Laying A Pre Finished Oak Floor

I've been laying a pre finished oak floor this week and I think it's up there with the biggeest single room I've done so far.

Each run of boards was 10 meters long so getting the first row straight was essential. 

The boards were engineered with a 6mm layer of oak on the top. They were pre finished with oil and have a really good feel to them. All boards were secret nailed down and the tongue and groove were glued to prevent squeaking. 

I've still got lots of floors to lay in this office yet, another 5 offices and all the corridors so plenty more before Christmas! 

Solid Oak Floor

Another solid Oak floor last week. Glued down to concrete, but this time using a Gekko gun and a lot less messy than with a trowel. 

Ready to go down

Cutting station set up with dust extractor

Alex with the oversized gun, my partner in crime on this floor! 

Midway clamp up, always tricky to keep it tight when gluing a floor to concrete

Wedging up the end at the end of the first day, still another room to go

First floor looking good.

Last board to clamp up. with my patented bent bit of metal and clamps set as spreaders

Track saw making ripping easy

cutting under frames so no expansion gaps can be seen in doorways

Between rooms

Second floor nearing the finish

Sanding up, orbital after the big floor sander has finished just to take off the marks left by the drum

More pictures to follow. Managed to do the last bit of sanding today so now it's ready for oiling then I can drop back and do the doors, architraves and skirtings.

Boarding Up Stairways

I've taken on an office refurb in Malvern that involves lots of stud walls and timber work. My first job was to board up a few stair wells that were no longer needed. 

A fairly straight forward job but one that needed to be done first to make the area safe to work in. 

Joist added

Way in to the cellar to be boarded up

New beam and joists added

finished boarded 

Lots more pictures from this job to come - I've got plenty to do there, sorry these aren't that interesting!

Pre Finished Oak Floor

Last week we laid a pre finished oak floor from Travis Perkins and to be honest I'm quite impressed with how it looks when it's down.

 This is the floating floor type, laid on a foam underlay with the tongue and groves all glued together. Lots of beams and doorways to go round and oak skirting and beads made out of the same stuff, at the customers request but unfortunately the longest length was only 4ft so lots of joints!

The customer seems really happy with it. My only concern would be how long this "high" finish will last compared to my usual oiled finish, but when you're having to pay for labour this pre finish makes it a lot cheaper rather than having to pay me for a couple of days to sand, stain and oil the floor. Also it means that the furniture didn't have to leave the room whilst we were laying it, we did one half then moved everything over and did the other.

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!

Oak Flooring

We finished laying some oak flooring in the small downstairs cloakroom this week.

 The flooring is an engineered board with solid oak on the top and bottom and pine (grain running in the other direction) in between these two layers. It was easy to lay, although I'm not a big fan of the adhesive we used as it's like trying to work with treacle! It's still all over my hammer and anything else that got near it!
Other than that the floor can be treated like any other solid oak floor, the top layer of oak is thick enough to be sanded and it will take any finish that's required. It was a top grade of oak so it contained very few knots or blemishes and looked great as we put it down.

The week before we also finished laying the floor in the kitchen, as the units are being fitted over the next couple of weeks.
I'll post more pictures of the finished floor at a later date.

How To Patch A Floor

Removing or moving a wall can sometimes mean that a floor has to be repaired. This is what happened today at work.

the area that needs some new boards

The repair was to be over a small area, ideally I would have preferred to take out a longer section of flooring and replaced the boards over a larger area. But this area is going to be carpeted and the two sets of boards in the different rooms don't match up (in line or thickness) so we decided this was the best course of action.

Both sides trimmed out to finish half way on a joist



To start with I removed any nails I could before using the circular saw to cut the floor boards back so the ends finish half way on the joist, this means that the boards have something to rest on and they are supported. Make sure your saw is set only to the depth of the boards or you'll be weakening the joists!

