Hi, I’m building a new house, which will include a modelling room.
any suggestion for floor finishes, particuarly if one happens to drop parts on it, noting that sprue cuttings, etc will end up on it.
thx
I built one a couple of years ago. We were able to get some free engineered laminate flooring. That is another story…but, this stuff has been pretty well impervious to paint, lacquer thinner, etc. The first chair (in the picture) I used had crappy rollers and damaged the surface, though. This is only to show the floor. It now looks nothing at all like this…no floor space, stuff everywhere. Been trying to straighten it up.
I like the wood flooring - sort of keeps the carpet monster at bay.
You might want to ask this in Modelling forums not here. This is for FSM technical problems only.
Go with hardwood flooring. NO carpeting unless you like hunting for lost parts in the carpet monster.
We installed Armstrong hardwood flooring on the second floor of our house. It’s beautiful stuff, but I’ve been disappointed at how easily it scratches and stains.
Some years ago I got a detached workshop with a plywood floor. I covered it with the cheapest light-colored vinyl tiles I could find. (As I remember, it cost about 50 cents per square foot.) It was easy to install, and it’s hard to lose things on it.
Your wife/significant other needs to be involved in the decision. (My wife told me she didn’t intend to set foot in my workshop, and I should put anything I wanted in it.) If your shop is supposed to be a dressy part of the house, hardwood is a great choice (though probably the most expensive one). If it’s going to be a Man Cave, though, either laminate, vinyl tile, or vinyl on a roll probably will meet your needs better.
Thanks. Yes, my feeling was a light vinyl roll. And yes, this is actually going to be a stand alone shed which my wife will only visit occasionally. It will be next to her glass casting workshop and kiln.
Thx
Bit like my current workshop. Absolutely chocker.
It has a 100 year led hardwood floor. difficult to fi d dropped parts, as the Fllor has moved over the years and has bpnatural gaps and cracks.
I use vinyl self-stick tiles (12 inch square). My local hardware store frequently has cheap tiles for sale, 30 to 50 cents per tile. If I spill paint on one, or otherwise wreck it, I can pull up old one and replace it easily. I don’t care if the tiles don’t match exactly on the new tile- it is just a workshop. I find the tile much easier to sweep and clean than the concrete surface under the tile.
I did the floor a little at a time, starting under the workbench area, then expanding and buying a dozen or so each time they had a good sale on these cheap tiles.
When I renovated my house, I had the opportunity to rip out the carpet in my office/modeling room. I replaced it with Pergo laminate hardwood flooring. This is the stuff that snaps into place. It was pretty nifty. It’s also tough as heck. I was able to scrape any paint spills off it after they’d dried, but then, I use acrylics almost exclusively. If I lost a part, I usually had no problem finding it. If I did, I could run a broom around the room and usually find the part in the resulting pile. I think we did the entire 1st floor of my house for around $600, with enough leftover for yet another room, so you can imagine from there what it’d cost to do one room.
–Chris