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All Project Categories Suspended Ceilings Toilet Refurbishment

Suspended Ceiling in Chippenham

Suspended Ceiling in Chippenham
By the entrance doors

Client: EJS Chippenham
Value: £2.5k

This project involved replacing an existing suspended ceiling in Chippenham. There were several ares to look at including a reception area, as well as supplying and fitting a new grid and tile ceiling for the shower room and toilets. As always the toilet areas take a long time as there are lots of small tile cuts to do as well as forming a bulkhead between some of the areas.

Existing pictures

Construction photos and Finished result

Suspended ceiling problems?

There are many different types of suspended ceilings and the range of tiles now can be quite baffling. The current trend is to focus on sound performance within the office and this can be dealt with by using a special tile.

Suspended ceilings are used for a number of reasons, they are quick to install and mean that all the services required for offices such as pipework for plumbing and air conditioning, as well as power and data can be hidden out of sight. Access to the services is also much easier than using a traditional plasterboard or MF type ceiling as the ceiling tiles just need to be lifted from the grid.

There are many offices with old fissured tiles, with sagging tiles and a mottled grey look they make the office look very dated. We like to fit nice white clean tiles to give a fresh look.

We have been supplying and fitting suspended ceiling systems as part of our main refurbishment projects for a number of years, if you are not sure on what can be done please give us a call.

Please give us a call on 01380 73 88 44.

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All Project Categories Mezzanine Floors Office Refurbishments Partitioning Suspended Ceilings

Office Expansion in Corsham for Coombe Castle

Office Expansion in Corsham for Coombe Castle

Client: Coombe Castle
Value: £48k

Office Expansion in Corsham

This project consisted of converting a storage unit in to office space in order to provide some much needed office expansion. The project would involve fire protecting a mezzanine floor as this is required by Building Regulations if you have offices above, steel work and a suspended ceiling.  Ventilation had to be put round a chiller and fire sensors had to be installed within the chiller as it could not be moved to fit the fire protected board. Office windows had to be installed to match the rest of the building.

Upstairs needed a complete office fitting, so a suspended ceiling, dry lining the outer walls, decoration of the outer walls,  some fire rated partitioning to create a fire barrier between the offices and warehouse, as well as demountable partitioning within. Full electrical work including CAT2 lighting, 3 compartment perimeter trunking, flooring and new windows were also required. As always we follow our process, so the first step is to understand what the client wants, and then to assess what they have by taking photographs, and drawing everything.

Existing Space Photographs

It is a bit difficult to see from the photos, but essentially we had several areas to deal with. Underneath the mezzanine and on top of it was the main area, but included absolutely everything we do.

Building Regulations

It is crucial to consider Building Regulations when looking at layouts for offices. In particular fire ratings and Building Regulations which is a legal requirement. This particular project needed offices to be fitted on top of a mezzanine floor and so this is why it had to comply to the law.

If you need more information about Building Regulations, we have written a few things here.

Construction and finished photographs.

Office Expansion?

If you have a problem with your existing office space and need it altering as you are running out of space then Cre8tive can help. Please give us a call on 01380 738844.

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All Project Categories Suspended Ceilings

Suspended Ceiling in Melksham sub station

Suspended Ceiling in Melksham sub station
Other rooms had prismatic panels

Client: Melksham Sub Station
Value: £4k

We were called in to look at Melksham sub stations‘ meeting room and staff room as there were a few problems with the inside of the room. The existing ceiling at the sub station was just exposed to the roof. As well as looking unsightly, the rooms were generally noisy as any sound bounced off the hard surfaces of the roof without being absorbed. The sub station also lost heat through the roof space, so the requirement was to install a new ceiling in a couple of rooms which would solve these issues. Instead of the usual CAT2 louvred lighting we fitted LG3 indirect/direct fittings which reduce any shadow around the edge of the room. A suspended ceiling was the obvious answer.

Choosing the right suspended ceiling tile is important to get the right balance between how the ceiling will look, its performance, (often related to sound and insulation), and of course cost. Cre8tive usually presents some options with some recommendations which then the customer can chose the right combinations to the budget that is available. In this instance we did not believe in presenting the cheapest tile for the cheapest price, which is what many companies do, but for not very much more they got a massively different look to the ceiling. The client also spent a bit more money in getting the correct lighting sorted and ended up with exactly what they wanted.

