Office Refurbishment, Knutsford

A two-storey office in Knutsford for a small professional services firm — about twenty staff, mostly desk-based, all of whom had to be back at work on Monday morning each week of the project. The brief was a full redecoration of the main open-plan areas, the boardroom, the kitchen and the corridors without losing a single working day to the job. The plan was to work across two weekends and three evenings, with one zone being completed each session and signed off before the next started. Before any paint went down, the work zone was sheeted and tented in polythene, with workstations, monitors, cabling, server racks and stock all boxed off or covered so nothing got contaminated by dust or spray. Walls were prepared (filler where the previous occupiers had taken down fittings, caulking along edges, sanding back to a clean surface) and finished in a hard-wearing scuff-resistant matt emulsion in a neutral mid-grey — chosen for high traffic and ease of touch-up. Internal doors and door frames were removed from their hinges where possible, taken to a controlled spray area, prepared and sprayed in a hard-wearing satin lacquer for a smoother factory-style finish than a brush would give. Skirtings and architraves were cut in by hand to a sharp line against the new wall finish. Each zone was usable again by the start of the Monday after its session, with the team coming in to a fresh space rather than a building site. The whole job was completed inside three weeks of calendar time with zero lost working days.