“Did you know it’s international floorboard day today?” Cat said to Colin as he arrived to help with the last push before the soda blaster arrives tomorrow.
Cat and Zanna brought the floorboards out of the house through Cat’s bedroom window.
Jasper waiting for Colin to arrive (he knows he is coming).
Colin has arrived. This makes Jasper very very very excited!
Look at that tail!
The top of the window seat in Zanna’s bedroom finally gets freed (we’ve been trying to get it free for days, Colin manages in a few minutes) to reveal the mother of all cobwebs inside. Sadly no family jewels.
Colin removed the radiators upstairs, this was behind the one on the landing. It looks like an early 20th century wallpaper.
More of the blue colour that we like behind the wallpaper.
Colin removing a chunk of cement that is still covering one of the timbers that we want to expose. This cement is over an inch thick and none of us have managed to remove it. It nearly beat Colin, but he was determined and eventually it came off.
It was cemented on with nails embedded into the timber, to make it even stronger. This is close to the buttress in Zanna’s bedroom and was clearly added to address the issues with the walls here…
Everyone is too busy to play with Jasper.
Cat looking like she hasn’t showered for a while (she actually hadn’t, our hot water had broken yesterday).
These are all the floorboards from Zanna’s bedroom, the half that they took up as the joists underneath had to be replaced.
Each board needs to be de-nailed and have all the sides scraped down. There are centuries of dirt (skin and toenails most probably) that has built up between the boards.
Some also have lumps of plaster or cement on them which need scraping off before they get soda blasted.
These are all the boards from our new bathroom. Some of the ends and sides are quite rotten with wood worm, but this will be trimmed off.
The weird and wonderful shapes and sizes of the boards from the landing. It’s gonna be a proper jigsaw puzzle putting them back together!
This photo has everything; skip, cement mixer, old pine, old bricks, radiator, piece of York stone, old elm floorboards, cement lintel and a pile of Hornton stone!
Cat’s new toy, the angle grinder, making itself useful. There are so many nails, tacks and the occasional screw in these boards, it takes a fair amount of time to remove them. Some just won’t budge, in particular the old handmade nails, so this is the only way to remove them without damaging the boards.
Tacks used to attach the old oilcloth and also the more recent red carpet.
Angle grinder sparks shot no.1.
Angle grinder sparks shot no.2.
The floorboards from the new bathroom, all scraped down and nails removed.
The floorboards from Zanna’s bedroom laid out so easy to remove all the nails. Anything Zanna can’t get out of with the pincers, crowbar, hammer or her teeth gets removed by Cat with the angle grinder.
Looking a bit tired and hot…
Loading up!
The first of many boards makes it on to the trailer.
In all the events of the last week we hadn’t checked the veg patch. Look at the beans!
We have our first courgette!!!
Well done Colin for persevering with that horrible concrete – I know how thick and tough it is! ⚒
Can we all have a Colin?
👍