Clearing old floors in Blackhorse Lane and Leyton units
A commercial floor rarely arrives clean. In the Blackhorse Lane industrial area, around Uplands Business Park and the area's micro-breweries, at New Spitalfields Market in Leyton or inside the 17&Central shopping centre, a unit that has had several tenants carries a trace of each one. There may be patches of tile adhesive, painted lines, a thin coating worn through along the walkways and filled trenches standing proud of the slab around them.
Grinding removes that layer. A machine fitted with rotating diamond heads travels over the floor and cuts the top away a fraction at a time. High spots come down, ridges and old trowel marks disappear, and glue, paint and thin coatings are taken off until the concrete or screed below is exposed and sound. The result is a clean, open surface that primer and compound can grip.
What follows varies from job to job. It might be a levelling coat, a new screed, carpet tiles, vinyl or a resin system put down by a separate specialist. We prepare the base for any of these, but resin and polished concrete are not finishes we lay, and we neither sell nor hire out grinders or diamond tooling. The grinding is done by our team as a contracted job.
Where a whole unit carries thick paint or epoxy, grinding can be slow going, and shot blasting or scarifying may suit better; both appear on our floor preparation page. For the compound that usually comes next, see floor levelling in Waltham Forest.
Extension joins and lifted carpets in Waltham Forest homes
Houses call for grinding on a smaller scale. Where a new kitchen extension slab meets the original floor of a terrace, the joint often leaves a lip of a few millimetres, and grinding the higher edge down lets both areas be levelled as one. New building brings its own versions of this. 9% of the borough's homes date from 2015 or later, and a fresh slab or screed can carry laitance, trowel ridges or a raised edge between pour bays that needs removing before flooring.
Pull up old carpet or sheet vinyl in an older house and there is often a hard layer of glue underneath. Grinding takes the floor back to concrete, so a new finish is not stuck to something that is already failing. A garage conversion is similar, with oil stains and paint to clear.
Grinding has limits. It flattens local high spots, but it cannot correct a floor that slopes or sags across a room; then we grind the peaks and level or screed. On a thin screed we also stop well short of cutting it below its minimum depth.
Dust is the other concern. Silica is present in concrete, screed and tile, and cutting them releases fine dust that can be breathed in, so every grinder we run has extraction connected and the rooms next door are sealed off. A cracked slab found underneath goes to our concrete floor repair service, and over the border there is floor grinding in Redbridge.
How we price floor grinding in Waltham Forest
A fixed written price within 24 hours, once we know the area and what has to come off. See our floor screeding cost guide.
Who grinds your concrete floor in Waltham Forest
K & B Screeding’s own team, led by director Donatas Bardisevicius. Founded 2019, company 12298780.
See what customers say in our Google reviews and on our testimonials page.
Concrete Floor Grinding from Slough to Waltham Forest
As the crow flies, our yard in Slough is about 27.9 miles from Waltham Forest, which lies to the east. Postcodes here include E4, IG8, E17 and E10, and Redbridge (3.2 miles), Chigwell (3.9 miles), Hackney (4 miles) and Haringey (4.8 miles) are close by.
More on floor grinding, part of our screeding services.