Construction and finished photographs

Not sure what Suspended Ceiling to have?

There are many different types of suspended ceilings, and we have selected a good quality plain faced tile in this case, which will not bow if it gets a bit of moisture, and is nice a bright. The lighting was important, as traditional CAT2 lighting creates shadows around the walls, we chose LG3 which throws light back into the diffuser producing less shadows around the edges of the walls.

There are many different types of suspended ceilings and the range of tiles now can be quite baffling. The current trend is to focus on sound performance within the office and this can be dealt with by using a special tile.

Suspended ceilings are used for a number of reasons, they are quick to install and mean that all the services required for offices such as pipework for plumbing and air conditioning, as well as power and data can be hidden out of sight. Access to the services is also much easier than using a traditional plasterboard or MF type ceiling as the ceiling tiles just need to be lifted from the grid.

There are many offices with old fissured tiles, with sagging tiles and a mottled grey look they make the office look very dated. We like to fit nice white clean tiles to give a fresh look.

If you want to improve sound performance for a space, or want to hide some services, or have any questions about suspended ceiling types please give us a call on 01380 73 88 44

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Air Conditioning All Project Categories Mezzanine Floors Office Refurbishments Partitioning Suspended Ceilings Toilet Refurbishment

Office Refurbishment in Gloucester

Office Refurbishment in Gloucester
New stairs

Client: Scott Law
Value: £160k

Mezzanine Floor installation

Cre8tive Interiors completed an office refurbishment fit out project in Gloucester. The original building consisted of an occupied warehouse with a split level floor and block walls which needed to be converted to offices. We are calling this project a refurbishment project, it involved taking an industrial unit and changing it (refurbishing it?), and then fitting out the inside to provide a complete office space by fitting a mezzanine floor inside. So it is probably a mixture between a refurbishment project and a fit out project.

The offices had to include toilets, reception area, new staircase, kitchen, boardroom and further offices as well as full integration of electrics, data and air conditioning. The project was also run under the Construction Design and Management regulations, so adherence to Health and Safety was paramount. All activities had to have risk assessments carried out as well as method statements for the type of work. Cre8tive was also Principle Contractor for the work, and this meant that there were some things that the client wanted to do within the time frame on site which we managed to do.

Pre-construction Photographs

All of the internal walls, ceilings, toilets and electrics would have to be stripped out including the spiral staircase and small room above it. The two units had a gap inside joining them which would need to be blocked up. The block walls inside would have to be modified. In the end it was easiest just to rip it all out and start again.

Construction Work

The following photographs show the stripping out as well as the construction and finished photographs. The photographs show the sequence of events and all of the work that goes into creating offices over a mezzanine floor. Complete network cabling, power and data, heating and cooling with air conditioning, flooring, external windows, there are many things to manage and get to work properly which is what we do at Cre8tive.

We used demountable partitioning for the offices upstairs and downstairs for a few reasons, the first is that is is easy to reconfigure if you want to change it, and one of the other main benefits is that it can be leased and treated as a ‘moveable item’ as well as the mezzanine floor. The mezzanine floor itself is fully self supporting and not fixed to the fabric of the building so is also ‘demountable’. It could be unbolted and then re bolted in the car park outside if needed.

Why Demountable Partitioning?

  1. Demountable partitioning is tax efficient in that they are seen as movable items and so can be treated differently in writing down allowances in the accounts.
  2. We can also lease Demountable Partitioning as they are movable, this spreads the costs of having the work done as Demountable Partitions always cost more than customers think.
  3. Leasing of demountable partitioning is very tax efficient and Cre8tive can provide illustrations, please contact us for further information.
  4. Most landlords insist on demountable partitions being used for offices as it is much easier to take them out should the tenant renting the space leave for any reason. The benefit is that is saves making a huge amount of mess and destruction that would be need with a conventional stud and plasterboard constructed wall.

