Sunday 31 August 2014

Flooring in the bedroom

The bathroom is not finished yet, but we're getting closer. Meanwhile, this weekend we decided to tackle the flooring in the bedroom. Just because it's a lot to tackle, I guess.
We still have a detailed bathroom tiling post pending.

We went to the store to buy more floorboards, because we didn't have enough for all the rooms. Good thing, since they are discontinuing them. I hope we have enough this time. The floorboards are single pieces of massive, tongue and groove oak. I posted about them before. Here too.

All in all, Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, and a great amount of hours today (Sunday), and we finished the bedroom! (at nearly 22h) which is about 18 square metres. We also did part of the landing adjacent (the floorboards continuous).


Compressor + nail gun

This is a simple job, at least compared to all the other jobs... over the existing floorboards, two layers of 3 mm insulating foam (supposed to absorb 20 dB each, not idea how much that is combined) and the floorboards nailed on top.


Nailing boards diagonally on the tongue
Pim didn't want to hammer these things by hand with a hammer, too easy to damage the wood at this angle, and such a huge pain in the ass. Renting a compressor with nail gun twice would be as expensive as buying the entire set-up, so that was a no-brainer. We aren't sure what we are gonna do with all these tools once we are done, though.

Board under the door frame (more about that below)

Board (bit) under the door frame

Puzzling around the staircase, more below

Putting boards in place

Closer to the finish line - many floorboards are dusty...

With such a grimy house all around, we don't want the floorboards damaged with the crap we carry in our shoe soles, etc, so we covered them with a thick felty thing (which is nice and lined with plastic on the underside) as we went. And it is going to stay that way until things clear up a little.

A more general view

What is this thing? more on that later sometime

The vanity corner

Glued bits
Under the radiator (so, inside the mantlepiece), and next to the wall besides it, we could not nail the thin strips of floorboard down anymore. So we glued them to the previous boards inside the groove.

The most challenging part in the bedroom
(which wasn't very challenging)

No hammering or nailing here, you push with your fingers
Last bits, these strips are just glued with white wood glue

Some pictures from Friday and Saturday, these were taken with my phone, so they're quite terrible:

Wood haul

I found a delightful little saw to cut door frames to measure. You don't even have to measure, just put the floorboards next to the frame, place the saw on top, and saw away.

Cutting the door frames to measure
The handle is raised you that you can hold the saw flat against the floor, and it has a mechanism to reverse the saw and make it face the left or the right. Great! I have no idea how these are called, there was a Dutch name shown in the store but I forgot.

Great saw
Nice and sharp little teeth:

Frame leftover

Pim helping me with the frame

Cut to measure board under the frame

Making sure the first line of boards is straight with the tiling laser

Cutting a template out of paper
I tried out the white MDF plints (?) we bought for the bedroom (we got solid oak for other rooms, I didn't feel like buying oak and then painting it white for the bedroom...), but I didn't install them all around the room yet. Mitered cuts with this fancy old thing Pim's dad found around (I think it's Danish), glue + a few nails, easy enough. I love the contrast of grey, white and medium wood all over the room:

Mitering tool from the 70s or 80s
Plint testing


Tuesday 19 August 2014

More tiling

Some more pictures. The floor and almost all the wall is tiled, and grouted. Now a lot of finishing and installing.

Monday 4 August 2014

Quick preview

We are very much behind posting about the tiling in the bathroom. So much to do, so little spare time.
So, meanwhile, a few pictures of the latest progress:


Long wall all tiled. The inside of the niche to go.
Some of the floor.
Center floor pattern. Our first ever tiling!
Shower and door-side wall (it's all tiled now).
Storage and bath walls. These are also tiled now.
We're leaving the bottom strip until after the floor is all tiled up.
Some grouting has also happened. We chose a medium grey, which looks
darker here since it wasn't dried yet. Grouting is slow! or at least we are
slow grouters ;) we'll use the same grout on the floor as well.
I'm afraid they're all phone pictures... too dirty (and time-consuming) a job to bring better cameras around.