# Flawless Detailing's 4,000sq ft Unit !!!!! Yup you read right



## FlawlessDetailing (Mar 13, 2010)

Hi all. :wave:

Im sorry its been so long time since i posted here ! i feel like a bit of a phantom, but its tough when your as busy as i am working 3 jobs to keep afloat !

After 5 years of borrowing space, garages and sometimes depending on the terrible Irish weather I finally decided to get myself a premises. In Greenhills Industrial Village,Drogheda, Co.Louth, Ireland. - just incase anyone is looking. 
So i posted a teaser pic a few months ago of the new unit I'm currently leasing. Well there wasn't any update since as I'm actually only finished the unit and open since last week !!! Why may you ask would it take 3 months ? Well set back After set back occurred and well it was an absolute nightmare to be honest. Seriously stressful and more to the point it was builders, movers a bit on the landlords side of 'Just Getting Things Done' that it took so long.

Well theres my explanation !

So heres my Unit Build (renovation) 4,000sq ft. 134ft long by 48ft wide - yea its tiny haha But i firmly believe if your going to do it, Do it right.

Heres the outside.
Filthy to say the least!


The inside wasn't much better.




The door was also a bit small ! 
I couldn't fit my Audi in without pulling in the wing mirrors and having a movement of about 3 inches each side so that needed to be sorted.


Myself and the misses started at clearing the rubbish from the inside, but we got there, 1 full skip and 4 hours later!






So the following weekend i rented a big f**k off power washer.
Starting with as far as i could reach up the inside wall with the power washer and i washed the walls down, of the whole Unit. Years of concrete dust needed to be sorted out. Then i moved onto the floor which was equally as bad. but the fun part was trying to brush out the hundreds of liters of water!! Challenging to say the least considering the floor had no slope to an exit and pretty much dipped in the centre of the bloody unit !!
Ive no pics of this for obvious reasons.

After the inside was done, the next day i started blasting the outside to shift some of the years of grime that had built up. I was lucky some temp scaffolding was left by the builders to i used that to get up tho the top of the outside wall. Oh and note to anyone power washing a building - MOVE YOUR CAR !!!


The builders started on the new door here, 3mtsx3mtr entrance and roller door to be fitted. i would have liked bigger and higher but you can't complain when its being done by the landlord for free 




Much better 


After a good debated chat with the landlord again abut the outside and how i needed the guttering was replaced where it once was otherwise it would be a waste of my time and money Painting, he very generously obliged. With a steel crash protection cage around it too might i add. Trucks didn't like guttering in the past !
So the Painting started… by the lady herself…


And myself for the higher bits, oh by the way, a good long pile masonry roller and long reach handle make it soooo much easier !






Black Skirting around the bottom set it off nicely


After that weekend i Headed over to Kelly @ KDS Detailing in Kent. Spent a week over there and completed the exclusive Master Detailer Course. 
If any one is even thinking about it, JUST do it. It was by far the best experience Ive ever had. The man has a knowledge far beyond recognition. And the experience i gained had been invaluable to me. im already planning on popping back over to do a refresher Course Late next year.

Anyway,

Then onto the inside. 
I Bought a Spray gun and PVC'd every wall inside. about 60/40 mix pvc to water. 
Now onto the painting.
I read up as much as i could about painting breeze block and i went and bought a sprayer. Did 2 coats by the gun, about 50/50 again. Did pretty much the whole Breeze block wall of the unit.




I thought i was doing great work, until the misses popped down to help, starting painting by roller, did 2 coats with no spray under coat and got a better result then i did with the previous sprayed under coats !! So the undercoating was scrapped for the rest of the walls. Maybe it was my mix, of cheap paint but it just couldn't compare to the good ol reliable roller.












This Box by the way contains 2 big machines. By big i mean 1 weighed 9 and a half ton and the other just 4 !
Part of the deal was that the would stay there for the foreseeable future (set 6 - 12 months min) so i thought why not paint up the box.