Office Refurbishment

This particular project was more complicated that many that we do in that it involved the mezzanine floor. If you need any advice or are thinking of an office refurbishment project please give us a call, we would love to talk to you, on 01380 738844

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All Project Categories Mezzanine Floors Office Refurbishments

Mezzanine Floor Extension Project in Salisbury

Mezzanine Floor Extension Project in Salisbury
Wider view of end elevation

Client: Quality Lifts
Value: £44k

Cre8tive were asked to look at a new mezzanine floor extension for Quality Lift Products based at Whaddon Business Park in Salisbury. The project was really interesting as there were many different things to consider.

As well as working out the office layout and lighting, we helped the client organise a number of things themselves in order to keep costs down to a minimum and in effect only used us for doing the specialist work of dry lining, tape and jointing, demountable partitioning, commercial flooring, suspended ceilings and contract wall covering. A small detail was that inside the lower room, the customer wanted the floor plates sunk into the concrete so maximise the space and so that there were no unsightly bolts sticking up out of the floor. The difficulty with this, is that you cant just cut a hole in a concrete floor, you have to check that the composition will be strong enough to support the weight of the mezzanine and that you do not go down too deep affecting the structure of the floor. Cre8tive obtained some specialist advice before carry out the work. The floor was extremely hard to cut and needed a petrol disc cutter with water cooling to achieve it.

Initial Space

Mezzanine Floor Construction Photographs

Final Photographs

Office Extensions

If you have warehouse space and want to extend your offices then we would be delighted to offer some free advice. We are interiors specialists and not a dedicated mezzanine floor manufacturer, as we just sub contract the steel work out, we do what we always do and use our experience in looking at the inside space to make sure it works for the client. In this case, they did not want the cost of moving the lift and needed more space, and so we advised them that we could build around the problem which they did not think was possible. Over the years we have experienced many problems like this and we can usually come up with a solution.

Please give us a call to discuss any projects on 01380 73 88 44, or email us on the contact form of the website.

Categories
All Project Categories Consult Install Office Refurbishments Partitioning

Office Fit Out British Nuclear Group

Office Fit Out British Nuclear Group
Mallard Court

Client: British Nuclear Group
Value: £99k

Cre8tive were contacted by an Office Furniture company as they were not able to deal with the office fit out side of the project for British Nuclear Group. The customer had already employed an architect to specify what was required and so it was really a case of demonstrating that we knew what we were doing and that could cost the project to meet the clients budget. This project took place on the ground floor of Mallard Court.

The project was designed by Oxford Architects who specified the partition system.

The project was a 6 week duration project which had to run under the Construction Design and Management regulations. Cre8tive Interiors acted as Principle Contractor on the project. The office fit out  for British Nuclear Group consisted of Komfort Double Glazed Polar Demountable Partition System, as well as single glazed Polar screens and Komfort Komfire 100 partitions. The project also included supplying and fitting of a kitchen from Howdens, new carpets, fitting of fire barriers in the ceiling and floor voids, and complete decoration of the workspace.

Initial design and drawing work

Initial site photographs before work

Construction Photographs

Working for the British Nuclear Group had it’s challenges. As you would expect every aspect of the work was scrutinized, we also had to have a permanent person on site all of the time which sometimes on projects like this we do not always need to have fitters doing work whilst other work is being done by others. BNG contracted their own duct work people, so they had to carry out some works when we had to be off site.

Completed Photographs

Why Demountable Partitioning?

This particular project had what we call demountable partitioning in it. Landlords insist on this type as it can be easily relocated without doing much damage to the building.

  1. Demountable partitioning is tax efficient in that they are seen as movable items and so can be treated differently in writing down allowances in the accounts.
  2. We can also lease Demountable Partitioning as they are movable, this spreads the costs of having the work done as Demountable Partitions always cost more than customers think.
  3. Leasing of demountable partitioning is very tax efficient and Cre8tive can provide illustrations, please contact us for further information.
  4. Most landlords insist on demountable partitions being used for offices as it is much easier to take them out should the tenant renting the space leave for any reason. The benefit is that is saves making a huge amount of mess and destruction that would be need with a conventional stud and plasterboard constructed wall.

Need an Office Fitting out?

This particular project was driven by BNG with a design carried out by Oxford Architects. We were the contractor who completed the work. If you need any design work doing we can do this, as well as being the principle contractor for the work.

