Lift Lobby And Common Area Flooring

A lobby floor sets the impression of a building before anyone reaches an apartment. It is also the surface that takes the most traffic, absorbs the most water in wet weather, and is the most difficult to replace.

Why it is difficult

Everybody has to keep using it.

You cannot close a lift lobby for three days. Residents need the lift, deliveries need the corridor, and there is no alternative route in most buildings.

Which means the work is staged, half the area at a time, with a safe walkway maintained and surfaces that are either trafficable overnight or fenced properly. That planning is most of the job, and it is the same constraint as any [work in an occupied building](/blog/bathroom-work-in-an-occupied-apartment).

Choosing the surface

Carpet tiles. Quiet, warm, forgiving of an uneven substrate, and replaceable tile by tile when one area wears or stains. The staged replacement argument is strong. They hold moisture in a wet entry.

Broadloom carpet. Better look in a residential corridor, worse for spot repair, and a full width roll is difficult to get into a lift.

Vinyl and luxury vinyl plank. Hard wearing, water tolerant, quick to clean, and unforgiving of a substrate that is not flat. Substrate preparation is where these jobs are won or lost.

Tile. Durable and correct for an entry lobby, and it needs a slip rating suited to a surface that gets wet, which matters most inside the front door.

Polished concrete. Excellent where the slab suits it, and a gamble where nobody has ground back a test patch first.

Slip resistance is not optional

The entry, the lift lobby and any ramp are the areas where slip claims happen, and they are the areas most likely to be wet.

Specifying a surface with the right slip rating for the location is a straightforward requirement that gets skipped when a floor is chosen on appearance. A beautiful polished tile inside a front door in Sydney rain is a genuine liability.

The substrate decides the outcome

Almost every failed floor in a common area failed underneath.

Moisture in the slab, which needs testing before any impermeable covering goes down. Levelling, because old corridors are rarely flat. Old adhesive residue, which has to come off properly. Movement joints in the slab, which have to carry through the new floor rather than being covered.

Testing and preparation are the unglamorous part of the quote and the part that decides whether the floor lasts ten years.

Transitions and edges

The junction at a lift sill, a fire door threshold or a stair nosing gets damaged first, and it looks worst if it is done carelessly.

Proper trims, a level transition at the lift sill, and contrast on stair nosings are small items that separate a tidy job from an obvious one, in the same way [make good that looks original](/blog/make-good-that-looks-original-not-patched) separates a repair from a patch.

The staging plan

Agree the sequence, the hours, the access route and the lift protection before anyone starts.

Residents accept disruption they were told about. They complain about disruption that appeared without warning, and in a strata building those complaints reach the committee rather than the contractor.

Ample plans common area flooring around the building's use rather than around ours, and keeps the same crew across the stages so the finish matches from the first section to the last.