How long to leave new turf?
Steven Long
5 years ago
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Parquet flooring: DIY or leave it to professionals?
Comments (13)Hindsight is a wonderful thing, what I would do first is decide if your floor is the right height, it will add height, can your doors open, will it cause a change of height between rooms etc, and will you go up to existing skirting /cupboards etc. Is the floor level? If it slopes away your pattern may go wonky. Be prepared that short blocks in herringbone may leave little gaps, ours did, but you can fill obvious ones. Often the short ones were used in a square pattern, but no reason why you can't be creative. Then sort it all out into piles, good condition, damaged, odd shaped. Place the blocks tar to tar, because once it gets onto the wood surface its a beggar to clean off. How much tar is on the side edges and surface? Old varnish chips off fairly easily. Choose the cleanest ones and decide if you have enough to do your room. If there is tar on the surface the easiest way to get it off is before you lay them. Let them get cold, the scrape off with a window scraper tool, or rough grade paper. It needs to be cold, to be brittle, to scrape off. I've used tar remover and liquids, but it smears it around, which will clog up your big expensive sanding pads, you'll wish you had got it off before that stage. We sat in our garden with a pile of blocks at our feet, a small hand sander, a Stanley knife, and a towel over our laps, and scraped, sanded , scraped, sanded, scraped just the edges, It took days, filthy exhausting work, and hard on the wrist/hands. It was worth it though, because we couldn't afford a professional. I would love to have sent them "somewhere" to be prepared for me, but no sense wishing! It is very expensive to get a pro to do it all by hand, better to send them somewhere where they have machines. You could try a few yourself and then times it by 1000 to get the idea. When it came to laying them, we bought plenty of adhesive, 25 tubes, cost about £60. Decide your pattern, and which way you want it to run. Walk around and imagine the feeling, maybe lay a row or two to get a feel for it. We went for straight ahead as you walk in the room, but across adds a feeling of width. The herringbone one we restored in the lounge goes straight past the fireplace, not towards it, but if you have a bay window or double doors it seems to feel better when it heads towards these big features. If you don't want to lay them to decide , use a long piece of masking tape, it'll give you the same idea. So, if your floor is right, block edges are scraped clean and even, tar removed from top and edges, book the sander for hire. If I had my time again I would lay out all the blocks and then glue them down. It was nerve wracking doing it free hand, who knows where our line would end up!!! We did use a guide line , draw on floor where your first run will be going, and stick to it, because a cm out becomes 3" by the time you reach the other side. Also decide how it will look in doorways etc, if youre having an edge, I'd draw that off first, you will have the joy of chipping lots of diamond size bits to fill in between the border and the main floor. To cheat, remove the skirting and put it back on top! ( I didn't say that, lol!) We used a big hoover shaped one, with a circular hand held for the edges. It still wont do into the corner 2 inches, so be prepared to do that by hand. I didn't like using the big hoover sized one, ran away and dug in, but other people have no trouble. With normal planks you would walk it along in same direction. But with herringbone parquet you need to do short small areas in different directions, so imagine using a hoover. The idea is not just to get the colour back to real wood but to get the whole floor feeling level, so there are no sticking up bits. You may have to sand down quiet hard to get rid of all the old colour. If you don't mind that fact that it is old, and bit rustic, its not such a problem to go in with the circular and take a bit more off in one area, but if you are going for super sleek smooth special, sell them all and buy new! Sand with roughest grade first, and buy plenty of pads, more than you need x2, because you can always return the unused ones, its understood at point of hire, there's nothing worse than running out and having to dash out for more. For best feel and shine sand over two or three times with gradually finer sanding pads. It makes the difference when you varnish or wax. Clean the floor well, brush and hoover to get all dust up, Varnish will bubble and feel rough if the wood is not really smooth, I haven't used wax, so not sure. Perhaps it'll make it more non slip, but old parquet is so lovely and organic, I've never found it slippery. If you varnish, we used ronseal diamond hard clear, but there are lots to choose from, some are anti yellowing , good for pine. Get a varnish brush, and a spare empty tin. Get down on your hands and knees and do each block slowly gently in a thin even coat, wiping off any suds on the empty tin, this stops the suds drying and feeling like sandpaper! Try not to go over the edges, or you'll get a double coat and possibly darker "ends" Once dry, sand it back by hand or machine using very fine grade. Then you can go ahead and apply next coats a bit more quickly but keep the suds at bay. Et viola! Next time I am going to use gloss finish, because the satin "shine" faded quite quickly. Hope I haven't put you off, I love my floors, its great to recycle, kind of satisfying to have done it ourselves, but ask me if I'd rather have sat back with a nice drink on the beach instead.................See MoreHow to Care for Your New Piece of Hand Painted Furniture
Comments (2)Thank you OnePlan - that's very kind of you. I'm new to Houzz but I'm loving what I've seen so far. You have a lovely portfolio!...See MorePOLL: How long do you keep your Christmas lights up for?
Comments (8)I start taking my decorations down in the days after 2nd Jan but usually leave a few bits up until 5th of January, the evening of which, I (and the Church of England) consider to be Twelfth night. It seems logical to me that Christmas Day is the first Day of Christmas, and twelfth night is the last evening before Epiphany. It doesn't make any sense to me to start counting from Boxing Day but I know lots of people believe that it is the night of Epiphany is 12th night and you hear both dates used...See MoreLong/Narrow new build living room layout?
Comments (2)The internal door naturally divides the space into two. Use this to your advantage and create two zoned areas. It isn’t complicated to extend the TV point so I would be inclined to create a TV viewing area in the smaller zone and a general living area in the larger zone with access out onto the plot. Is this the garden? You can emphasise the two zones by the placement of furniture. For the larger zone move the chair to the middle of the room, where the coffee table is now, facing towards the double doors and move the sofa along the wall closer to the double doors. Move the coffee table in front of the sofa. The wall where the TV is now would be ideal for fitted cupboards and shelving with a picture in the middle to act as a focal point or how about a fireplace with cupboards and shelves either side. The option of a large rug under the coffee table would serve to visually connect everything. You might even get away with a bigger coffee table. For the smaller zone site the TV in the natural recess behind the internal door. I suggest investing in a small sofa to fit along the opposite wall and possibly a small chair or a few bean bags or large cushions under the window. If you invest in a larger coffee table then the existing smaller one could be moved here in front of the new sofa. This arrangement would leave you with a spare chair. Could you find a home for it in a bedroom? This arrangement would still allow free movement around the zones and in and out of the doors....See More
Ronan Lang
5 years ago
Steven Long
5 years ago
Jonathan