Any questions please do not hesitate to contact us on 01380 73 88 44 or email [email protected]

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Air Conditioning All Project Categories Office Refurbishments

Refurbishment in Shepton Mallet

Refurbishment in Shepton Mallet
Easynet Global Refurb

Client: Easynet Global Services
Value: £160k

Refurbishment

Cre8tive was asked to tender to carry out an office refurbishment in a 3 storey building in Shepton Mallet. Having successfully won the project, the next problem was how to carry out the work in a relatively short space of time, over the winter months with snow on the ground and no heating until the air conditioning was commissioned. The building was not a traditional office, in that there were no suspended ceilings (and not the height to fit any), and no raised floors, and the customer wanted lots of walls removed as well as fitting CAT6 cable into floor boxes in all of the floors.

All of the major elements that are used in a conventional office refurbishment were used, electrical work including data cabling, new lighting, reconfiguration of the power between floors, flooring using a rubber insulation floor to reduce sound transfer between floors, new air conditioning throughout, new kitchens on the floors including new appliances.

One of the difficulties was that the work had to be carried out in the winter months and without any heating until the air conditioning system was installed it was freezing on site. We had heaters but you cannot have the heaters on too much as it would dry out the plaster too quickly causing cracking. The paint also did not dry out properly so it just made the project much more difficult to complete. We also had snow to contend with and we lost several days as the guys could not get into work. We did finish the project a week early allowing the customer some more time on getting the IT equipment in.

Existing building photographs

Construction photographs

Office refurbishment

If you need any advice or are thinking of an office refurbishment project please give us a call, we would love to talk to you, on 01380 738844

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All Project Categories Office Refurbishments Partitioning Storage Walls Suspended Ceilings Toilet Refurbishment

Office Refurbishment and Design

Office Refurbishment and Design

Client: De La Rue
Value: £200k

Office Refurbishment in Bath

The Administration Building looked very dated and did not represent the image De La Rue wanted to present to their customers. The building needed a thorough interior office refurbishment and design to create an environment in which staff feel empowered and involved and to portray the right professional image to visitors to reflect the high company values.

As the company uses wood pulp in the production of security papers, an earthy feel was required to the design. Due to the size of the project the work had to be carried out under the Construction Design and Management Regulations (CDM) which applies to any construction type work taking longer than 30 days or employing more than 5 people on site at any one time. Cre8tive was employed as a principle contractor, and the client employed a Heath and Safety Consultant to help run the project safely. The office refurbishment had a strict timetable of 8 weeks for completion.

Design Work

The design process took around 3 months. The initial proposal was made in competition with another company in which we were able to convince the customer that we had the skills to deliver, as well as come up with a good design. The first step is to measure everything and work out who does what where before moving onto the plan. We thought upstairs the best thing to do was to take out as much of the upstairs walls as possible to let as much natural light into the space. Unfortunately the walls upstairs held up the roof, so we had to employ a structural engineer to do some calculations and fit some steels to the beams. Downstairs also required opening out, and a beam had to be fitted downstairs.

Initial site photographs

Construction / demolition photographs

Office Refurbishment Project?

If you need some office design as you are unsure what to do Cre8tive can help, regardless of the size of the project we like to be Cre8tive with what we do with the space. As well as all of the practical things such as running the project as Principle Contractor, dealing with Health and Safety and running the project well we add something extra and that is the Cre8tive effect.

Please give us a call on 01380 73 88 44

Categories
All Project Categories Partitioning

Partition on a Reception Desk

Partition on a Reception Desk

Client: Malmesbury Primary School
Value: £5.6k

This was a difficult problem to solve and the only way we could think of doing this was to actually construct a glass partition onto the reception desk. The school had a specific issue with noise coming into the office area as the reception desk is in a main traffic area. Draught’s were also a problem as well as some of the electrical control equipment including the CCTV system was spread over a large area. A new cabinet was supplied under the desk with all the cables re-routed to suit. It was also important to keep the costs to minimum so various options were considered before work started.

