Saturday 28 September 2013

Finishing An Oak Floor

I remember pricing an oak floor, over a year ago now, and the customer said to me not to bother pricing in for staining and oiling the floor, they'd do that themselves. I cringed, as this can really make or break a floor. It's a shame to spent a lot of money on the oak and then skimp on the last bit.
 
 Last week I laid an oak floor, so all this week I've been juggling my week around sanding, staining and oiling it. Once the glue had gone off I filled all the deep knots, then spent a morning sanding all the filler off and any planer marks from the supplier (there were plenty). I sanded it to 120 grit as this is all that's needed for flooring.
I then spent quite a while cleaning it, making sure that there was no dust what so ever in the room before I set about staining it down to a medium oak colour.
The stain involved putting it on with a brush and then removing the excess with a rag (wax on wax off) and as the room was bigger than one pot would do, I emptied both pots into a container and mixed together so there would be no difference in colour tone.
This then took a day to dry before I set about oiling it. It took around two hours to apply the first coat of hard wax oil and this then took 24 hours to go off, I did set a large fan to blow over it to decrease the drying time.
I sanded lightly back between coats, hoovered it all again and applied the second (and last) coat of hard wax oil. I fitted the skirting in there yesterday and I'm really please with the finish. The floor has a warm even tone and is smooth to the touch. More pictures to follow!

Sunday 15 September 2013

Making Box gutters

This week I had to make up two sections of large box gutters to waterproof an area of a barn we're converting.
The roof used to run down into a wall with vertical cladding that had normal guttering at the bottom. This was fine when it was just a barn as the water could run down onto the floor and not cause any problems.
As we're now doing them up it need to be water proof. We stripped off the cladding and the first four or five runs of slates so we could see what we were working with.
I then started at the lowest point and made the first step. A 1.4m run of ply that had a good fall on it. I then worked my way back to the other end of the roof creating each 1.4m run of gutter with a 50mm step between each level Each bit has to be fully supported and built in such a way to take the lead.

Working on the roof
 Bert the plumber then leaded these for me and we set about lapping the felt back over it to make it waterproof before we put the slates back on.
One stretch of leaded gutter
I've now got to reinstall the cladding and repair a section of oak frame that I exposed due to a high level of rot/woodworm on one joint.

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