You'll see an after in the later pictures.

Then onto some Striping to break up the White and to keep with the overall theme.


Heres the wall striped and the Box painted. Also was testing out some floor paint too.


My Dad Working hard on the construction of the lighting boxes. And the misses cutting in the top line of white.



I was just going to affix a few strip lights and 4 or 6 metal halide lamps on the wall and box but my trusty brother in Law Dave came up with this whole lighting box concept. Dave and my pops worked at a design, then they started at it. I was delighted with the idea and the results were class. I have fitted 4 double sockets around the box meant no more dangerous and bloody annoying extension leads for the polisher 
I don't know where he's gone in this pic but he put loads of time in which was a massive help. 
Thanks Dave  






I wanted to separate the unit in two. Top half, detailing, bottom half storage, my brothers area and a waiting area for customers cars while there waiting to be collected or in the Q. How optimistic of me haha.The span from the wall to the box was 16 foot. I was thinking of several ways to separate it. Double swinging doors, A big single, An affixed 30/70 split. when my once again brilliant misses chirps up and mentions putting a curtain in. Originally laughted off i thought on. settled on the 70/30 split and priced the wood. €350+ just to separate two area's, fudge that !! 
hmmmmm what about that curtain idea. So i approached my new industrial neighbors a curtain makers, turns out if you like a fabric they don't and have loads of you can get it for very cheap !!  Curtain it was. So a 16 foot gun barrel tube was also got to hang the curtain from. Emma Come to fruition again. It was perfect.

Oh and i seemed to have done my black Skirting there sometime too.



Of course there was a few other teething problems with the building. The roof guttering was what i presumed to be blocked, and in return wet my newly painted wall and left puddles on the floor !!


So the Soccer pitch was removed from the gutters !!! Builders say the never cleared anything like it. At the back of the pic you'll see an actual tree that was growing on the roof !!!


So once that was sorted i had the confidence to Paint the final coat on th floor thursday night knowing it was dry. The results i must say were the business. 




So with everyone under strict instructions not to enter, i left the floor to set for the weekend late Thursday night.

On Sunday night i decided to pop my head in to see my lovely new painted shiny floor. 
Well to say my heart sank would be an under statement !




The whole floor was flooded. Any hardener in the paint due to cure was well and truly watered down and as you can see from the picture above the whole floor was bubbled. 
I went to the CCTV. Thinking that i had a few people nosing about while cleaning the place up and painting maybe i had been vandalized for some unknown reason. After going trolling through 3 days of footage i eventually worked out what had happened. 
There was a massive down pour of Rain fall on Friday at 3pm. All the debris, not much might i add, that the builders left in the gutters ran down the drain pipe. Remember the steel boxes protecting the guttering ? Well the debris made a lovely little water tight seal around the base of that box and the water rose to over a foot in no time (134ftx30ft of roof all going into 1 drain!!!) The completely mad thing was, the toilet in the unit was right inside the wall of that drain pipe and some bloody genius and drilled not one but 2 wash basin waste pipes and never sealed up either. Complete act of god if you ask me. I went over it in my head and with my landlord a few times and it was just so bloody random to happen there wasn't much i could do. I could have followed suit with the builders but world it have been worth it ? No. 
heres the amount of Debris that i pulled out of the guards, so little but did just enough damage.


So, using my trusty wet and dry hoover i attached 3 of the hoover arms i had accumulated from 3 older hoovers, attached the head and sat the end in the deepest part of the water, which was 4 inches deep by the way, to avoid as much lifting of the paint as possible. So it being only a 20 litre hoover it took only 40 seconds to fill it each time. 2 hours later i had removed roughly 1200 litres of water from the surface of the floor.

So as you could Imagine i was getting pretty ticked off about the whole thing at this stage. So when i thought to myself, things can only get better. I called the landlord Monday morning to see what we could do with the whole floor situation and the leaking and at the end of the conversation i was once again given news i didn't want to hear. The big machines behind my freshly painted Box with my new lighting rig were being removed the following week. AAAARRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!!!!!!

