Looking under the laminate laid in the drawing room (sorry far too grand to call a living rooom) of this Georgian mansion when it was refurbished by a property developer seven years ago we found that the original floor boards (and gap filler) still existed underneath. Didn't look great but they had potential. After sanding a trial section of floor our customer was enthusiastic about trying to restore the floor to some of it's former glory.
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The floor was constructed of boards 25 feet long by 6 inches wide and you just don't get wood like that very easily these days. Over the years the floor had suffered slightly from various incarnations having once also been covered in oak block board nailed into place. More recent developments had seen three separate hatches being cut into the floor one being placed directly in front of the marble fireplace. We decided to take one step at a time and assess at the end of each step if it was worthwhile going further. This image shows the floor after sanding.
After repairing a couple of the hatches cut into the floor by lifting the affected floor boards, moving them to cover the hatch area and re-laying them end on end and replacing the smaller pieces at the other end of the floorboard, we straightened up the boards and gave the floor a coat of light oak wood colouring and it's first light coat of varnish. Some small areas of the floor had suffered from a previous infestation of woodworm and were replaced with boards from a reclamation yard, others which were not so bad were left in situ.
The gaps between the boards are filled with a silicon and glue solution which was a similar colour to the original gap filler. This has stopped any draughts, and quietened the floor down considerably. Before completion a further two coats of light varnish were applied.
After 250 years you cannot expect the floor to look like new (and you probably don't want to) but the finished article looks fantastic in real life, the photographs don't actually do it justice.
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If you would like to contact Handy Kenny then please call 07484 171458 .
