Parquet

Cast your mind back to last February. Saints were still in league 1, Clegg and Cameron had just come back from honeymoon, and the only worry people had about Greece was broken crockery.

About this time, we were putting down the new floor in the Bathroom. We decided on Chestnut parquet. Research on the web suggested that it was a bad idea to use hardwood in a bathroom, but on further research, none of the people saying this had ever tried it. Also, our old house in Salisbury had pine floor boards, since the 1930's and that was still standing.

I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a nail gun from my friend Pete ( the orange thing through the door).

This made it very quick to fix the boards, and had lots of safety features, so that you couldn't go all Mel Gibson on any unexpected visitors.

The shower tray was a bit of a challenge.

I was lucky enough that the long board fitted round it with no cutting but, after that you couldn't get the clamps under it to tighten the boards.

Out of necessity, I learnt a few new tricks about rasping out the grooves to make a snugger fit.

Getting the last boards down next to the wall required a bit more fiddling and ingenuity.

After that there was the small matter of filling small gaps and sanding it all down. I used a 1/2 plate sander and took my time. I had tried using one of those large belt sanders that you can hire once before , and it left so many grooves at the edges that I had to hire a carpenter to come in and sand it all down ( with his 1/2 plate sander).

To finish it off, Tina applied 4 layers of varnish.

We were finally ready to fit the bathroom.

January 2011 - Plastered !

At the start of the year we were finally ready to start plastering the bedroom.

This was a big challenge, due to the size of room, the sloping ceiling and more importantly, the fact that neither of us are plasters.

We learned a few lessons from the bathroom, washing the walls down before we plastered to stop it from bubbling up, and also make sure you use the french 2000 plaster, as it is best fro skimming.





I also made sure to leave the last section I did each day for 20 minutes or so before I went back and polished it.








This cross beam was a nightmare, as you couldn't get the float behind them to spread the plaster evenly, so I had to improvise with jointing knives.

It took an bit of sanding down, to get a good finish, but not as much as the bathroom had. It took almost as long to get all of the dropped plaster and dust off of the beams, the floor and me.

I also managed to fill in round the window, covering all of the mortar and getting a decent finish, for an amateur.