Restoring an old cottage...

Category: floor

Floored

Approximately 387 years after starting this bathroom project, the Stone Room now has a proper floor!

We laid marine ply over the joists as a subfloor, and then had a good old think about what to put on top. It being a bathroom, it’s gonna get wet (or at least damp) so we needed something that could cope with that.

Bamboo was an option, so was oak or another timber, and we considered tiles or laminate or lino.

We don’t like laminate or lino, and decided against tiles because we didn’t want them to crack as the house moves.

In the end, we chose engineered oak: about 5mm of solid oak on top of ply. It stands up well to temperature and moisture fluctuations, and looks exactly the same as solid oak. We bought random lengths in rustic grade, with tongue and groove, from Good Bros Timber near Leominster.

Lovely piles of floor all sorted neatly. Guess how many times we moved it all around…

The bathroom isn’t quite square, despite our best efforts (nothing in this house is square), so we weren’t sure where to start laying it, and dithered for a while until Vicky made the unilateral decision: we’re starting in the tunnel just outside the room. So we threw a few boards down to do some measuring and make sure that, as far as possible, we’d start with a full board along the wall.

Careful measurements and a giant finger

Cutting the boards to fit the tunnel was pretty fiddly, and we added some battens so we could create a neat step later on.

But we did it, it’s neat and tidy, and then we were motoring.

Tidy!

We used secret screws — countersunk screws screwed in at an angle into the tongue, to hold the boards down and prevent creaking. And we used odd offcuts of floorboard as knockers, to keep the tongue and groove tight and minimise gaps.

Helpful labelling.

We did our best to leave an expansion gap of around 10mm all around the edges of the room, but some of them were a bit tight. Hopefully it’ll be fine.

There were some fiddly bits — we had to cut holes for the radiator plumbing, the bathtub waste pipe, and the sink plumbing and waste pipes. We’ll do the bath tap holes from below later.

We cut holes using a hole saw or a spade bit set, depending on the size we needed, which does a really neat job. And thankfully our measuring was accurate and everything fits. Hurrah!

Precision engineering, that.

It took us about three days to lay the main floor, on and off. Then another half day to add the trim around the edge to hide the expansion gaps.

We made our own tool to cut the beading at angles, rather than buy one — but quickly realised our home-made tool was a bit crap. So it was off to B&Q again to buy a proper one, which worked much better.

Covering the gaps with a proper tool.

This was a right pain, because we don’t have skirting boards, just lime plaster. And lime plaster does not like having stuff knocked into it. We found some oak beading from B&Q which is actually really nice, and did our best to mitre it neatly — although, as already mentioned, nothing in this house is square. We were a bit miffed with the small gaps but honestly the next time we walked in, we didn’t even register it. We’ve bought some Osmo paste to create a resin to fill them in. If we remember.

I did Osmo the oak beading though and it matches the floor now, and looks lush.

Looks pretty good yeah?

Then we No More Nails-ed it to the wall, with the odd little tack into the floor to hold it still. It looks ace.

Odds, Ends, and an Actual Floor

We’ve not made much progress since Christmas, but we have done a few odds and ends.

Odd

We’ve been meaning to make a little shelter to sell our eggs from for ages, because otherwise people tend to wander into the garden and walk into Vicky’s office while she’s working.

So we used some left-over fibre roof tiles, some odds of batten, and a couple of chunks of joist, and created a snazzy little egghouse.

Random pieces of wood and a couple of roof tiles ready to make into an egg shelter

Bits and pieces

There’s enough room for an egg holder, some egg boxes, and a honesty jar.

Shelter with egg box and jar inside, and words on the top: Dingle eggs £1.20 for 6

Yum yum

£1.20 for half a dozen eggs, half the proceeds go to the British Hen Welfare Trust, which is where we go to rehome ex-battery chickens.

End

There’s been a gaping hole above the tunnel from the living room to the Rayburn Room for aaaaages.

We finally got around to building a frame and whacking some wood-wool panels up there ready for plastering—eventually.

The tunnel all panelled over with fairy lights

Tidy tunnel

The Rayburn has left the building…

We knew we wouldn’t be using the old oil-fired Rayburn anymore because we recently switched over to gas, rather than oil. It’s not worth converting it, so we’ll probably get an electric Aga when we do the new kitchen.

Joe advertised the Rayburn on Facebook, and a couple came to pick it up—and we got 150 beans for it. Winning!

Manoeuvering the Rayburn using rollers and muscles and hope

Pretty heavy. Rollers were useful.

Looking forward to turning the Rayburn Room into a library, and installing a woodburning stove in the fireplace.

Empty fireplace

All ready for plastering, beautifying, a new hearth stone, and a woodburner

Oh and a proper solid floor

And finally, having spent months wobbling around on bits of shaky plywood and OSB, and wondering if Joe would put his foot through the floor again, we decided to lay a proper subfloor.