So the box came down, and the lights on both sides by me of course as the movers refused to take it down carefully, only taring something down thats not yours is the only option these days ! 
And the 2 week wait commenced. Then after taking 2 days off everything to make sure i was there when the movers arrived two weeks later than discussed 3 men in a car arrived. WTF ! Im a pretty calm nice guy, but to say i was angry when they said "were only here to assess the move" would be an understatement ! So i as politely as i could told them if today wasn't going to happen, it never was, Id find some travelers to cut up the machines and take them away and they would also be getting a big fat bill off me for the days work, losses, inconveniences and storage. They decided they could do it that day after all !
It was the owners of the machines that were so indecisive but the men who moved the machines were gentlemen. And bloody good at what they do too.




So after a bit of thought, i decided to reconstruct the box and make it bigger  so the space and construct is there in the future to build a spray booth :-D


A you can see its a bit bigger but worth it. Lots of wood cutting and hammering here !


So here it is back up and bigger before i repainted it again. And you can see the sorry state the floor was is too. if you even dragged your foot it would come up. 


A bit of signage for the front of the building  Also done by an absolute professional and a gentleman. 




So the floor was re done again. 3 full coats again on the floor. And this time i got some clear sealer to go on top too. water proof, oil proof, and tough  And i decided to go for a two tone color for the floor too. 








Oh and heres one to be a little jealous of, MY FLOOR EVEN GOT BEADING !!!!!!! haha


So finally here it is ready to Rock. I still have to put up a few photo frames and little touches like that but I'm pretty happy where i am now. a bloody log shot from where i was 3 months ago !!





Chillout area


The correction Lab;
So i have 5 double multi directional metal halide lights each side of the correction bay. 20 bulbs in total so it gets pretty bright at full tilt. An i have 4 6ft tubes to fit under the boxes also just for a difference in light for correction and some light for the lower skirting of vehicles. I also have 4 double sockets placed strategically on the box and opposite wall meaning no more dangerous and bloody annoying extension leads for the polisher 


With an Accord i did the other day for size awareness.


The valeting/ drying and finishing area.


So thats my Journey so far. Bit of a roller coaster but i think it was worth is in the end. Plus I have newly gained experience in Plumming, carpentry, wiring and a little bit of Painting 

Thanks for reading and i hope to start posting my Detailing work from now on too.

Padraic

Flawless Detailing
0851464162

www.flawless.ie
www.facebook.com/flawlessdetailingdrogheda


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## Kash-Jnr (Mar 24, 2013)

Exceptional work. You should be proud of the amount of crap you put up with.


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## shudaman (Sep 12, 2010)

Hell of a task you have takin on mate, well done
I love the roof design too really nicespace


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## clubber01 (May 29, 2013)

That's epic mate, looks awesome. Good luck with the business


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## marc147 (Nov 21, 2011)

What a transformation you have done, well done :thumb:


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## Benn (Aug 22, 2007)

Wow, hell of a lot of work gone in to this, but it looks fantastic to what it did. 

Well done for not giving up.


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## s29nta (Mar 9, 2013)

Fair play its looking great, well done:thumb:


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## Guru (Aug 28, 2013)

That is simply marvellous. Love the colour theme and your narration too.

Somehow the correction lab seems to be "complete" with the Accord sitting there.


