After supporting his local football team at an away game, football fan Simon Dobbin was set upon by a gang of men in an unprovoked, vicious attack. The attack took just 90 seconds to change his life forever as the husband and father of two was left fighting for his life in intensive care following a massive stroke and bleed on the brain.
Tragically his injuries caused Simon to be permanently brain damaged, unable to walk and talk and in need of 24 hour care. As a result, his family’s lives were also upturned with his wife Nicole, a Senior Care Worker at a nursing home, becoming Simon’s carer when he returned home from hospital. However, their home in Mildenhall, Suffolk, was unfit for Simon’s needs placing a huge strain on family life until BBC DIY SOS, its volunteers and generous companies like Gerflor stepped in to lend a hand.
The BBC’s flagship renovation programme hosted by Nick Knowles helps people struck by life changing experiences by making their environments better places adapted to their needs. The BBC DIY SOS team is assisted by local trades’ people who give up their time to help deliver large scale projects in very short time scales. The transformations are also made possible by companies who donate products that meet the precise specification of each and every challenging project.
Before BBC DIY SOS came to the rescue, Simon was living in his downstairs living room in a hospital bed with no washing facilities and only a curtain to separate his space from the rest of the house. When East Anglian flooring contractor MBS Flooring was told that the BBC was looking for experienced volunteers it was eager to help.
“We felt privileged to be involved,” said Michael Spinks, MBS Flooring. “We needed functional, good looking floorings that would meet the specification criteria for the converted ground floor living space and disabled bathroom. These areas were created to restore Simon’s dignity and correspondingly improve family life. The floorings also needed to work precisely with interior designer, Lawrence Llewelyn- Bowen’s, interior décor for the house.
Gerflor products are known to BBC DIY SOS as the company has previously supported its projects. Co-incidentally, MBS Flooring, which sources first rate products for its customers’ homes, uses Gerflor products regularly and has an on-going working relationship with the international flooring manufacturer. Happily Gerflor agreed to help out and so Gerflor’s luxury vinyl tile Creation 55 dry back range in ‘Norwegian Slate’ was chosen for the living spaces and slip resistant Tarasafe™ Ultra H2O in ‘Gravel’ was picked for the bathroom.
“Gerflor has very good products which were more than suitable for the areas,” said Michael. “Creation 55 is my ‘go-too’ luxury vinyl tile as the specification equals the best LVTs, it’s a nice, hardwearing product and the price is right, making it an overall excellent value product.
“I also love working with safety flooring Tarasafe™ Ultra H2O, which was a natural choice for the wet room as it is pliable and particularly easy to work with. I laid it personally and can vouch that it went in very smoothly, only taking a couple of hours to complete a four corner shower room with watertight welding.
“Creation 55 also went in very smoothly, the guys loved fitting it; it is such a brilliant range and a straightforward product to cut and work with. Given the timescale it was important to work with familiar products knowing how they would perform. We fitted 65m² over the whole ground floor in a day and a half. In the first instance we had to get the corridor down early as the other rooms feed off it and as by 9am there were 100 or so people wanting to get into the house.
Under time constraints like this you need straightforward products and that’s 100% what we got from Gerflor,” concluded Simon.
Complete with built-in anti-bacterial and fungicidial hygienic treatments, Tarasafe™ Ultra H2O is a high performance, ≥36/R11 slip resistant, compact backed vinyl safety flooring which is lightweight and flexible for quick and easy installation. Coupling barefoot comfort and shod application durability tough enough for wheelchairs, it provides enhanced slip resistance in both wet and dry conditions and is ideal for heavy duty, high risk wet areas.
In stunning mineral and wood designs and 5 plank sizes with 4 beveled edges for realism, Creation 55 is a cutting-edge, LVT tile from Gerflor for both contract and residential installations. It has a hardwearing 0.55mm wearlayer and PUR+ Matt surface for natural looking, long lasting good looks and easy maintenance. It is also soft underfoot and noise absorbing and like all Gerflor floorings, it is 100% recyclable and sustainable.
Navjot Dhillon, Marketing Manager, Gerflor, said: “It was a pleasure to support BBC DIY SOS Mildenhall, which by improving a family home helped a family in need enormously.”
For more information about Gerflor solutions, order a free sample or to speak to a specialist call 01926 622600 / email: contractuk@gerflor.com or visit www.gerflor.co.uk
