Home DIY

is only in the christmas living room

How many living rooms do you have?

two - one we use 95% of the time, which has the big telly in it (converted 'dining room' because who needs one of those) and this second one which would be the 'grown-ups' room I guess (if I had kids) so will likely just get kept good and used at christmas/for visiting dignitaries

and no, I am not a member of the conservative & unionist party of great britain thankyouverymuch for asking

ta

The "good" room, as my parents' generation called it.

Grandparents on my mum's side just called it "the room"

Carefully brush some NitroMors onto it. It’s horrible stuff to use indoors but it should bring that off if you go at it with a scouring pad afterwards.

I had to do the same on a textured bathroom window.

Further to my adventures with floorboard replacement: there are details I'm not happy with, both in terms of gaps between boards and architraves, between boards and hearthstone, and in terms of how removed skirtings have been reinstated. I've paid in full £2.5k for 30 square metres, supply and fit. I didn't want to withhold payment; I figured this was a non starter. I don't think the joiner has the skill necessary to remediate, and I don't think I could have gotten enough money off the job to make it worth the hassle of the argument.

So now I'm looking at getting some remedials done by another firm in the same contact as sanding and oiling the boards.

What I'm after in this post is some kind of reassurance that chalking it up to experience and moving on is indeed the right way forward, rather than disputing the work with the original joiner. It would also give some comfort of anyone has experience of the cost of this sort of work. If the price was cheap then I can be happier forgiving poor workmanship. (I had a moment of being a complete idiot and didn't get comparative quotes; I thought I was under the gun to get the work done quickly - it's now apparent that I could have waited. Lesson learned, painfully).

You should chalk it up to experience and move on instead of disputing the work. I always find it hard, but sometimes it really is better to just let go.

total shiter not sure what the best course of action is. probably just going to have to take your dumps : /

thought I'd add though, just so you have a reference for your sanding quotes: I'd expect to pay £25-35 per sqm for sanding work. that includes prep, sanding, finishing etc. we paid £30 psqm for our latest floors and we are really happy with them. this is in glasgow - wouldn't expect prices in ed to differ significantly

£25-35 per sqm for sanding work

This echoes what I've paid in LFL.

Thanks @6pt and @cozey that's really useful.

I'm struggling to figure out just what was going through my mind when I commissioned the new boards. I have a fair bit of experience reviewing quotes/tenders and thinking about cost vs quality. Possibly just a moment of trying to "just get on with it" but the cost is approximately 30% of the whole refurb and in some ways all it's achieved is to move the "problem" from the middle of the room to the edges. FFS. Technically the work is a reversible intervention, so it's not as bad as all that. I think I can forgive myself as long as the finishing isn't skimped. And perhaps I just lose a couple of £k into the wind. Life could be worse for sure.

Just a thought: these sanding quotes, were they for old boards? Or for finishing new? Localised repairs aside, mine don't need much. Just finessing.

Can you take pictures of what you’re not happy with? Gives us a better idea.

I guess your experience is why people tend to stick with tradespeople they trust, and why word of mouth is still really important.

Also, don’t fret too much. Having experienced people making right and doing the finishing will make a massive difference.

Old and salvage boards for me. Tinted to uniform (ish), bona on top. No idea what exactly was done – it was the third time I’d got the sanding guy out and at this point I just let him get on with whatever.

We’re looking to move away from London and I’m not looking forward to having to go through finding tradesmen for everything again at the other end, can’t be arsed with the almost inevitable disappointments another time around 😞 that said, my floor guy went far enough into north London to sand Apollo’s floors that maybe he’d tolerate the a303.

latest one (£30 psqm) was for old (1920s) boards, with blanchon initial ultra mat on top. this included all the usual stuff as well as transplanting donor boards from other parts of the property and knitting these into the room (e.g. where fireplace hearths were removed) in a seamless fashion.

Hopefully mine will be <<£30/sqm as they're new and pretty flat. Where are you heading to? My London geographic knowledge has faded so I can't recall to where the A303 goes.

@nefarious absolutely, will take photos as soon as I can get back in (plasterer in there currently). Forgive my ignorance, but it what is rift?

@cozey thanks. My fear is that if I had waited long enough I wouldve gotten someone to repair and refinish all the old flooring for, say, £1.5k. All the decent flooring contractors seem so busy they wouldn't even turn out to quote a job until January, which put the fear in me as well as some of the repairs being (partially) under the new cabinets. But hey, if I get my next steps right there will be a flatness and uniformity that may justify the extra spend...

Forgive my ignorance, but it what is rift?

A typo, meant to say making right.

As in, the guys finishing will hopefully be able to able to sort a lot of the problems.

Ah!

I'm learning a lot of new terminology. Thought that was just the latest on the list...

the guys finishing will hopefully be able to able to sort a lot of the problems

Indeed. I'll be scheduling the items needed (again when I can get access for photos)

Another thing to remember is that a lot things that look like a problem now, won’t be visible or will be a lot less noticeable once it’s all done.

Yup.

One particularly painful example is some skirting, where the joiner has made a half assed job of taking it off, cut some boards short so they barely go under the skirting, and made a half assed job of putting it back leaving big gaps filled with silicone.

If he was a better workman more focused on quality, he would have pulled off the skirting and then called me to say "hey Cupcakes this skirting is a piece of shit with a B&Q label on the back, shall I leave it off for you to re fit later, this allowing me to cut the floorboards to the right length so it all looks decent when it's done?" But no, he's just bashed it back on and I've taken it back off again to discover it myself.

One option now is replace all the skirtings with new thicker ones, thus covering short boards and improving the skirting details themselves.

@nefarious Here's a few photos.

Boards have been cut short at pretty much every door architrave and the gap (about 15mm) filled with mastic. There's about 12 locations like this.