We had a little help from Kenda and Mike to get started:

Joe on left and Mike on right, putting noggins into the floor

Men doing manly floor things

The rest of it looks like this only without the gaping holes:

Marine ply screwed to the joists, with insulation visible beneath

The beginnings of a solid floor

And now the whole floor is screwed down and solid, and you can jump up and down on it and everything.

Hurrah!

The Stone Room Floor of Death + Woe

That floor we opened the last post with? Yep, time to go. It’s been grim. Really really grim.

We started downstairs in the Rayburn Room and ripped all the weird fake panel bits off the ceiling:

Ceiling panels

Ceiling panels were kind of structural…

Stripped off the fake panelling

Stripped off the fake panelling

Then we put on masks and gloves, took a brave pill, and Went Upstairs.

And discovered such delights as this section of floor which isn’t really attached on one side at all hahahaHAHAHA such fun!

Gap between floor joists lovely

This floor is actually held up here with hope

And this exciting bundle of bare wires that go who knows where and are stuffed into a broken junction box under the floor with highly flammable wood and dust and crap WOO!

An exciting collection of wires going who knows where

Fun with wires!

And this floor joist which is two scraps of wood held together by one old nail which I put my foot on AND NEARLY DIED SUCH LARKS!

Secure floor

Secure floor

We perfected our balancing techniques (and when I say we I mean Joe because I got proper vertigo up there looking through the floor at the room below it’s NOT RIGHT) and pushed out all the MDF ceiling panels. Which, we truly believe, were partly structural. Which is also terrifying.

In the end, though, we dragged out everything and ended up with this magnificent, cathedral-like space:

Truly cathedral-esque

Truly cathedral-esque

And this exciting door into nothingness:

White wooden door with black iron hinges opening onto nothing

It’s like a haunted horror house

So, yep.  Next thing was to fit the wall plates, which you can see my dad working on in the pic above, and then the floor joists, which we pretty much fitted in the same way as we fitted the ceiling joists above. More on that later…

Paint and Oil

The attic is almost done! The attic is almost done!

We’ve spent the Easter weekend painting the attic walls and ceiling in Flutterby clay paint by Earthborn. It’s delightful stuff: goes on easily and dries super-fast and looks gorgeous. Putting it on with a roller, it retains most of the lime plaster texture.

Then we oiled all the exposed timber with Osmo Polyx Oil – same as we used for the floor.

Doesn’t it look beautiful:

Vicky sitting on the floor oiling the timbers

Freshly painted and mid-Osmo

We still have to put skirting board up – but we’re getting Ken to come and take a look. He’s making us a door, too. And we’re getting some architectural glass to fit over the frame at the end. But other than that… we’re almost done.

We’d have been moving into the bedroom tomorrow if we’d read an email properly.

The bed-frame we have now is gorgeous, so we’re moving it up to the attic. But the mattress is pretty aged, so we bought a new one from Emma – it was 35% off and is rated as the UK’s best mattress, so we’re pretty chuffed with that. Paid extra for fast Saturday delivery, thinking it’d arrive Easter Saturday… only on checking the email, it said delivery for Saturday 27, which is too late. So I’m waiting for them to call me and rearrange delivery and give me my extra delivery cash back.

We’re so excited because we also have brand new duvet and pillows made from Merino wool, and gorgeous new bed linen from Cologne & Cotton.

And we have a chair, which I’m going to reupholster in some amazing fabric.

Tomorrow, I shall start making the attic cosy.

And we’re fitting the most magnificent light above the stairs…

Happy sunny Easter, Dingle fans 🙂

Important Lessons About Laying Solid Oak Floors

After almost exactly three years in The Dingle, the attic has a proper solid oak floor–and we’re bloomin’ delighted!

Having asked grownups to do the scary structural stuff like the big oak beams and joists, and the staircase and roof structure, we thought we’d have a go at laying the floor ourselves.

There were loads of options, but we decided on character-grade solid oak planks with tongue-and-groove edges.

They’re beautiful.

And they’ll be even more beautiful at the end of this weekend, when we’ve oiled them.

We signed the beam

We made this 🙂

Starting the floor was fiddly. We laid the first plank at the top of the stairs between the door frame oak – and rather fabulously, there was a plank exactly the right length. It was pretty nerve-wracking nailing those first nails in. We quickly got rather more blasé about it…

First plank down

Exactly the right fit

Then we had to jigsaw notches around the structure, which went rather well.

Tidy notches

Tidy!

Those strips are 3mm MDF. We used it to fill any gaps between board and joist, so hopefully there won’t be too many squeaks and creaks.

Most of the planks fit perfectly, but the odd one or two weren’t quite perfect – so Joe got a chisel out and did a brilliant job of fettling. Under close supervision by Whiskey, of course.

Whiskey keeps an eye on the chiselling

Supervisor Cat is supervising

And suddenly we were motoring. Slowly, like the first automobiles. But motoring nonetheless.

Now, a cautionary tale. While laying this floor, we learned Important And Useful Things that may help you, should you ever decide to lay a solid wood floor.

Are you paying attention, grasshopper?

Good.

