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829 Garfield Avenue, Jersey City — Floor-to-Ceiling Mirror Wall for the Fitness Center
Scope of Work
829 Garfield is a new rental building in Bergen-Lafayette, Jersey City, a block from the Hudson with the Manhattan skyline across the water. Its amenity floor includes a fitness center fitted out with Technogym equipment, and Alex GC fabricated and installed the mirror wall that runs the length of it: floor-to-ceiling mirror panels, butt-jointed with no frames, channels or visible fixings, so the wall reads as one continuous sheet of glass.
A Gym Mirror Is a Structural Job
Residential mirrors are small and forgiving. A gym mirror wall is neither. The panels here run from the floor to the ceiling and along the full wall, the joints between them have to be dead straight and dead plumb from one end of the room to the other, and the whole thing has to survive a dropped dumbbell, a kettlebell swung too close, and a barbell leaned against it every day for years. The mirror is safety-backed so that a broken panel holds together rather than shedding glass onto the floor, and every panel is bonded to the wall with mirror-grade adhesive on a levelled substrate, with mechanical support at the base so the glass is never hanging on the adhesive alone.
Butt Joints, Not J-Channel
The cheap way to do a mirror wall is to run the panels in aluminum J-channel top and bottom and hide the joints behind a cover strip. It works, and it looks like a locker room. This wall is butt-jointed: polished edges meeting edge to edge, the seam visible only as a hairline. That takes a substrate that is flat within a couple of millimetres across the whole run, panels cut to a tolerance that keeps the seams even, and an installation sequence that sets each panel against the last without disturbing it. The photograph shows the result — the joints read as thin vertical lines and the reflection is continuous across them.
Sequence on a New Building
Mirrors go in after the finishes and before the equipment. On this floor that meant the ceiling, lighting, floor protection and wall paint were complete, and the Technogym machines were delivered and parked under plastic on the far side of the room while the glass went in. The photograph was taken at that moment, before the floor protection came up and the equipment was set in place.
Photographs
Photographed on completion of the mirror wall, with the gym equipment still wrapped and the floor protection down.
Similar Work and Related Specifications
Mirrors and reflective glass · Glass partitions · Safety glass · 95 Greene Street — LED backlit mirrors · 3121 Ocean Avenue — glass office partitions · Work in New Jersey
Planning Something Similar?
Fitting out a gym, studio or amenity floor? Send us the wall dimensions and a photo. We fabricate the panels, prepare the substrate, and install a butt-jointed wall with no visible hardware.