Boards are cut short where they meet walls. This happens in a few locations. It's most frustrating in areas where the skirting was actually removed, and then reinstated in a ham-fisted fashion. Today we actually found an offcut of the new floorboards wedged in behind the skirting. I had my plasterer remedy this already.

Boards are cut off-square at ends. I am at a loss to see how this is even possible. He had a chop saw or miter saw (not sure exactly which it was) on site for goodness sake. How can you even cut a board in a wavy manner when its sitting on a table and the machined edge of the board is against the cutting guide. Unless I have grossly misunderstood it looks like all the boards were actually cut freehand with a multitool. And maybe he had his eyes closed when he did it.

No attempt to cut boards to match the edge of the hearthstone. Or the tiled bathroom floor. Or the adjacent retained historic boards. He said of the edge of the hearthstone, which I explained would be exposed when the project is finished, "you can put some silicone in there". That will look shit though. Just like it looks shit everywhere else.

Some scotia/ beading installed against skirtings and timber paneling to cover gaps where the boards haven't been cut properly to suit. @Bobbo has already summarised the state of these pretty well. They just look shocking. I have already had the worst of these removed.

Several squeaky boards. Probably to be expected to be fair. But it's still annoying, as one of the services that restoration companies offer is to deal with exactly this. I'd expect better from a new install.

Boards have been chopped out for radiator pipes in a way that... I dunno, I'm running out of words, it just shows that no care or attention was being used.

To be fair, I can deal with a lot of these simply by replacing all of my skirting with new thicker skirting. It's a lot of skirting, but the existing stuff wasn't anything special. However it would have been reasonable for the guy to point this out and offer to remove it all. Then he might have made a better job of dressing the boards against the plaster walls, so I would be able to reinstate something that looks good. In places he's left gaps between skirting and board end even when he actually removed the skirting FFS.

On the other hand, the total time spent by the joiner and his labourer was 6 hours on Friday and 11 hours on Saturday. I was fully happy and ready for this job to run on and take 3 days. I can see now that it should have done. The work has simply been done too fast.

Cost was £2500 for about 30 square metres, supply and fit. That's £83 per square metre.

The cost of the boards would have been around £900 (assume 50 boards which I have based on counting the boards and figuring the area, from my local wood merchant who charge £15.22 per 4.5m board, and allowing 20% wastage). This means the labour was £1600. That's £47/hour each for the two workers. I may be way off base here but the work I see doesn't warrant that kind of hourly rate. I contrast this with my plasterer who just a day and a half of work at around £30/hour, and did it really well even though it's complicated, bitty job and I changed the scope on the fly as we discovered more and more knackered bits of wall (some of which caused by the joiner).

So in summary I know I should walk away but I'm also supremely hacked off with it. The floor is the most expensive part of the project, and I'm looking at spending money repairing it within a couple of days of it being done.

p.s. apologies once again for the drawn-out drama fest.

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Any ideas on a better bathroom storage solution to this atrocity installed by the last owner? There's a grey water pipe from the bath running along the front of the plinth, but not enough space to open a door between the base and the bath. I don't fancy reconfiguring my whole bathroom*. Conveniently the alcove is just over 1m wide, but apparently there's less 1m wide freestanding cabs/shelves in production than I'd think, especially ones with sliding doors.

Hidden baton shelves and a deeper plinth seems the only solution that jumps out at me. That way I could admire my glorious big roll hoard everyday.

*I could probably route the waste pipe under the boards fairly easily solving that issue.

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So, squeaky boards you can fix relatively easily by drilling a hole with a 10mm forstner bit (for a clean hole that will take a plug neatly), and then a pilot hole for the screw, screw into the joist, and then cut a plug from a scrap bit of floorboard, glue and tap in with a hammer, cut down and then sand flush. If you google cutting wood plugs, it should explain the idea.
It would be good to know if you have any cables or pipes under where you plan to screw down, and you need to be able to locate a joist.

Unfortunately, they have just been lazy with the gaps at the edge. You can usually sneak boards under the skirting and not leave much of a gap without removing the skirting at all. It is a fiddle and time consuming though - it caused me a lot of distress when I did mine tbh as taking the skirting off wasn't an option at all.

I think you're rightfully upset. The job isn't great, however I think there are strategies to minimise the things that irk you. Once you have chosen your finish (oil etc) and you know what colour it will be, you could get one of Bona's acrylic fillers to match the colour, which will be a lot less obvious to look at. Also, properly fitting some trim will completely hide the issue. It'll take time but it should be worth it. Amusingly I need to do something similar in my flat and I've still not gotten round to it several months later.

Also, when the guys come in to do the sanding and finishing, they should be able to help and advise.

Also, for the gap between doors - just get a threshold. You can get solid wood or metal. It's not the most elegant and there are probably better solutions but it will look neater than what's there already. It's not a million miles off how mine look tbf. As for the gap by the hearth, you do need a bit of a gap for expansion. You could get someone to carefully cut it square. Either with a multitool, or very carefully with a plunge saw. Then I'd just put some some of trim over it.

Edit: it's not a drama fest mate, don't fret. These things are stressful regardless - don't be too harsh on yourself!

Bona filler:
https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/product/bona-gap-master?gclid=CjwKCAiAv4n9BRA9EiwA30WNDyLjOnBv4PQZLxQIJzS_XwFcMU1pNhliI_6LGm5wByrhTkYrFO-lOxoCTDQQAvD_BwE

Cheers. Do you reckon this stuff is worth doing DIY? I was just compiling a list of annotated photos to try to assist the sanders and finishers to get a more accurate quote (they've been in, but it's a bit of a scatter gun approach until I decide what I want to achieve).

Edit: it's not a drama fest mate, don't fret. These things are stressful regardless - don't be too harsh on yourself!

:)