The floorboard installation is now complete. I’m loving the natural finish and colour now that it’s down, and it’s completely transformed the rooms.
I’m almost daring to imagine furniture in here! Something I haven’t done so far. It’s felt too much like a building site.
The internal doors have also now been delivered, and they’ll start to be installed next week.
We’ve gone for oak panelled doors, some with glazed panels for where extra daylight is needed, such as between the internal hall and the boot room.
Then it’s architraves, skirtings, window sills, the build out of the kitchen, utility and bathrooms, installation of lights and sockets, and completion of the painting… still lots to do.
My main concern is getting in before the bad winter weather hits. Despite all the delays, and recognising that all this may not be finished in time, we are still hoping for October.
The floorboards are definitely progressing well now. In a short break in the rain today I sneaked into the house to take some photos of progress with some sunlight as a backdrop.
Looking towards where the staircase will be
I was initially worried that the colour of the boards would be too dark, but now that I’ve seen more of them laid, I think it’s looking good.
Looking back into the lounge area
As you can see, our grand plan of painting everything first before the floorboards were laid didn’t quite work out. My operation got in the way, other stuff took longer than planned and dates didn’t align. But it’s ok, that’s the joy of self building. We’ll be able to protect the floors whilst we continue the painting.
The kitchen recess
Every now and then I get a small frisson of excitement that it’s really real, that we’ll be in soon. Today was one of those days.
As I stood in the living room, the air filled with the smell of freshly cut oak and sawdust and with the light bouncing off the building rubble, I honestly thought “not long now”.
The floorboards arrived several weeks ago after a protracted negotiation to have them delivered to the island.
I’m always perplexed when companies say they won’t deliver here – we have a land bridge to the mainland so it’s no more difficult to get a lorry here than it is to Glasgow. But you’d be amazed how many companies simply refuse to deliver to anything other than a mainland address. It’s infuriating.
They arrived in driving rain (of course) so husband and I worked like fury to get them indoors and stacked before the rain soaked through their protective wrappings. This was before my recent operation, thank goodness.
Stacked floorboards
They’ve been stacked in one of the bedrooms for some weeks now acclimatising to the humidity levels in the house, which will hopefully ensure that there’s no warping when we put them down.
We now have them laid in the living and dining room areas and hope to complete the installation in the remaining ground floor areas next week.
In progress
These are engineered oak boards from Russwood, a local Scottish company, finished in Osmo oil. They’re designed to be compatible with the underfloor heating that we’ve installed.
We really wanted natural flooring and there are so many options these days with bamboo, stone, porcelain, cork, lino, rubber etc. that it took us a while to sift through the alternatives. I’m hoping that these will prove classic and easy to live with.
The price of wood has gone through the roof over the last twelve months and if we’d waited another year I’m not sure we could have afforded these, but taking the long term view we figured we’d be living with them for a long time, so we should buy the best we could afford.
I’m so glad that we did.
We’ve just ordered the wooden staircase and we’ll be onto the interior doors and skirting boards next.
The house ground floor is now fully covered with 100mm thick celotex insulation boards. These are cut and fitted neatly together to form the underfloor on which the screed will be poured.
Insulation boards down and taped
As the concrete subfloor beneath this is not entirely level, we have laid sand to compensate and to ensure that the boards sit as evenly as possible.* readers note – when I say WE I actually mean Husband…
Insulation boards down
The joints between the insulation blocks have then been taped securely to make sure that there isn’t any movement.
Finally a plastic membrane is laid and sealed on top of it all. This is the layer that the underfloor heating pipes will be laid upon prior to the screed being poured.
Membrane down
And I thought it was just popping a few boards down and running pipes over them… I guess this is why people often get surprised at how long seemingly simple jobs take. Like me 😬.
Ravencroft Skye 