Acclimatising new floorboards

[citizensmith]

believe it or not the window by the satelite dish is the bedroom window for the one bedroom tha is useable after 20 years! Admittedly the room is 20ft + square. The rest is either unuseable to positively dangerous.
We have a small kitchen downstairs and a "livingroom" that is again about 20ft sq but has an intersting slope to the floor. It falls about a foot back to front. We once had torrential rain and then found out why. Water came through the back wall, crossed the living room floor and out of the front door. Genius French thinking!

 

[citizensmith]

A slightly different view - everything to the right of the portway is uninhabitable.



Dont know how we will ever have reources/time to fix it all

 

[FamilyWiggs]

I think we may have a venue for the next PPUK party....! 8)

 

[Penners]

It'll be Agincourt all over again....

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Yes - I'll be arriving at a quarter past two in the afternoon :roll:

 

[citizensmith]

I am finally going to do something about laying this floor this summer.
1. Just taken delivery here (UK) of 18sq M of 6 inch red deal T&G boards which i have cut to 1.8m lengths
2. Will take them to Brittany next weekend
3. They are from a trade builders merchants (Bradford's) and were not wrapped - stored in a warehouse and are going into a "barn" type outbuilding (see earlier posts)
4. I will lay them and be fixing with my Portanailer using 50mm T Nails "secret nailed"

One silly question

Do i have to cut boards so the ends always meet 1/2 way across a joist, or can i rely on the "mesh" of T&G to support ends of boards that fall between joists? I am just being tight and want to minimise wastage of quite nice timber! The joists are quite narrowly spaced (about 18 inches) and are only 2 inch wide themselves (9 inch deep)

Apologies for the mixed measurement units - I am a child of the 60's/70's and am therefore "impimetric" :roll:

 

[Lime]

The short floorboards should always abut on a joist.
You cannot rely on the tongue and groove to support heavy furniture or sustain impact.
If laying over cables etc. give some thought to where you would wish to access the floor void for servicing.

 

[worms]

a child of the 60's/70's and am therefore "impimetric"

I like the term! Accurately describes those of us brought up with a foot in each camp.

 

[Feltwell]

I second Lime's comments. If the joists are close together, you won't get much wastage cutting to the centre of the nearest one.

Secret nailing is all very well but does make the floor a complete sod to take up in future without damaging the boards, so I really would heed the comment about access to pipes & cables. In the past I've put a hatch under where furniture is to go to enable access without the hatch being too obvious.

Nothing wrong with "impimetric" - I suspect that describes a lot of us!

 

[citizensmith]

OK - on the joists it is. I just didn't want to fuss and then find out that it was unnecessary.

As far as services - its just some cable for a couple of power points and lighting. I will run that along the side in a "gap" and make a kind of "skirting" box to contain it.

Access is easy - there's no ceiling below, its all open at present. I have not decided what to do about that yet. It is only going to be a sort of "Camping Barn" standard building.

 

[MdB]

I put down some oak hidden nail T&G in one room and put the joints in between the joists as the joists were narrow and fixing the ends of two planks to them properly would have been difficult. This was a mistake as some now squeak. If I was to do it again, I would screw an additional piece of wood onto the side of the joist where I wanted to make a joint so that there was good area to fix the ends to.

I also used these screws rather than nails as it gives a better fix:

(Made by Spax - I got mine from screwfix http://www.screwfix.com/p/spax-flooring-screw-zinc-yellow-passivated-4-5-x-60mm-pack-of-300/88716?_requestid=381942# but I didn't pay this price which seems a lot)

I agree with the others regarding leaving hatches etc for access to important areas. I arranged it so that I could lift a complete strip on either side of the room by cutting the planks on a saw bench as follows:

The top version keeps the direction of the T&G the same while the bottom reverses it (this enabled me to come away from the wall on both sides which improved the finish). You are left with a line of screws which are visible but they seem to blend in after a while and it doesn't bother me now.