A school floor takes a beating no house ever will — hundreds of children, chairs dragged twice a day, cleaned every night — so the product choice is about durability first and appearance second.
The old vinyl came up, the subfloor was levelled, and the new tiles went down. Scroll through and you can see the whole job, because the preparation is most of the work.
Schools, offices and guesthouses, not only homes
A commercial floor is a different specification and a different conversation. It has to meet a durability and fire standard, it has to be laid around a working building, and it usually has to be finished inside a holiday or over a weekend.
If you are specifying a floor for a school, an office, a guesthouse or a public building, talk to us early — the product choice is easier to get right at drawing stage than after the tender.
Stripping out and levelling
The finished floor
On site
Frail care corridors at Huis Lettie Theron
The old flooring in the frail care wing was worn out and damaged. We stripped it, levelled the corridors and laid Kalahari quartz vinyl tiles through them.
A frail care corridor is a demanding floor for reasons that have nothing to do with looks. It has to be even underfoot for residents using walkers and frames, it has to take trolleys and wheelchairs all day, it has to be cleaned hard and often, and it has to be repairable one tile at a time without closing the corridor. Quartz vinyl tile does all four.
Working in an occupied building
Nobody moved out for this. Residents still needed to reach their rooms, the dining room and the bathrooms while we worked, so the corridors came up in sections with access kept open throughout.
If you manage a care facility, a school or an office, that is the part worth asking us about. The flooring is the easy bit — sequencing it around people who cannot simply be sent home is the job.
Engineered oak in a house with the ocean at the window
Finfloor Fin Oak in Outeniqua — a real timber surface on an engineered core, laid in a new build with nothing between it and the sea but fynbos.
This is the job we point to when someone asks whether they can have a wooden floor near the water. Engineered wood, yes. Solid timber, no. The layered core stays stable as the humidity swings; a solid plank in this position would cup and gap within a season.
Aspen European Oak through a whole house
Aspen European Oak from the Aspen Living range, laid through the living areas, the passage and the bedrooms. A wide plank in a warm mid oak, which is why it holds up in a room with this much light coming into it.
The house has moulded skirtings and stained-glass doors, so the floor had to sit against detailed joinery without looking new against it. Continuous board runs through the doorways rather than a trim at every threshold.
Chalked Oak, wall to wall
Dezign Series 200 from Azura Distributors, in Chalked Oak. A pale, grey-washed oak — the opposite end of the range from the warm mid oak in the project above, and worth comparing the two before you decide.
A cooler floor like this does two things: it makes a room read larger and brighter, and it does not fight a grey or white interior the way a warm oak can. It is also the more forgiving choice in a house that gets a lot of coastal light.
Pecanwood — the same range, a completely different room
Dezign Series 200 again, from Azura Distributors, this time in Pecanwood. Compare it against the Chalked Oak in the project above: identical product, identical thickness, identical warranty — and the two rooms have nothing in common.
That is worth understanding before you choose. A rustic brown with this much grain and knot detail gives a room warmth and character, and it hides marks and dust better than a pale floor. What it will not do is make a small room feel bigger.
Spanish Oak, and the work underneath it
Aspen Premium in Spanish Oak, a soft pale oak laid through the living areas of a large house. It is a calm floor that lets a room with high ceilings and a fireplace stay the focus.
This one is on the site for a different reason though. Scroll down and look at the pink floor. That is the part of the job nobody photographs, and it is the part that decides whether a floor is still flat in five years.
The pink floor is a self-levelling screed, and it is why the floor above it is flat
A plank floor copies whatever is underneath it. Lay a good product over a subfloor with dips and high spots and you will feel every one of them underfoot, hear it as you walk, and eventually see the joints open up.
So we pour a self-levelling screed first. Ours is only 2 to 3 mm thick, it finds its own level, and it dries overnight — which means we can lay the floor the following day rather than holding the job up for weeks. A thick builder's screed poured during construction is a different thing entirely and does need weeks.
You will never see this again once the floor is down. It is the single biggest difference between a floor that lasts and a floor that gets relaid.
Outdoor blinds on a covered deck
A covered deck and dining area we screened in a few years back. Note what the screens do: the space is closed off against the wind and you can still see straight through to the view and the pool.
That is the point of an outdoor blind — a room you can actually use, not a wall.
Outdoor blinds and ZIIP screens
This is what a floor should not look like
We came across this floor by accident on our rounds. It is not our work, it was laid by another company a few years ago, and we are not going to say by whom — the point is not who did it, it is what went wrong and how you would spot it.
Those long ridges and hollows running down the passage are there because the pin roller was not used properly. A pin roller is what you run over a glued floor to press the whole plank into the adhesive and drive the air out. Skip it, or do it carelessly, and you leave voids. The plank sits proud in places and hollow in others, and once the adhesive has gone off it is permanent.
It is worst in a passage, where the light runs along the floor and shows up every one of them. You would never see this in a photograph of a small room, which is exactly why we photograph passages.
How to check a floor before you sign it off
- Stand at one end of the longest run and look along the floor, not down at it. Ridges and hollows only show in raking light
- Walk it barefoot. You will feel a hollow long before you see it
- Tap a suspect area with a knuckle. A void sounds different from a bonded plank
- Check the edges at the skirting and the doorways, where careless cutting hides
- Raise anything you find immediately. It is fixable while the adhesive is fresh and permanent once it is not
More going up as we photograph it
We have been finishing rooms in the Overberg for more than ten years, and most of that work went in without anyone taking a photograph of it. We are fixing that as we go.
If we have worked in your house and you would be happy for us to photograph it, tell us — we always ask first, and we never publish the address.