Gaucho Liverpool Amtico parquet in a former banking hall.

Gaucho's Liverpool restaurant sits in a former bank on Water Street, over a basement and the old banking hall on the ground floor. Adapt Flooring supplied and fitted the vinyl and the carpet, and carried out the subfloor preparation: the restaurant, the bar lounge and bar seating, the entrance, the staircases and landings, private dining, the open kitchen, the toilets and the full back of house.

The subfloor and the levels

On the ground floor we mechanically scrubbed the existing floor to lift loose debris, vacuumed it, then applied two coats of Bostik primer and two coats of Bostik smoothing compound, 8 to 10mm thick, with extra smoothing around the bar. Where the new vinyl meets the tiled floor at the bar, polished brass trims close the junction, curved to follow the line of the bar.

A basement floor we could not fix into

The basement needed a different approach. Its existing parquet wood-block floor could not be removed or fixed to. We deep-filled the holes in it with Ardex K40, then laid a Jumpax HD floating overlay across it, so nothing is fixed into the parquet beneath. On top, the back of house is finished in Altro Stronghold 30 safety flooring with coved skirtings, and the toilets in Amtico.

On the ground floor the same Altro Stronghold 30, coved at the walls, runs through the kitchens, prep and wash-up in the colour Dolphin, and through the open kitchen in Abyss.

Amtico and carpet front of house

Front of house we laid Amtico Signature in three patterns: Ink Wash Wood in basket weave through the entrance, the bar lounge and around the bar seating; Dark Walnut in a large parquet through the restaurant and its window booths; and a three-colour Aspekt pattern on the stair landings. A dark LG Hausys Decotile 55 border runs between the zones. The steps, some of them curved, are finished in Amtico and edged in brass, and the stairs down to the toilets have square brass nosings.

Both private dining rooms are carpeted wall to wall, one in an Ege carpet and one in a bespoke Brintons woven Axminster, and the bar seating areas have a geometric inset carpet edged in brass. Coir matting sits in the entrance lobby, and the stage above the bar has a Harlequin dance floor.