We're laying a Karndean floor at the weekend/next week and have been trying to get hold of a floor roller. After a lot of ringing round tool hire shops in South London the soonest we can get one is next Tuesday.
Any suggestions from anyone? I dont suppose anyone local has one we can borrow.
Ive had a few kardean floors laid in my house over the last few year (my wife used to work for kardean), but have never used a floor roller. Not sure which product you are using, but ive got the plank type De Vinci and the tile type De Vinci. First time round i laid it myself without a problem without the roller. The second time it was done professionally, and they did'nt use a roller either. I think you are worrying to much.
The head office is about 1 mile away from me. If I can be of any help let me know.
Agreed on the "contact" adhesive.
I've laid Karndean flooring in two bathrooms now. You can see one example result at
The second one (using "planks" rather than "tiles") was more recent. They had introduced the new "pressure sensitive" adhesive and that was an absolute pleasure to use. I got the proper special trowel this time from my local flooring supplier. I just used a small hard hand roller in places but I didn't feel it was really essential. No signs of lifting yet and there are plenty of pointy "corners" as it was laid in a diagonal arrangement.
Regards, Simon.
border without any of the tips having to be cut.
Hello Toby,
It looks great (if I do say so myself). However it took a LOT of planning to millimetre accuracy and on closer inspection you would find that the borders on each side of the room are slightly different widths to allow the diagonally cut half tiles to work out correctly. Also I had just had a VERY amusing quote for supply and fit so I was determined to do a good job of it myself to avoid the embarrassment of having to go back, with my tail between my legs, to the local pro fitter if I cocked it up.
See my older post at:
Actually the link in there to the Amtico interesting pages doesn't work any more. However for your convenience I have just tracked down the information. They have now made it available in a PDF file. You need to go to
Regards, Simon.
Many thanks, I think I may be a convert. Now I've seen this done for real (not just in brochureware) the roll of vinyl just won't do.
Simon, it looks as if you've joined 2 (or more) pictures together. If so what did you use to do this?
information.
You need to tell it that you're in the US to get the tech manual with the layout tips.
When I looked it didn't say US any more (but see above).
It also didn't announce itself as the right file or mime type but as application/octet-stream: I had to give it a .pdf extension manually when saving it (this is with Mozilla)
Hello John,
Curses! You spotted the join. I think I used Enroute Quickstitch, which I bought many years ago. The main good thing about it was that if could handle panoramas with multiple images in the horizontal and vertical directions, up to 6x6 images.
I just checked and it is apparently discontinued. See
Thanks for the further tips on locating the elusive PDF file on the Amtico site. The following direct link seems to work for me today but maybe not for long.
Regards, Simon.
It was very smooth: I only noticed one little step discontinuity (at the base of what I guess is your shower enclosure). I'm particularly impressed that all the straight lines really look straight. I've been using Arcsoft Panorama Maker which came with my Nikon Coolpix 3100 and whilst it can sometimes do a nice job on outdoor scenes it's pretty much pants on interiors: even when you tell it which points to marry up on adjacent frames there's no way to compensate for the differnet parallax distortions of the images, so you get bent lines instead of straight. (That's when it manages to marry up the images at all: I've had a few pictures of baths looking like Picassos :-)
cheers
John
I got Canon Photo Stitch supplied with my new digital camera but I dont know if you can get it seperately . You could do a search of
Try a trial version of Pixaround from
Parallax distortion ?
Parallax as a photo problem generally refers to the offset of the viewing point from the actual lens viewpoint. It doesn't exist with SLRs naturally.
Would you be referring to wide angle distortion ?
If so, my workaround is to use as close to 50mm equivalent on a 35mm film camera as possible. This is fairly close to the human viewpoint. Then just shoot more images to get in all that you want. Best to use a tripod. If you are really picky you will also want to swing the camera about its focal plane which may not necessarily coincide with the tripod mount.
Photoshop and Photoshop Elements both come with pretty good stitching abilities. I'm not sure about Elements but Photoshop also distortion correction also.
I have a small digital Canon which came with built-in panorama facilities and its own software. I found it excellent, allowing one to stitch both horizontally and vertically. Scenic views from a height made by stitching vertically can be very effective
Paul Mc Cann
Can you tell me more about this flooring. I have been looking at Amtico, but at £130 m2 and you have to have supply & fit it's pricey.
Rick
Hello Rick,
A wealth of info is available on their website at
I believe the product is really aimed at the supply and fit market, but I have had no problems obtaining supplies from my local stockist, also the adhesive, etc. If you read the info on the website you can find out all about the surface preparation required, and also the protective coating that you are supposed to apply the the finished floor. There is also a special cleaning product although we haven't actually used this and have experienced no problems over a couple of years.
Pricewise it is FAR cheaper than the £130 that you mention. Check with your local supplier. They do various ranges from a "domestic" one up to one suitable for commercial installations. The price varies accordingly. One thing I was wary of on the more luxurious range is that the edges are "bevelled" rather than flat - this wouldn't have worked for the "diamond" pattern that I did.
Regards,
Simon.
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