As the title suggests.I suppose Im asking because of a previous post I started where a so-called fitter isn't demonstrating a great degree of fitting knowledge. Mine was spending nearly 2 years in the shop learning how/what carpet felt like. Loading/unloading the fitters! Cutting up roll-ends, cutting up hsl's to shape. My boss said it was important to understand how my dolphin knife felt on different textures. In a way it was old school but when i finally did go out fitting (Bathrooms) it did stand me in good stead!.
cupboards, cupboards and more..... beer and women... 30 years later and it's still cupboards.. and beer,
Funny you should say that, I was in a tight cupboard just the other thinking WTF am I doin in here? Too tall and too long in the tooth for this! At one point all them years ago I thought I was only ever gonna fit cupboards ;-)
cupboards and bathrooms/more cupboards and bathrooms, stitching 27"for days on end/36 years later, no official qualifications, but do a decent enough job.
remember 1 site i was working on, every skirting in every room in 1 house had great big bloody dings on em lol took a while to live that one down with the boss cupboards, gripping, underlay for months untill i could knife the underlay clean to the gripper without mis cuts, then would progress to foam carpets (yes foam, felt wasnt aboot then lol)
Used to go in with my dad and older brother every Saturday since the age of 14, then left school at 16, used to hate carrying freezing cold boxes of thermoplastic tiles up 10 flights of stairs when the hoist didn't work! trying to prized them apart and putting them on the hot plate, then stacking them, keeping in front of my brother with tiles, blacking out flat after flat, then just sticking treads and riser, the amount of blackjack I used to get on the stringers and walls, mind you I wasn't bad at a young age and was left on my first site at the tender age of 16 &3/4 doing a 40 bedroom/flat old people's home in Writtle, laid 1.5mm Rickett tiles, My dad and brother used to come on the Friday and work the weekend , remember to this day the site agent going over to my dad and asking him to do something, my dad turned to him and said "see that young boy over there, his in charge, ask him and he will get me to do it, gave me a lot of confidence at a young age, (some say too much now!!) That was always the rule, whoever was the first on the job used to be the foreman, not matter the age, One of the problems with apprentices is the regularity of work, we tended to do large jobs as subbies and now I get my own work it's the same, so you can train a young fitter over a course of a job if your doing 50 to 200 flats or thousands of meters of carpet tiles to be a reasonable standard in that product, doing the same thing each day really helps, repetition really works, but we might not do that stuff again for 8 months.
Spent my time standing around, day after day of picking up rubbish and getting gripper/doorbars/tape etc from the van. Eventually progressed to prep work, battering the hell out of skirtings 'til I got the knack......the agony of prepping all day in jeans without pads brings me out in a sweat thinking about it, my boss was such a tightarse I had to make my own pads from underlay (can't remember the name but it had a hessian top layer, heavy as hell). Then cupboards....cupboards...cupboards
Sweeping and sweeping with a little bit more sweeping. In between sweeping it was fetch and carry whatever was needed. Always remember my first day. Had to move 20 rolls of lino which were all stood up and I was given a sack trolley to move them from one end of a sports centre to the other.
Making tea, making the food, picking up rubbish, hoovering. Waiting in the van! For about 6 months and regularly home by 3 pm. Now running the business and regularly doing 14-15 hour days.
this what you call a foam back !!! lol 1980 ish, we couldn't match it up, it was faulty and the last two foot across the 3.66 had a banana pattern, View attachment 5200 View attachment 5201
long and painfull myself but my son adams having it easy hes on the floorskills apprentiship and will be so much better trained than i was.fitting lvts already floor prepping and doing winders ,lifes going to be so much easier from now on .dont tell him that though.
Great to here that mate, hows it getting on i the real world? I hope the floorskills training is working well for you both ?
Marley tiles.......marley tiles.......cap & cove and loads of them ricket tiles , the ones you had to cut with that funny knife !!
Started in school holidays aged 13 untill leaving school at 16 stripping up mixing latex and thought I can do this job so left school on a friday started with same company on the monday to be greated with 100 bags of ardex yellow bag to be taken 3 floors with the boss smiling and saying welcome to the real world, after that I was put with 1 bloke for 4 years and spent 1 and half years of that in cupboards untill I was given the chance to fit in a large area in lino so off I went my own room on my own, time to show these ****ers what I can do so off I go scribe one end pull back perfect fit so scribe other end pull down perfect fit then walk up to first scribed end and its short the width of my scribing bar oops, haha back to cupboard fitting for me. aged 18 I got given a van and had to pick bloke training me for next 2 yeaes, and was finaly allowed out on own aged 20 and first 3 jobs were freebies for bosses friends and end of every day he would turn up put his glasses on and check every sq mm of the floor for afault in the fitting after these were passed by him I was allowed in to paying customers jobs and being told he doesnt care if it takes half a day longer than planned main thing is its perfect speed will come in time,
yep hes doing great,takes forever to gripper now but hes spot on. let him loose on a few winders and im impressed,does he get a data stick so he can look back on things when hes at home? this would come in very handy to recap.
yes he will get a usb pen. We have been having issues with the company who supplied them. Should be sorted soon. However, we are now thinking of not giving them eth usb sticks until the practical training is finished. Reason being is the younger apprentices stopped taking notes when they got wind that we would be putting information on a usb pen. We want them to take notes and draw diagrams themselves. they have small tests we keep giving them so they all know they need to go and read over there notes. In a hotel they dont have pc etc so a usb pen no good to them. Also the trainers can see who is making notes and who is day dreaming while teaching them. Dont worry, we do certain things for a reason.
