Sunday 21 October 2007

Finishing the floor laying.

Digg this

Just so you know, this is not intended to be a tutorial on laying floorboards, merely a description of how I laid my floorboards.

Last night the girls and I prepared a little box with a picture drawn by the children, a current coin and a description of who we are and what we were doing. This morning the box is safely beneath the floor and I hope it stays there for many years. When I concreted in the old drain I put a shoe under the concrete with a message in the toe, after I dug one up in a 15th century cob house once and it struck me as interesting.

I closed my note, which described where the wood was grown and when I laid it, with the words 'and now you're bloody ripping it all back up again, you sods.'

Anyway, I know what I am doing now, so I'd better get on with it, especially as I am on my own today.



This is much the same as yesterday, I am still using the same wedging method and it's going very well, although I can see that when I get to the wall I am not going to be able to continue with the wedges, for obvious reasons.

Being Manley, I choose to ignore this problem until I come to it.


A problem ignored is a problem bodged

When I do reach the wall it is a simple matter of cutting a piece to fit. I wedge and nail the board before the penultimate span (What is the word for penpenultimate anyway?) and then place a span down loose.

The wall is far from straight at this wall, so I measure the space every 6" or so and cut the curve out of a wide board before laying in place, again with approimately 2mm of growth space.


All done

Now all I need to do is the sanding. That's for next weekend.

For now, I weigh 200.1lbs.

================
I am having a poo
================

And now 199.9lbs. Please note that I am wearing enormous steel toe-capped boots here.

And so to bed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looking good, that floor is going to be a corker, are you going to treat it with something or are we going to have to wait for the next installment to find out?

Lord Manley said...

I shall varnish it.

I don't like varnish much, but it is quite required for a kitchen, I think.

Lord Manley said...

As a matter of interest, I did not varnish it in the end, I oiled it and waxed it and am very pleased with the result.