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## Derekh929 (Aug 28, 2011)

Hard work paid off big time well done and good luck with new unit, all you need know is a scissors lift:thumb:


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## Porkypig (Jun 20, 2012)

Cool dude, looks like an exceptional space to work in! :thumb:


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## b9rgo1234 (May 3, 2009)

:doublesho WOW, that was some read!
I'm glad it turned out so well in the end with all the set backs you had.
All the best for the future :thumb:


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## AGRE (Sep 25, 2008)

Awesome space to play in, thanks to all your hard graft. Looks great :thumb:


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## James Bagguley (Jul 13, 2013)

Great read, credit to you for battling through so many trials :thumb:
It seems to have paid off though, you have a practical, professional, and good looking work space, great job guys :thumb:


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## okcharlie (Jun 29, 2010)

Well done mate......a big space and a big challenge! Did a similar workspace but smaller some years ago and know how hard it can be. Like you i had my missus her dad and my dad to hand to help.....makes it so much more rewarding and personal when done. Good luck with your venture and all the best.


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## Rascal_69 (Sep 20, 2009)

Great read. 

Looks awesome now. Really nice how you done it. 

Best of luck with the business


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## Jonny_R (Oct 23, 2012)

Amazing transformation and space now 

Take my hat off to ya


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## Kerr (Mar 27, 2012)

Best of luck in the new place. A lot of effort has gone in there


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## streaky (Dec 2, 2006)

That is a huge space with lot of work put in by friends and family. All the best for your future.


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## steve from wath (Dec 12, 2008)

what a great thread
smashing workplace
looks the buiness now,nice clean uncluttered place to work
good luck in your venture


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## ianrobbo1 (Feb 13, 2007)

Enjoyed that read, I really hope things go a lot smoother for you, and your business takes off!! :thumb:


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## CJA Valeting (Dec 7, 2006)

That looks great, will you be washing cars inside or not?

The light boxes look rather high though, I would of thought some at door height would have been good too.


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## FlawlessDetailing (Mar 13, 2010)

Hi All. 
Thanks a million for all the well wishes. Its really appreciated.
It certainly was a challenge but it puts a smile on my face every time i open the door 

Yea I've a pretty cool Dad, he put some serious time in for me on those boxes, wiring and lighting, and he was never an electrician, just a bloody good handy man !! Family is very important and its nice to know they have your back when you need a hand. Not to mention the better half. She's also a keen detailer herself. Better than anyone I've ever had helping out ! 
A keeper i think ?!!!!

Thanks again everyone.

Padraic


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## neilb62 (Jul 30, 2007)

What a fantastic place to work, and all your own elbow too... top stuff..


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## iano C (Apr 4, 2010)

Hi mate well done and the best of luck with it, reminds me of my place when I moved in lol.I am on the move myself again looking at a few places in the next few days, going to get away from all the valeting sh,t and only do detailing.The landlord was a right pain and 3000 rent was just way to much for what it was ,anyway best of luck,I'll bell you tomorrow as I missed your call and forgot to call you back as just being packing and planning my next move .


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## luke w (Dec 11, 2012)

What a really interesting read, cheers for posting! Best of luck!


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## jamesgti (Aug 9, 2007)

Great work mate looks nice.


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## svended (Oct 7, 2011)

Very nice work on a great size unit. Lots of natural light too. 
No I'm not jealous..........................................much! Lol.


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## horned yo (Feb 10, 2009)

Lad that is seriously well done on your behalf. Think i would have fired out a few hay makers along the way if that was me 

unit looks the nuts to


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## craigblues (Jul 24, 2011)

Fantastic Effort! Hope it all works out for you...


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## [email protected] (May 30, 2006)

Haven't been on here in a lifetime, but fantastic to see someone from here doing such a build, investing time, money and effort to make your dreams a reality.

The very best of luck with it. Maybe I'll even visit sometime!


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## Rowan83 (Aug 21, 2007)

What an epic transformation,, all the best for the new business


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## Buckweed (Aug 27, 2012)

Wow that's fantastic ... You've all worked so hard to get it ready ...you have a great team around you ...all the best for the future. :thumb:


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## cleancar (Sep 21, 2006)

Any more pics !


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## MEH4N (Mar 15, 2012)

great read, you had quite a few setbacks but glad you overcome them and are settling in well. 

