Day 2 countdown (8 days to go): Floors...
My lovely boyfriend who I will be eternally grateful to has been spending the last couple of days prepping the floor for sanding. Downstairs, we got an incredible bargain on some lovely solid oak floorboards. Upstairs we pulled back the estate-agent-fast-sell carpet to reveal some original planks and got very excited. The excitement was short lived when I found that to get the entire thing done would cost near to £1000 and given that I'm running seriously over budget, that just was not an option.
The reason that my floors in particular would have been pretty expensive is the amount of work it will take to prepare them before the sanding and treating can even begin. They have tacks from the pointless carpet throughout them and very old protruding nails coming out of the edges. It takes hours to remove the tiny carpet tacks and is horrible work because they're so tiny that you tend to bash as much thumb as floor. Robbie is going through all of this pain alone, whilst I continue to paint. I cannot take any credit.
The other reason is that there are large gaps between some of our floorboards which will be drafty and also painful for stubbed toes unless something is done about them. The large gaps can be filled with the standard sawdust resin mix, but they won't actually be sealed up by this so instead we decided to buy some slivers of wood to pane down and hammer into them. This means that by the time you get to sanding, you end up with one flush and draught proof surface. It is also far more pleasing to the eye. If we were to have paid for this to be done professionally, it would have cost the earth but doing it yourself just means buying slivers (ours came to £100 total) and then a lot of time and pain. Thank you Robbie.
We are by no means there yet. We still have a whole room to complete before the sander arrives on Friday and then (according to all sources) the real pain begins. By the end of the weekend though we have to be done. Then it's just a matter of buying the wax or the varnish and finishing off. Bring on move day!
Please let there be a 'The Floor: After' post soon!
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