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I know it’s been a while but I’m finally getting around to putting an update on here about the flooring.

I know none of you out there have been loosing any sleep over the progress of our floor but I thought you might like to have a nosey.

So as you know, we started doing this sometime ago. How long it actually is is debatable. We’ve been using our bedroom as a social space for some time now. Literally every waking moment we spend in there when we’re not at work or doing bits and bobs around the house. As relaxing as that sounds, it’s not the best environment to be sleeping and eating in constantly, unless you’re a student. I’m way past that now. I like to have my separate zones. I think it’s important for you to have zones in your house for different purposes; bedroom for sleeping, kitchen/living room for eating etc. These lines have completely been blurred and I kind of feel this might be having a detrimental effect to my general well-being. I can’t comment for Stephen but I’m sure he’d agreed that he also can’t wait to have the living room back to being habitable.

Parquet down!

So it finally is down. It’s laid! It took forever.

The Sanding Stage

I think this has been agreeably the worst part of the whole process. After multiple separate hiring occasions of the industrial sander, the house being covered from top to bottom in dust, lots of sanding pads and many frayed tempers. It was done. Smooth as a babies bottom! Yes!

During Sanding After Sanding

One occasion the sander was broke and was going through sanding paper at a stupidly quick rate. One occasion the dust collection bag split and basically the machine was just pumping saw dust all over the house. It was madness. I’ll be honest, I gave up trying to keep on top of it or getting upset at the mountain of dust appearing on every surface. I think I actually came to terms with my fate and accepted that the house was going to be like this until sanding had stopped.

The process was long. It seemed to take months for the sanding but it was only about a month.

At least he got to play with the big toys!

In the middle of sanding

And for the past 2 months I’ve been going home to this:

Bane

I know, i know!! at least is he adhering to his own version of PPE. Yes he’s been being a good boy!

Where we’re at

I say “we” but really I mean Stephen. He’s slogged away every spare moment he has. Every weekend, every evening, trying to hit the milestones and to get through it. I’ll give him all the credit that he’s not given up. I’ve seen him throw planks of wood, be to the point of tears (I think) and loose it too many times to count, but we’re nearly there. I can’t actually believe I’m saying that. *Shocked face*

Ok ok, I’ve built it up enough. Here’s what we’re looking at now

Post-washing

It looks lovely. I’m really proud of him for achieving something he’ll not mind me saying that he didn’t have the skills to do before he started. This photo was taken before he did two coats of varnish but this is pretty much what it looks like.

So we’re just approaching the final stage. It’s my turn to put the work in.

All the paint is bought. Prepping needs to be done but I’m that excited I’ve booked time off work to do it!! Yay!

I can’t wait to show you the finished room. And more importantly I can’t wait to have my living room back.

XOXOXO

Our parquet flooring project started about 3 months ago.

Stephen often has bright ideas. It came to him one night that we should look at getting parquet flooring done in our living room. I have always been a fan of wood flooring so this sounded like a great idea. I didn’t exactly think about the execution as I didn’t know it was going to happen. “While we’re at it we can replace the fire and the harth and the skirting boards…” The list started to go on.

I didn’t really pay much attention. We’ve done large-ish scale projects before by accident, like stripping back the stairs to be the original wooden treads but that was “by accident”. We hadn’t actively planned to it so I wasn’t under the impression that this would actually come into fruition.

I can’t remember exactly when or how he broke the news to me but before I knew it, he’d bought 55 square metres of reclaimed parquet flooring off Ebay….

Typical behaviour. Yes it was a bargain. I couldn’t complain at that, but at that stage the garage was a complete mess and we didn’t really have the storage space but off he went with my friend’s husband in a van to collect the lot.

This was months ago. We’ve had it stacked in our garage smelling like bitchumen ever since.

The beginning

One day we just decided we’d go for it. Hyped up on the idea of having a lovely living room we hurried back home, donned some flexible clothing and started emptying the room. Luckily we have a large kitchen diner so we had plenty of space to put one of the sofas in on top of the dining table. I filled box after box with books, games and DVDS and proceed to disperse them throughout the house. Preferably in places that wouldn’t cause massive disruption.

This was about three months ago. Slowly the room has become more of a shell of it’s former self.

First the carpet went
Then the skirting board (and a lot of plaster off the walls with it after finding that the previous occupants wanted to set the next people the challenge to take it it off by finding the screw-heads of screws that were completely covered)
The fire followed and now lives in the garage until it can be sold
All the plaster from the chimney breast fell off as it had blown through not being suitable for having heat near it

We lived amongst the dust for weeks that turned into months. Things kept getting in the way of getting things sorted.

Finally, we’d had enough.

It started

Stephen got a family friend to come a plaster the chimney breast and hole where the fire will be going. He had two guys come and price up for a new fire and the work that comes with it.

We’d finally made some process…

Then last week we decided, that was it, the floor would be started.

Our living room consists of two areas; one the existing living room and two an extension which was put on by the last people who lived there. Sadly they didn’t lay the floor in the extension the same height as the existing floor. We kind of suspected this was the case as there was always a faint line showing through the carpet. Saturday we both got up early, did the obligatory run to B and Q and bought some self leveling floor.

I spent most of Saturday armed with a drill and a mixing attachment measuring out this grey powder, mixing it with water while Stephen poured it on to the floor.

Dry in four hours, fully dry in 24 hours. Challenge accepted. It was actually happening. The floor laying was coming closer!! I wasn’t letting myself get too excited.

Sunday morning we go up early again. Went to B and Q and bought the adhesive. Got home and prepped the room for the operation to start.

I carried a large amount of parquet flooring in from the garage and stacked it in one of the corners. Apparently you’re supposed to let the wooden flooring acclimatize to the room temperature. Luckily it’s not too different in the garage to the living room.

We spent a long time on Sunday getting the measurements done to get the precise starting point ready. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube that can advise how to do it but for the herringbone effect that I really wanted, you need to find the centre of the room and mark 45 degree angles. Basically the floor look like some mathematical theory by the time we’d finished.

We were then finally ready… two pieces of parquet went down. And the more followed.

It’s not easy. That first line if blocks is a killer. They slide around, go of straight, basically are a pain in the arse. I thought Stephen was going to rage and throw it all out of the window. Luckily he composed himself and admitted that we could only do so much on the first bit. It was better to let it dry and have it for a sturdy structure for next time. This was very true. The next night was much easier. We did notice that we’d gone off course slightly but we have accepted that we’re not experts, there will be gaps, it won’t be 100% perfect. We’re ok with it. It looks good and will look good when it’s done.

Current progress

Here’s a selection of photos showing the current status of the living room.

We started laying the parquet floor on Sunday afternoon. It’s now Thursday, so we’ll be doing more tonight. The first two photos are from Sunday and then one each night after.