Flooring progress.

I apologize for the lack of attention to the blog updates. The reason is we have been busy, busy, busy with all the many aspects of work on the house.

Firstly the timber flooring survived under my make shift cover from all the rain. That was a big relief. Unpacking the timber packs, sorting the boards and laying them out on all the floors in the house to acclimatise took more than 4 days!
 There are boards lying everywhere I walk.

The boards needed to sit where they are to be laid for at least a fortnight.

Meanwhile the mortar bed for the toilet and en-suite have been laid. This involves mixing up lots of sand and cement in a fairly dry consistency. This stiff mix is then transferred into buckets and carried inside( great work if you can get it!). The mortar is then laid in a bed about 50 mm thick. It is carefully leveled so that it is just right with the perfect fall to the floor waste by the DW. She has done an amazing job, however I was scolded that she was unable to wear a particular skirt to work as her knees had cement burns! Now that is dedication. The pic below shows the en-suite with the mortar bed in place awaiting the tiling. We have the main bathroom and laundry still to do.

The tiling in the toilet area is almost finished. It is a great job considering it has been about 5 years since her last effort at tiling.

So what else have I been up to?
I have been nailing the seasoned floorboards down. Here is a picture showing the beginnings of the hardwood floor in the kitchen area.

More pics soon.

 

Stress

After a period of extended dry I ordered our expensive sustainably produced flooring.( Humidity is everything with this stuff). 

The day/night before delivery we had about one third of last years annual rainfall over less than two days!

After many unsuccessful very,very early phone calls and emails I was able to catch the loaded truck on the way out of the yard!

We rescheduled for this Friday.

Friday brought us a 39 mm downfall in about 20 minutes just after the truck delivered the flooring onto the exposed deck.
I had managed to relocate about 14 boards into the dry interior of the house when the rain started. After about 40 minutes of crazy running around collecting plastic, sheets of tin, bits of wood and stone I managed to hopefully cover the timber.

"Stress" is the description of my guts as I attempt to fall asleep hoping the sheets of tin and plastic hold and protect my investment of this kiln dried timber. Obviously, if this rain that  I hear as i get ready for bed penetrates into my packs of timber I will have bits of flooring resembling useless expensive boomerangs!

Perhaps I should start an ebay shop selling boomerangs painted by the kids just as a back up................

What an interesting trip.