Yes, with a few more days and a few less people in the house, it was time to get this done. If you are thinking of giving this a go, the one thing I would say is try to do it with an empty room, not working around family life, as I had to! However, it got done in the end and the final result is just good enough to make me forget the sore knees and aching back!
The family are away on a break this week, so that means I can empty the kitchen of all furniture, sand the floor and add a finish. Most of the kitchen units are now in the garden, wrapped in tarpaulins.
I’ve got three free days to spend on fixing up the most noticeable gaps in the floor. I’m not going to bother filling them all. It’s an old house, I’ll call the smaller ones ‘character’! 😉
The big sanding day will happen on Wednesday, when the floor will hopefully be transformed into something that actually looks quite nice.
All I do to fill the gaps is cut strips (usually about 1/8″, sometimes thinner), from a couple of blocks. It’s actually very good practice with a hand saw cutting these strips, my sawing technique has come on in leaps and bounds. Who needs veneer saw, I can cut straight all day now…
Have you got a moving fillister, boxed moulder, or another plane with more insanely complex boxing than this?! How did craftsmen even manage to do this? Seriously, if you know the procedure please do let me know, or point me to a link.
In the meantime, I announce the start of the Hackney Tools ‘Boxing Tournament’. Got a better one? Send me a pic. mail@hackneytools.com
Not much to report today on the floor project. Worked some perimeter blocks around the angled bay out into the garden. Then I ran a border around the front of the oven, as I noticed that we do get a lot of spitting onto the floor from the cooking. By running a border around the oven, I have space to drop in a piece of stone, which should be a bit more resilient to grease. I do plan to seal and varnish the blocks obviously, but haven’t yet had time to look into the best products. Onward and upward.
I squeezed a little more work in on the floor today in-between other bank holiday things. The perimeter is looking pretty good, but taking longer than I thought. When you have a short run of blocks, it looks very odd to have one very short block in a run of longer ones. Consequently, on short runs of blocks, I have to take the measurement from one corner to the next and divide by two, three, whatever, then cut all the blocks down to that size for the length. It does look better and I’m sure I’ll be glad I took the time when I look back at the finished job. However, it’s very time-consuming and I have a deadline approaching for when this floor has to be finished. Argh.