What does commercial property maintenance cover?
For DBF, commercial property maintenance means the work that keeps a business premises looking right and working properly: painting walls and ceilings, tiling walls, repairing or rehanging doors, and reaching the things nobody can get to from a ladder. Some of it is planned, like redecorating a shop floor. Some of it is a repair, because something has been knocked, split or worn out.
The jobs below are ones we have done and photographed. Every picture on this site is our own work, and you can see the rest on the our work page.
How do you work in a premises that is still trading?
A shop is not an empty room. In the food store shown above, the walls were painted and tiled around signs, shelving, fire points and the pipes and cable trays overhead. That is normal for commercial work, and it is most of the skill: cutting in cleanly to things that cannot be moved, and leaving a line that looks as though it was always there.
It also means the timing matters as much as the work. Tell us when the premises is open, when it is empty and which areas the public use. DBF offers 24-hour working, so say when you need the job done and we will tell you what we can do.
What about the jobs that are out of reach?
Plenty of commercial maintenance is simply too high for steps: things on the front of a building, above a shop floor or over a car park. We own a cherry picker and use it for our own jobs, so high work does not have to wait while access is arranged. If the job is up high, describe it and where it is. The cherry picker page has more.
What should you have ready before you ask?
A quote is only as good as the description behind it. These are the things that change a commercial job, so they are worth a line each:
- What is there now. Bare plaster, old paint, existing tiles, a damaged door. Say what the surface or the fault is.
- What you want it to look like. A colour, a tile, or simply the same as the rest of the store.
- What cannot be moved. Fixed shelving, fridges, tills and signs all have to be worked round.
- When the space is free. Opening hours, delivery times and any days the premises is shut.
- How high it is. If any of it is above head height, say roughly how far up and what is underneath.
- How to get in. Parking, loading bays, stairs or a lift, and who holds the keys.
You do not need all of it to make a start. Send what you know and we will ask for the rest.
