Well it took a good deal longer than expected. Firstly I had to rub down the floorboards with a fine glasspaper because the grain of the wood had lifted slightly from the previous application of a woodworm treatment. The tin of oil (Huile Naturelle pour Parquets, incolore mat) said to apply liberally with a brush then wipe of the excess after an hour. Well of course I knew better and decided not to wipe off the excess and leave it overnight to soak in. Anyway it was getting to 2′o’clock in the morning and bed was calling.

So this morning we find that most of the oil had soaked in but it was still very wet and like an ice skating rink. Maybe if we leave it a bit longer it will disappear. Well it didn’t. So we both had to remove our shoes and socks and paddle in armed with piles of old cloths and towels to mop up the excess. This actually took quite a while because the oil had now started to go sticky and was pretty difficult to remove.

Fortunately it all turned out OK, as once the excess had been removed the floor dried properly (as it said it would on the tin) and the finish looked fantastic. The oil really brought out the grain and gave the oak planks a nice warm colour. The photo shows the difference between the pre-treated oak and the oiled oak.

In case you are wonder why I didn’t just use a varnish, it’s because I find that a varnish (even a matt finish) leaves a slightly ‘plastic’ sheen on the wood and I believe the oil shows a more natural finish and lets the wood ‘breath’ . The oil finish is slightly higher maintenance as it needs to be re-applied occasionally, but I think worth it.

The photo only shows progress half-way across the floor, but you would get the general idea.

After my previous experience of laying pine floorboards I was much more careful about getting every row straight and flush before proceeding with the next row. Every plank was checked for splinters, or muck in the groove and all the tongues swept of dust etc. before the next row was placed. Occasionally a board did not quite seat correctly and needed clamping to pull everything together. This time I used some old sash cramps in reverse to squeeze the boards against each other to ensure I always had a straight edge to work against. Fortunately there were only a couple of instances where I needed the cramps but it does slow up the process. Compared to the pine planks before these were much much better.

One thing that made progress quite slow was the nailing. I did do some research and found that there is a special floorboard nailing gun that fires the nail into the tongue at 45 degrees and punches it home. The perfect tool for the job. However all the hire shops I visited with picture of tool in hand either gave me a shrug of the shoulders or said, 'Yeh, seen one of those on tele, but we just do it by hand'. I did find a local shop that could order and sell me one, but at 500+ euros it seemed a little expensive for a one off job.

Impatience and the cheapskate in me decided to do it by hand. How difficult could it be to bang in a few nails Well it turned out that getting the right nails was a challenge in itself. I wanted lost head nails with serrations (barbs) down the shaft because I was nailing through hardwood into softwood and wanted the extra grip to hold the planks down and stop and squeaking and movement in the future. Again, trips to several DIY stores and builders merchants turned up nothing. Even the builders merchant thick nail and screw catalogue had nothing suitable to order. In the end I settled on a stainless steel nail with serrations, but a rounded head. Therefore every nail had to countersunk, and banged home (with some difficulty) with a punch. My hammering skills have certainly improved over the last few days, however I did catch the edge of some boards with the hammer head, so a few little dents here and there. Oak is tough, but not that tough. Any ideas on how to remove the dents on the edges of the planks would be appreciated.

BTW – If you are wondering about my crazy multi-coloured floor laying plan, the inventory of planks supplied by the sawmill might explain things.

So after four days, 1000 nails, a sore back and forty square meters, we have a floor. No more mud.

brittany renovation

The window frame was made from some oak beams of 10cm by 20cm sections to take a 60cm by 75cm window. That's the internal dimensions of the window. The window is actually about 4cm larger all around as it is fitted to the inside face of the frame. Just for fun and a little authenicity I used oak pegs to made the joints in the frame. Because the joints in the frame might leak on the window sill there are two channels cut into the underside of the sill and a plastic membrane running under the sill and up behind the window. Hopefully this should allow and water to drain away outside, rather than collect in the wall and cause a damp problem inside.

Making the hole in the stone wall is a little scary, as the hole always seems to end up about twice the size that you need it because of errant large stones. From the photo you can see the inside beam at the top of the hole that protudes right into the wall. The new window was deliberately positioned right under this beam so that I only needed to use one acro prop to support all the stone above the window. As you can see quite a lot of stone still falls out which all needs putting back in. Personally I use quite a dry mix of mortar so that there is very little 'cement water' that seeps out to stain the face of the stonework. Any mortar is also raked out at this stage to leave a gap between the stones for pointing later.

The inside of the window is just shuttered with some old planks and concrete used to fill out the inside wall. I used a couple of bits of oak beam to make the internal lintel then infilled with stone above. The internal lintel is not shown in this photo. The internal stonework and concrete has to wait until the external stonework is complete, but not all the external stonework can be done at once. Therefore this whole process has taken several days, by building up several layers of stone outside, backfilling with concrete, then more outside stonework etc. etc.

Personally I pretty pleased with the end result. Things are really starting to move along quite swiftly and the downstairs rooms should start taking shape soon.

The lounge is going to be floorboarded and the kitchen area tiled, so to proceed much further floorboards and tiles need to be bought and a staircase chosen.

I used pine floorboards upstairs but really wanted oak or chestnut downstairs. It's much tougher, looks better and is more in keeping with an old cottage. Looking around the DIY shops, oak and chestnut floorboards came in at about 80 euros/m2. For a 40m2 space that really starts to get expensive. Fortunately someone recommended going direct to a sawmill to save money. This turned out to be a really good idea. We visited two sawmills, one in Combourg and another near St. Brieuc and had a surf on the 'net. It was really nice to see trees going in one end and finished flooring etc. coming out the other end. Kind of felt more satisfying to buy than from a DIY store.

The choice at the sawmills was a bit daunting, various widths, lengths and knottyness (quality) to choose from, but eventually we settled on some 15cm wide oak tongue and groove planks with lengths varying from 1m to 2m. There is a 3 week delay and then we should leave the wood to aclimatise in the room for another 2 weeks, but at least that was one job done and for 50 euro/m2. Well worth shopping around.

Floor and wall tiles next. I don't find making decisions on colour combinations that easy, and choosing the wrong colour floor tiles can really affect the style and limit later choices for wall and kitchen colours. Anyway, after much head scratching and umming and arhing we chose light terracotta style floor tiles and, a bit boring, white bathroom tiles. We did get some coloured border tiles to brighten things up a little.

All the tiles, grout, adhesive etc. was brought from a large DIY store in St. Brieuc. Normally it about a 40 minute drive. However with the trailer and car full of tiles we were seriously overloaded. I reckon the trailer was several hundred kilos overweight on it's own. Just to get the tyres back to a roughly round shape took a while with the air hose.

Driving back was certainly a bit of a hairy experience. Any faster than 70kmh (40 mph) caused snaking and bouncing and something not to be recommended. It's a bit scary going that slow on main roads. The journey back took 30 minutes longer than normal and it was a relief to get back in one piece.

It's very easy to under-estimate the weight of tiles.