It's great to see so much natural timber coming out from under the rug.
Literally thousands of people are ripping up there carpets to reveal beautiful natural
timber floor boards.
Da daaaaaaaaaaaaa
Oh, it's concrete.
I knew that.
But it's ok because we are going to show you how to lay a beautiful natural timber floor
on this concrete pad.
We are going to lay the floor using the direct stick method.
Which actually means we are going to glue it and nail it to the concrete pad.
Before you begin, your timber floor supplier should be able to check moisture levels in
the slab to make sure it's dry enough.
There is a large range of colours, grains and varieties of solid timber floors available.
The one we have chosen is this light coloured oak, it's going to work really well with the
colours we are going to paint the walls.
It's 80mm wide and 12mm thick.
We start by marking and checking out the door frame so that the end bead fits neatly underneath.
We are going to lay the boards this way, always start with your longest run.
Now the timber is cut to size, the fitting of the first plank is very important.
It's gotta be in exactly the right place.
To allow for a 10mm expansion gap down this side we have marked the wall an extra 10mm
out here.
Using polyurethane adhesive, we glue and nail one end of the first board.
This must be set absolutely straight, as it is a guide for the rest of the floor.
So the very next job in getting this first board absolutely true is to run a string line
so we can fix this.
Just pull it tight Dene.
Oh and have you got the pencil and ruler..
Thanks...
Using the string line as a guide, nail and paint the first board.
The glue is then evenly spread onto the floor and we can start to lay the timber.
Well the glue is spread nice and consistently.
It's very important because if you don't get that bit right, you get lumps and bumps.
We have measured and allowed enough glue for 10 boards.
We are going to put those in and then we are going to clamp it.
Now at this point, once our first 10 boards are down we clamp using these clamps which
you can hire from the retailer.
Just to close all these gaps up and then we fix and nail the first board or the last board
down to hold it all in place.
Then we remove the clamps and continue on our way.
When you clamping it you make sure that you use an off cut as a block, just to protect
the tongue on the side of the timber there.
Once clamped, we check for raised for raised or drummy stops.
We then drill and nail to fix.
You right on the end?
Yep?
We then continue laying the boards which we have cut at random to create a staggered pattern.
Well that's great we are getting there.
Looks good.
Very good.
Well it's looking great so far, we have almost come to the end of the laying.
The next bit is the sanding and we're not going to do that are we.
No I think that calls for an expert.
Our expert floor sander uses this vast array of specialist equipment to produce a brilliant
finish on our timber floor.
There are 16 separate steps in the process.
He starts with a fairly course paper and then sands both across the boards diagonally, and
then along the grain to ensure a dead flat surface.
Corners are hand levelled and sanded to ensure an even professional result.
Any imperfections or nail holes are hand filled and sanded.
The grade of papers are then reduced over separate sanding, finishing with a buffing
mat or disc.
He then applies the finish over 3 separate coatings.
And we end up with a superb job on our beautiful solid timber floor.
Well, we did it.
Yeah apart from the sanding.
As you have seen sanding can be a little bit tricky.
I agree, sanding and polishing is defiantly a job for the experts.
But it looks great.
It looks fantastic.