A diary of everything involved along the way!
Posts tagged floors
Progress!
Nov 23rd
Things are moving forwards nicely so far this week – and it’s only Monday!
Lots of painting is being done, with vast quantities of raw plaster being covered with 1st coats of paint.
While paint’s going up downstairs I’m taking advantage of a few spare floor boards that had been left in the loft to replace a couple of cracked & damaged boards in key areas – upstairs landing & hallway!
It’s been a while since I exercised my carpentry skills but am starting to think it’s something I should do more often.
Problem board removed:
Needless to say, they were not all quite so easy to remove & replace. Seems that whoever had installed the house’s central heating had taken a few shortcuts and fitted heating flow/return pipework right at the top of the joists, immediately below the boards.
As a result cutting boards over the joists was a bit of a non-starter as there wasn’t enough clearance to cut the board without cutting the pipes, and as I didn’t want to create a water feature upstairs I ended up removing the board piece by piece to reveal the pipes – creating enough room to cut the board !
Replacement boards (from a convenient collection of spare boards left in the loft!) were trimmed to size, and the fit checked.
Job done – boards replaced & screwed down. Not worried about the mismatch in colour as we’re sanding back & refinishing the floors throughout…!
Everyone should get one of these tools – fantastic bit of kit for cutting, sanding or scraping in confined spaces.. not too expensive either.
Busy week ahead…!
Nov 20th
Just a quick update to say that a busy week is coming up…
Progress today includes lots of ground work to prepare the way – getting a couple of rooms nearly ready to finish off when a floor sander arrives on monday!
Window sills have been painted & coving “installed” in both main bedrooms. Tomorrows job will probably need to be painting said coving, along with a freshly prepared radiator & removing all upstairs carpets!!
Finally, we’ve just about lined someone up to do battle with the garden. It’s a job that’s at the end of a long list of things that need doing but needs to be done…
More mountains moved!
Nov 8th
Great progress today – starting to feel like the house is slowly coming together now.
Lounge plastering is well underway; bedroom 1 has had all of the remaining mess/carpet tape removed along with the first coat of paint on the replastered walls & ceiling and the remaining paintwork in bedroom 2 completed.
We’ve also made a bit of a 
positive discovery – all of upstairs bar the ensuite extension has good quality floorboards throughout rather than chipboard.
Does mean that we need to hire a floor sander for longer than thought but also means we don’t need to recarpet everywhere!
A quick test of the varnish we’re looking to use seems to have resulted in a nice finish on sanded boards – which is good even if it does seem to need 3 coats!!
Next steps are to finish off the bedrooms and to get the lounge painted once the plasterer’s finished.
Lots more to do throughout however!!!!
Moving forwards
Nov 7th
Things finally seem to be building up a solid head of steam & are starting to move forwards….!
Bedroom 1’s new plaster’s nearly dry and we’ve made inroads today into getting the room finished.
The carpet’s been pulled up to reveal a floor that has tons of potential if sanded & varnished; skirting has been stripped & sanded; and loads of extremely sharp carpet gripper bars have been persuaded to part company with the floor.
Needless to say this wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded – along with the grippers the carpet was stuck down with what feels like miles of stubborn & surprisingly strong carpet tape… Took a while to figure out what would work well to remove this and fortunately a combination of a heat gun & sharp scrapers seems to work.
Worked around 3/4 of the room today and tomorrow’s job is the rest – along with painting the ceiling & hopefully a base coat of paint of the walls!
One of the bedrooms is also starting to look finished with fresh paint & just needs the ceiling & skirting painting to finish.
The lounge has also finally been prepped for plastering – all in, a busy day!!
