The Floors – Greg Santos and Soaps impress our expert
The final task for the trainees was to fit the floor finishes. The Bricking It flat has timber-finished laminate boards.
Fitting them presented a major challenge, requiring carpenters Santos and Soaps to do a lot of precision measuring and cutting. Inch-perfect gaps must be left around the edges of the flooring. This is so the floorboards can expand without pressing against the wall and buckling. A special trim is then fixed around the bottom of the skirtings to hide the expansion gap and make it all look tidy.
"Greg Santos really worked well", says Robin Clevett. "He desperately wants to get into the construction industry, and carpentry in particular, so I tried to help him. Soaps was excellent too. She had brilliant hand-eye coordination."
Finishing off – all the trainees get Robin's approval
Finishing off is when all the door furniture is fitted. It's also when we put on towel rails and toilet roll holders. The doors on the kitchen also need some final alignment.
There are other little jobs to finish off too, like the slatted shelves in the airing cupboard. Finally the front door goes on, and the door furniture is fitted. Zac was my right hand man. He has a fantastic attitude, but looking back I'd say that none of the Bricking It trainees were any different to your average apprentices.
I'd probably give them the same piece of advice my father-in-law told me when I was an apprentice: eyes and ears open, mouth shut.
