Richard was so impressed with a job well done in Central London that he chose it as his subject of discussion this month
‘WOW!’ moments are few and far between in the life of a consultant, but occasionally there’s a chance to look at a job done well rather than one with problems. I was looking at some vinyl flooring on a back staircase and in some changing rooms in Central London.
The venue was prestigious, but the out-of-public-view areas were unglamourous, to say the least, and my inspection included a fair bit of crawling around toilet pans and in wet shower areas. My host offered to show me a carpet that had been laid some years before in the main function room and when he opened the door with a ‘ta-da!’ I felt as if I had been transported from a rubbish dump into a palace.
The room itself was astonishingly impressive with oak panelling, crystal chandeliers and a table arrangement set for a banquet later that day. But the flooring was, in the truest sense of the word, unique.
A bespoke woven carpet with the pattern created around the shape of the room, including the semi-circular shape at one end, and all made out of body carpet three feet wide with each length woven to a specific design to build up the design piece by piece.
It had taken months of liaison with the manufacturer to create the design and weave each individual piece, and the installers had taken great care to lay the pieces in order and tension each piece of carpet to ensure a pattern match along the full length of each (up to 20m long) seam. The result was stunning payback for the time and effort invested.
Just a week before I had been to look at another prestige job, but this one had not been such a success. The carpet was a modern printed design with large swirls across the full width of the roll. The installers had cut the carpet to the manufacturer’s cutting plan but found the pattern did not match at the seams.
They had aligned the pattern in what they felt was the best compromise, but the client was not happy and they had escalated the complaint to the manufacturer as they believed the issue was that the printing or backing was faulty and so the pattern was badly distorted. Their beliefs were reinforced by an independent consultant who had been before me and had been unable to make any sense of the wayward pattern across the seams.
In some places a part of the pattern was offset to the right and further along it was to the left. Some small parts of the pattern were missing on one side. It would have taken a lot of uneven stretching and shrinking to make it work, and this was not possible with the carpet in question.
I started on the top floor of the hotel and it was easy to see why the client wasn’t happy. As I worked my way down the floors, the layout of the pattern had been planned in the same way on each floor, so the apparent mismatch was at exactly the same part of the pattern each time. As printing is very precise and the print rollers do not distort, it wasn’t possible the pattern could be out.
Although some distortion can be induced during manufacture, there is a Standard for what is permissible and there was no reason to believe that was the issue here. There were two possibilities left: either the cutting plan was wrong or the installers had missed a trick.
On-site, I checked the pattern match by marking the pattern along the edge of a large sheet of paper and then moving it forwards and backwards parallel to the seam to see if there was a place where a match was possible.
Offsite I printed out the photographs I took of the seams and selected four or five. I cut along the seams so I had the two parts of the pattern. I then moved the pieces and found an exact pattern match was possible in each case by overlapping the pieces by a few millimetres and slightly offsetting the pieces – in each case slightly to the right.
Cutting plans always include an allowance – extra carpet – to allow the installers to trim along the walls and along seams.
The installers had simply butted the pieces as they were provided to them and then blamed others for the resulting mismatch.
If you’re bored at any point on New Year’s Day, try this. Pick up some discarded patterned wrapping paper from Christmas Day and tear it in half – you don’t need to be precise. Now overlap the pieces and see how many times you can find a match point. Depending on the size of the pattern repeat, and whether it’s a half-drop or full-drop design, you’ll find matching is not difficult.
I doubt that you’ll find a wrapping paper with a full-width design like the carpet in question, but if it was wallpaper, another printed product, it would match side to side as well as having a pattern repeat along the length.
The principles apply to any patterned product and in flooring this can be resilient flooring as well as textile. Planning for the pattern repeats has to be done at the estimating stage, but it also needs to be considered when cutting the bulk and installing each piece. If you need help, most training providers include this topic in the relevant estimating and installation courses.
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Richard Renouf is an independent flooring consultant