Home DIY

That is going to look great. What kind of wood?

Honestly I don't know - whatever they'd have put down in 1936. Oak?

Ah, the quarterly view of loose herringbone... no toe in picture tho..?

Six months since the last viewing I think, going to stick it down this time as I've sorted out the underfloor now.

And in thrilling adhesive news, this is the winner: https://www.selcobw.com/sikabond-5500s-wood-floor-adhesive-16kg

Spent the afternoon tidying up the staircase ready for painting. I must've pulled out 100+ staples and a bunch of shitty pins. Scraped and sanded the grime and paint.
Need to do a finer sand tomorrow and then ready to paint.

We've got a couple of Ikea Grundtal storage rails going spare.

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/20213538/

Two 59cm with a variety of hooks and a cutlery drainer. All new and never used. Change of plans in our new kitchen.

Free to a good home.

I think it's a combination of things. I look after customers, sometimes it costs me time. For example, I'll fix a small problem without charge, even though it takes me an hour or so. Quite often I'll get a pack of beer or a box of wine as a thank you later but it's optional. I don't charge call out fees or for advice/quotations. I don't charge extra for materials, the material costs on the bill are the price I paid. Always be prepared to spend a bit of time talking to people when you are working. Someone passes an exterior and talks to you, don't be too busy to have a conversation. I've picked up work in shops, on the street, at parties etc. just by making good contact with people.

Don't change your prices depending on the client. Wealthy clients will always give your business more stability and if you charge them more they'll be happier to let you go if you make the smallest mistake.

You'll always need to have 3 regular clients to make your business work, landlords, developers, large properties all might need months of work each per year. The other small works will come along in a much longer cycle.

When you fill your order book always leave plenty of flexibility for the clients you can't let down, i.e. the landlord who needs a room painted this week who normally keeps you busy for a couple of months a year.

I'm not sure it's the greatest business plan but it means I'm comfortable with the clients I have, they trust me and I don't have to worry about getting paid. In the end your own personality dictates your business style.

Should add that I do almost anything, and sometimes I regret that but it helps to keep finding work and clients and it's more of a lifestyle than a business.

One pattern (breadbasket) or alternating squares?

Why not herringbone, love the herringbone you've shown before. To me it's what parquet is all about.

I'll end up with three rooms with parquet, was thinking of doing a different pattern in each room - herringbone in the sitting room, breadbasket in the hall (I can screw a series of long boards to the centre line and butt against them to get a dead straight reference plane for what is an 11m hall) and then diagonal herringbone for the laundry/bike room.

But I could stick to herringbone, it does look nice. Breadbasket is more about trying to reduce wastage than anything else.

11m hall! It's got to be herringbone.

If only because they look like the forum's famous chevrons

.

The parquet that I have is reclaimed, it was originally bonded to the floor using bitumen - this has left a residue on the blocks. There is much debate on the Internet about whether or not you can stick blocks down with old bitumen on them - the conclusion seems to be that you can if you use an adhesive formulated with old bitumen in mind, and that your blocks have "bitumen residue" on them.

So far so good - but what qualifies as "bitumen residue"?

I thought that it would be best to test this.

Here's a block that has had the minimum of cleanup - just enough to knock any protuberances off and make sure it's square:

This has had the bitumen knocked back a little, but there are still a couple of spots:

And this has been scraped for a couple of minutes:

I've stuck them all to a board using Sikabond 5500S:

In this order:

And will see how well they have all stuck tomorrow. If the almost untouched one bonds well then that has the potential to save days of work, so fingers crossed.

Can you not get them planed and remove the bitumen? Beats sanding.

Band saw?

I think that any mechanical method of getting the bitumen off would gack up a powered tool - especially as the vigour with which a machine would attack the task might well heat the bitumen up rather more than me and my scraper.

The blocks I have are the same height as the existing ones, so I don't want to buzz 2mm off the bottom either - this of course would not be a problem if I was going from scratch.

That said, the blocks have a chamfer on both sides adjacent to the face that bonds to the floor, which I suspect is important in terms of allowing the bonding agent to not be forced up between the blocks when laying them, so cutting that off might be a problem.

But if you went down that route you would just plane the chamfers back, wouldn't you?

They'd probably be best cut in with a router, which I could set my router table up for - but it's more work.

Ideally I'd like my test to reveal that the least stripped block has stuck fast, that way it's only a lot of work rather than a massive amount to clean all the blocks up.

Brother in law (chippy) sort of agrees with the table planer heating up and melting the bitumen. He suggested trying a joiner as an option. Alternatively try a power Fein tool at low speed using the scraper bit.

Theres a geezer called Handy Hubby on you tube cleaning them with the edge of a multitool blade (i.e. Fein multimaster type). That type of tool would probably be my guess for a power tool. Probably just as quick with a carbide scraper if you can clamp them to a bench, I would use a festool clamp designed to clamp from the sides leaving the top accessible, don't know if anyone else makes one. Would be interesting to try an IR gun on them, not really sure what effect it would have.

If you had to do them industrially my guess is sandblasting or similar but that's not really going to be cost effective for the amount you have.

A jointer was also my first thought but it's still a plane blade type of machine so it would probably get messy.

Festool clamp= the type that goes in a peg board type thing?

Whilst I wait for the Adhesive Experiment to cure what's the view on this now complete Breadbasket pattern?

jointer

Definitely. I would still want to put them through the jointer after I had cleaned them up.
Scraping or whatever and maybe a do with some paraffin or acetone or whatever to get to a standard that doesnt fuck the blade.