All the best for the future


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## Kenny Powers (May 29, 2013)

Excellent turnaround on the unit Padraic and fair play to you for sticking with it despite the various setbacks!
It takes serious liathróidí to set up this sort of business in the current economic climate, and I wish you every success with it.

P.S. At least you got rid of the diesel laundering plant out of your unit!:lol::lol::lol:


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## FlawlessDetailing (Mar 13, 2010)

Yea Kenny, thought that myself. Turns out they were chocolate machines for Craft aka Cadburys. Some size. Glad there gone tho, otherwise I'd be doing a "LSP with White chocolate on white cars and Dark chocolate on black" thread hahahaha. 

CJA Valeting, I could wash inside if I wished. Have the space and the paint and floor inside are waterproof. But it's too dodgy with slipping, cleaning up water, condensation, damp, ect so outside will do. 
And the lighting box position are perfect. Their position was well planned. I'm not working on exclusively low Lamborghini and Pagini just yet !  


Thanks again guys. 

If anyone had any questions about anything at all don't hesitate to ask ;-)


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## Brian88 (Sep 28, 2013)

Love threads like this absolutely brilliant what's a transformation! Hope it all works out for you mate  good luck.


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## Grant-s3 (Oct 13, 2013)

What a transformation. Wish you the best of luck with your business. I am opening up my own Powder Coating shop in the next 18months so I will get a thread up on my unit(see if I can get it looking as good as yours )


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## D.Taylor R26 (Feb 5, 2012)

some fantastic work so far. cant wait for more pictures. thanks for taking the time to post up as well. 

Dave


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## Andrew Goacher (Dec 27, 2012)

Great work, excellent turn a round :thumb:


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## Envy Car Care (Aug 17, 2006)

Well done there, you must be very patient ;-)


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## Junior Bear (Sep 2, 2008)

Miiiiiiiinnnnnttt


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## rojer386 (Mar 15, 2008)

Brilliant work, looks great. 

Well done and good luck.


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## jenks (Apr 20, 2009)

Great result from your hard work.

What floor paint and sealer did you use please?


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## VRS James (Nov 23, 2013)

Good work there. Should serve you and your clients well.


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## FlawlessDetailing (Mar 13, 2010)

jenks said:


> Great result from your hard work.
> 
> What floor paint and sealer did you use please?


Hey Jenks.

Believe it or not i got the BAUFIX stuff from Aldi ! 3-4 coats Est 80-90 litres. Then topped it off with Ronseal Concrete Sealer/waterproofer 10 litre. In hindsight i should have just gone with the two pack epoxy resin from day one but with so much space to cover i would have cost me nearly 1k and i was doing this as i had the money so couldn't afford it at the time. Maybe when i start making enough ill strip it back and re do it. for then mean time it'l do nicely.

Thanks for all the nice comments guys :thumb:
Business is slow, it is winter i suppose. But word is slowly spreading out about the quality of work we do. So only time will tell :thumb:

Thanks again

Padraic


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## rkelly113 (Oct 12, 2013)

You did a great job to the place! Good luck!


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## Carshine (Nov 11, 2009)

Wow, that place really came up nice, was in desperate need of a makeover I guess  The picture of the tree that was removed from the roof, had me for a laugh there  Good job!


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## MitchB121 (Nov 23, 2009)

Great turn around!


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## hibberd (Jul 5, 2006)

Well done. It must have been soul destroying to have had all the setbacks. A word of advise, they say behind every sucessful man is a wonderful woman, treasure that lady as she is worth her weight in gold for all the help and work and I imagine support too she gave.


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## taz007 (Dec 31, 2007)

great turnaround on that unit. nice set up now.


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## TheGruffalo1 (Dec 11, 2013)

Took me a fair while to read it, felt like I was doing it myself.

But a huge WELL DONE. I really hope it works out for you!


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## fifer807 (Sep 7, 2013)

Looks pretty smart. I wish you all the best.


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## almas_09 (Dec 19, 2013)

wow, amazing turnaround!


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