November 7th. Time to level the floor between old bathroom area, current lounge area and current kitchen. Time to create a room.

 Llick takes her turn at the jarring end of the crow-bar, chipping horrible pink tiles off what used to be the outdoor veranda floor, preparatory to creating our own tiles.

Slick installs the frame for our new floor.

Framed up. Notice that the floor-frame ends between the green drill and the vacuum? We decided to move the wall behind the vacuum forward to the edge of the just-installed floor frame, making that section of floorspace (that the vacuum is on) part of the kitchen-to-be. Confused? Don't worry, it should all become clear eventually. Maybe...

Looking the other direction. We were wrapping the timbers in plastic to protect the pre-applied finish from the concrete and mess. It was annoying. Notice how the floor drops suddenly in the foreground and then slopes steadily away to the furthest corner? I guess, since the bigger section used to be a veranda, they wanted the drainage more than a level surface.

This photo shows the higher level, where the bathroom used to be. (The hole in the middle ground was the sink drain.)

New tiles, here we come. Yes, you are seeing a pile of gravel in the house, and no, we aren't kidding. We were about to create concrete tiles, divided by finished treated pine timbers, for our dining room floor.

This floor, if it worked, would accomplish several things: It would be a great for collecting heat in winter, being on the north face of the building and under big windows, or deliciously cool in summer, since it heats slowly; it would provide another visual cue to delineate the room; it would provide a reasonably sensible and hopefully hard wearing surface for a dining room; and it would be a floor that we could create ourselves without too much trouble or expense.

Mixing and spreading on the spot. Gravel, sand, cement, oxide for colour and water.

Fun stuff! Adult mud pies...


And a surprise ending, just to finish off, because guess what? We didn't take photos of the finished product! By next post (which should this time be much sooner than six months hence) I will hopefully have some pics of the finished floor.

It is June 15th. Our kitchen has suddenly shrunk. As readers of previous posts have already seen, first a door has been removed, then a window installed. The wall separating the kitchen and dining area has also been removed, unfortunately without a photographic record. Now a completely new wall is being built, cutting the kitchen almost in half.

 

First, the kitchen was half cleaned out, then the wall framed in. Shelves had to be made and furniture, such as the pantry cabinet, fitted back into the remaining kitchen so the cook didn't go quite crazy. Then the panelling was nailed on. This tongue and groove pine panelling was actually bought new. Gyprock recycled from other walls in the house and gyprock bought for a song off the 'damaged pile' then clad the upper walls.

That night, Dad got out the (new) tin of Tongue Oil/Polyurethane mix and put down the first layer of floor sealant.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Speaking of the floor and sealing it, obviously the floor had first to be sanded back. The floorboards, fresh and new when we took up the linoleum fifteen months before, were by now darkened with a layer of ingrained dirt. In shifts, we painstakingly sanded off that fifteen month layer of our life story with a palm sander. Dad's belt sander died ages ago, so, going through many sandpaper pads, we worked the floor with a little, zippy hand sander. It was slow and numbing. After finishing a shift, your hand/s would feel fat and clumsy - as though you had pins-and-needles - and itchy, as well! But it was soon done, being only a small space, and resulted in a floor that looked and smelled almost brand-new.

Then the sealant poured on and transformed the pale honey pine into rich, warm tones that deepened even to black over the knots in the timber. Shame about the smell!