In addition to the above, the school wanted some degree of sound insulation. Their initial thought was that the desk would have to be rebuilt with some form of new partition built and all of the computing equipment behind the desk would have to be moved. The CCTV and security systems would also have to be disconnected so a real nuisance. I did think that the desk that was there was pretty good and we could keep it in place, why get rid of it. The idea then was to build something on top of it. The complicated section was on the raised section, a normal partition system would have very chunky frames, so we chose a silicon jointed glass system that would be ready neat and tidy. The joins of the glass could then be angled and ground, then seal with a silicon seal without any vertical aluminum uprights that you would normally use on a conventional partition system.

A further requirement was that they wanted a sliding hatch arrangement so they could open and shut glass doors as needed and we could build this in a partition.

Construction photos

Timing was important as with a busy school and the reception desk being situated in the main thoroughfare, we had to build the partitions out of school hours for safety. The first section to build was the more conventional sliding frame hatch using a conventional partition system but using special ‘Chas mood’ sliding door gear within the partition frames. Once the sliding hatch was built, the glazed system was constructed across the desk. Once all of the frames were built the glaziers arrived to fit the glass.

Completed photos

We did use two different proprietary demountable partitioning systems to provide the finish result. There are several good reasons to use this type of system, the main one is that it can be taken down and removed quite easily. The words demountable partitioning are used quite often in our fit out and refurbishment projects.

Summary on Demountable Partitioning

  1. Using Demountable Partitioning is very tax efficient as they are seen as movable items and so can be treated differently in writing down allowances in the accounts. We have a better description on our News / Blog page on this site.
  2. We can also lease Demountable Partitioning as they are movable, this spreads the costs of having the work done as Demountable Partitions always cost more than customers think.
  3. Leasing of demountable partitioning is very tax efficient and Cre8tive can provide illustrations, please contact us for further information.
  4. Most landlords insist on Demountable Partitions being used for offices as it is much easier to take them out should the tenant renting the space leave for any reason. The benefit is that is saves making a huge amount of mess and destruction that would be need with a conventional stud and plasterboard constructed wall.

Questions on extending offices?

If you are not sure about anything as well as taking about all kinds of partitioning including Demountable we love to talk about projects and sort out problems and issues with space, please give us a call on 01380 738844

Categories
All Project Categories Partitioning Suspended Ceilings

Office Fitting in Melksham

Office Fitting in Melksham

Client: Coombe Castle
Value: £62k

Cre8tive was asked to help carry out an office fitting project for Coombe Castle,who were moving from Corsham to Melksham. The work on this started 6 months ago, once the customer had in mind what they wanted to do, Cre8tive carried out a detailed plan of the building. This involved taking accurate measurements of all of the inside and outside space, in particular determining where all of the cabling went.

Cre8tive then designed the position of the new canteen and offices that were required on the existing mezzanine floor. The only problem was that the roof height was over 4 meters high, and Building Regulations says that you have to have 1 hour fire separation between offices and warehouse, so we devised a specification to meet this.

Other requirements for office fitting included spaces that need ventilation and heating, so Cre8tive had to extended the existing heating system, and fit a VAM  unit within the ceiling void to take air from the outside to the inside.

The office fitting project included data cabling the existing offices as well as the new, providing all electrical, flooring, kitchen, decorations and suspended ceiling for the space.

Drawing and specification work.

We produced many drawings for each of the areas that we had to work on. This included work to the front offices, so they needed power and data, lighting, repairs to the suspended ceiling and new carpet. Other areas included:

  1. Repairing some of the panels in the toilets.
  2. Stripping out the existing kitchen and canteen, converting into a new Sales office.
  3. Providing all of the plumbing requirements for the clean room area downstairs.
  4. Building new offices and canteen on top of the mezzanine floor which had to meet building regulations.
  5. New heating and ventilation.
  6. New comms rack.
  7. Painting much of the outside block walls white.
  8. Building a couple of offices on the shop floor, again these had to be 1 hour fire rated.

Existing building photos before work

Construction photos

Completion photographs

Project Management..

We have many ideas on how to make the best use of space, and we are seeing offices and talking to customers all of the time. Over the years we have seen many projects and often have to work to a budget. What we do is get the space working right first and then focus on the budget. In this case the budget was very tight so we ended up using a very cheap carpet which did not affect the design of the office, and just brought it into the manageable level for the customer. This project was leased over 3 years. Please contact us for further information about leasing and financing.

01380 73 88 44 or email us at [email protected]