I had a message the other day from a friend who I work with quite often asking if I'd help with a job. And a picture of a very damp looking chipboard floor.
As the Etsy stuff hasn't been selling at it's usual level lately (I'm guessing Government turmoil and cost of living are hammering my sales) I agreed to it.
It was pretty bad! We stripped back the lino to expose the chipboard. The floor was on top of a concrete slab, a layer of plastic then 2 inches of polystyrene insulation, then chipboard then a layer of lino.
We think what had happened was the bath had leaked for the 20 years since it had been installed. Managed to get under the lino behind the bath and then be sucked up by the chipboard. Just a tiny bit each time the shower was used. But enough to do this.
Luckily because it was pretty much sealed it didn't smell! In fact it was hard to spot. The floor felt a little soft, but more like how an expensive lino feels than anything else.
We could lift the chipboard out with out hands, like scooping up a bowl of weetabix! And the polystyrene had soaked up so much water it took two of use to lift a sheet of it!
We got it stripped out and cleaned up. The plastic had saved it from being damp under it.
Then we added battens on the floor (we are fitting a wood floor to allow access to pipes in the future) and levelled them up.
With this done we started to fit the floor.
Seems years since I've fitted a good pine floor. Very under rated.
They also had a big unused balcony we could use as a mini workshop - great news as it rained the whole time we were there!
Saw not dissimilar in and old colonial cottage I bought in NZ about 40 years ago. The washing machine fell through the floor when i moved the machine. That had been a wooden floor inside a brickworked lean-to. Pinned a frame to the brickwork, set in a row of piles and did more or less what you have done there. Very satisfying.
ReplyDeleteIt's nice to put it right. I bet it made you swear when the washing machine went through it!
DeleteLooks great Kev - and I would agree that a pine floor is a very under-rated wood for flooring.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's so rare to fit something that looks better with age!
DeleteThis reminds me of when my father fell through the bathroom floor of our old farm cottage when we lived on a farm 60+ years ago. Unbeknown to us the floorboards across the whole ground floor had gotten damp and were suffering from severe dry rot until that fateful day when Dad fell through the bathroom floor. We had to move out for a week whilst the whole ground floor was stripped and replaced with a concrete floor. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect that the culprit was a leaking flat roof segment that allowed water to permeate into the internal walls and on to the floor. After my parents moved out the cottage was demolished to make space for a garden centre to be established on part of the farm as part of a diversification push by the farm's new owners.
ReplyDeleteI ended up fitting concrete floors here, not due to damp but more the wind used to blow through and cool it and the mice used to love living under there!
DeleteLooks so good,
ReplyDeleteThanks! I love a good pine floor!
DeleteI closed the front door seeing the builder off. he was doing the kitchen ready for selling house. the door would not close as the hall floor had collapsed. lucky the builder was still in the drive, he came back did quick repair so I could close door and floor repair went on to bottom of list of jobs.
ReplyDeleteAh no! at least the builder was still there when it happened!
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