Thing The First: Flooring. Takes. AGES.

We thought we’d spend ages fiddling the first row into place and ages fiddling the last row down (because the end of the attic isn’t so much a rectangle side as an oval). Then we believed we’d turn into an efficient floor-board-laying machine.

Ahahahahahaha.

Oh how we laugh now… because laying floorboards takes bloody ages. Especially when you don’t have clamps (see further down). But it was good fun and we did learn a lot of useful stuff.

I’m sure professional flooring people do this at lightning speed, like those sped-up videos on t’internet. But we did not.

Oh and also it’s totally knackering:

Human face down in hole

Zorsted

Thing The Second: Note Joist Spacing When Ordering

I have no idea if joist spacing is standardised, but just in case: make note of how far apart your joists are when you’re ordering your planks. It will make it easier to lay them and make for less wastage if you have different lengths that’ll fit nicely in the gaps.

When laying a row of planks, you want the join over the joist for strength. The whole thing is like a jigsaw puzzle.

With no edge pieces.

Or picture on the box.

In the end, we did super-well and ended up with very little wastage and only one butt-joint (fnarrr). (A butt-joint is where you can’t tongue-and-groove two planks together, so you just have to butt them up to each other, nail them down, and hope for the best.)

Thing The Third: Label Your Planks

About halfway through laying the attic floor, we had a brainwave. Up until that point, we’d been measuring joists and then going downstairs and measuring loads of planks to find one that fits.

You’re probably reading this and wondering how we manage to dress ourselves – I bet you’d have labelled all the planks at the start, right?

Well, it took us a couple of days but we got there eventually. We measured each plank and wrote the length on each in chalk. Made it much easier to plan.

Just in case this doesn’t occur to you, take our word for it: labelling in advance will make the job much quicker and much less annoying.

Thing The Fourth: List Your Lengths

While you’re labelling your planks with the lengths, write all the lengths down in a notebook so you can cross them off as you use them. That way you don’t have to go downstairs every time you want to plan a row. You can just check your notebook. Easy peasy.

Thing The Fifth: Beg, Borrow, Or Steal Floorboard Clamps

About halfway through our flooring adventure, one of Joe’s BJJ buddies – Pat (thank you dude!) who is a black-belt strangler – saw our Facebook post about our progress and asked if we had floorboard clamps.

We did not.

We were intrigued.

Until then, we’d been using our feet. As in, I’d perch on a joist and shove my feet against the board we were nailing down and put as much pressure on as possible to close the gap while Joe banged nails in. It worked, after a fashion… but you can definitely tell at what point the floorboard clamps arrived because the gaps entirely disappear.

We’re okay with that, because our learning curve is part of the history of the house now. It’s cool.

The clamps sit on the joist, and you wind them up using the handle thing, and they gently push the board tight. Honestly, you would not believe how much easier this made things…

Floorboard clamps in action

Magic miracle lumps

Thing The Sixth: Punch At The End

You might be wondering why we didn’t use secret nails. The reason is because the wise owl at Good Bros Timber who sold us the oak floorboards advised us to use lost-head nails. So we did as we were told. Also, it fits with the rest of the house.

For about half the floor laying adventure, we punched the nails in as we went along, using a big ‘ammer and a nail punch. One of which broke. Nothing to do with me being ham-fisted.

This is a right pain in the bum because the punch is always at the wrong end of the room. Incidentally, bonus tip: have a little wheely trolley and put all your tools in it and wheel it around as you work.

Or, alternatively, every time you stand up, pick up your hammer, nails, and anything else and take it with you or you’ll spend all your time swearing and asking where your hammer is now.

Back to punching: knock all your nails in, then at the end when all your boards are down, you can work your way methodically along each joist punching the nails. It’s much easier than staggering around the floor doing it as you go along.

Thing The Seventh: Take Breaks

Do not underestimate how much hard work this is if you don’t do a lot of this type of thing.

It was surprisingly hard work.

We fell asleep on the sofa about an hour after showering and dinner after each flooring session.

Working tired means you miss more nails (there are some little dents in the boards), you forget to stick nails in (we found an entire board without any nails at all: winning!), you bend more nails with inaccurate strikes (which is really irritating because getting them out is bloody difficult), and you risk hurting yourself.

As soon as you miss the first nail or put a slight bend in one, it’s time to take a break at the least, or pack up for the day if you’re knackered. Trust us: pushing on through is not worth it.

Finally…

My patented technique for getting upstairs. Disclaimer: I am in no way recommending you do this. (But it is fun.)

This is how circus people do flooring:

Really Finally…

At the far end of the room, the wall is seriously bowed. Like an egg. And while I was away for a day, Joe did a stunning job of jigsawing oak boards to fit precisely into that funny shape. It’s perfect.

Here’s the finished floor. Didn’t we do well?

Finished oak floor

Beautiful oak floor

Hope you’ve found this helpful! And inspirational, because if we can do this, you can too 😀

Next week: sanding and oiling (it looks gorgeous).

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