The floor boards in the different rooms are different thicknesses meaning one side had to be packed




The one room has floor boards a slightly different thickness to the other so I had to use packers to bring it to the same level (you can just make your own out of wood, but these plastic packers are great as they come in different sizes and are ready to use).

All screws have to be pilot holed and countersunk so the boards don't split

I fixed the boards as I went and as the screws are near the edge of the boards they all had to have a pilot hole and countersink to save splitting the wood. I also made sure that all the original boards I cut were fixed down as well as I had removed some of the nails from them earlier.

The finished repair ready for carpet

A basic repair but when it has carpet on top no one will ever know I've been there!

Laying a Chipboard Floor

A bit of a different direction from the last post! Can't say I'm not varied even if it is all wood!

We finally managed to get the flooring down in the toilet area of Summerfield Park today. Feels like a complete relief, what with the copper being stolen in the past and having to raise the floor in the first place to avoid the cellar.

Anyhow we got it insulated (insulation held up with battens) and worked our way across the floor laying the boards as we went (I think it's the most pipes I've ever cut round on one floor - got through a whole pack of jigsaw blades).

All the pipe work was on the undersides of the joists so it makes you feel a little better when your nailing it down (we still play the game where you hiss like a leaking pipe when you put the first nail in! - Not good for those with a nervous disposition).

Even managed to get the layout for the studding marked out with the sole plates fixed to the new floor, which means I've got a nice Friday studding - seems like a good way to end the week.

An Oak Bathroom

A job from last year

This is going to be a picture heavy Post!

Last year I was just going self employed again and I didn't have much work, so my mother decided it was time to have her dream bathroom. My sister and I have both left home and my brother works away a lot so Mum decided to loose a bedroom to give the large farm house the decent sized bathroom it needed.

The room before I attacked it!

The trouble was the room chosen had only small oak joist going into a chamber beam and to make matters worse the floor was 5 and a half inches out of level from one side to the other. Add to this that mum wanted an Olympic sized bath and an oak floor, the only option was to raise the floor level with a suspended floor.

No easy task, but one I enjoyed. The step in the entrance was an extra problem but it just took a bit of extra trimming round. We then got the bath and shower in it and the plumber in to do his pipe work, It was then time to lay the oak floor boards. It had been a while since I had done an oak floor but it didn't take long to get into the swing of it, I was proud of the results, all secrete nailed and tight joints.

I also created a stand for the basin out of 3x3 oak using foxed mortise and tenon construction, my little mortisier got quite hot but managed with only a bit of tidying up with a chisel. The bath boxing on the other hand was not as fun, it was huge as mum wanted a shelf created all the way round to be tiled. I spent a couple of hot afternoons on my hands and knees wedged under the bath, cursing!

Mortises for the basin stand

[Basin stand being clamped up]

A friend then tiled the walls, he took his time but made a really good job of it.

To finish I stained the floor a medium oak colour to go with the feel of the rest of the house and then gave it two coats of oil to seal it, the basin stand was given a different shade of stain to make it stand out.

Picture showing the step and basin stand (the mitre was cut by hand)Bath with tiled boxing around

Shower area

The best compliment so far was someone couldn't believe it wasn't the original floor! Mum was really pleased and its always nice to be able to go back and enjoy your work (spa bath please!).

What goes on behind those walls?

Sometimes the best sign of a good tradesman is the fact that you can't see he's been there.

That was the case the week before last, as we were battening out an old brick wall. In the end all you could see was a perfectly plumb plywood wall but behind that there were all the timber grounds to straighten it out, full of wedges and packers, once its tiled there will be no clue a carpenter was ever there.

The shower floor will be another example of this. as we were raising the floor up 6inches anyway the customer decided that they didn't want a standard type shower tray. Instead they wanted one that was sunk into the floor. This meant positioning the trap to the shower and then making the floor fall in four directions into it, bit of a test of my geometry skills! It will then be tanked before the tiles are laid.

I've also been doing plenty of wood turning this week (due to the fact that we can't leave the village due to snow) but most of it is presents so I can't put them on here just yet!