Our 17th Century former pub has a "coffin hatch" in the first floor landing. It's great for getting bulky furniture upstairs which would otherwise be impossible via our winding staircase. We'd like to create a similar hatch on the second floor landing, so I lifted the Victorian floorboards to see what was underneath - the answer was more floorboards, albeit broken ones with lots of gaps. I think these must be the original hardwood boards from long ago. Question is - should I try and reinstate the original hardwood floor or keep the wood for use elsewhere in the house?
- Thread starter tigger449
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Feltwell
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- Shropshire, England
There's no right or wrong answer to that one, except to say - is the building listed?
The purist view is put the Victorian boards back with the old board remnants underneath, it's a record of the history of the building.
How much is the hatch really needed? If the building is listed then first conversation should be with the CO, I wouldn't imagine they'd be overjoyed at the idea of cutting holes in the floor.
The purist view is put the Victorian boards back with the old board remnants underneath, it's a record of the history of the building.
How much is the hatch really needed? If the building is listed then first conversation should be with the CO, I wouldn't imagine they'd be overjoyed at the idea of cutting holes in the floor.
We have a turn of the 1600s timber cottage, extended by the early Georgians about 100 years later. When I was gutting our upstairs bathroom, my first great find was 10 inch wide Georgian boards. They had been a bit damaged for past utilities, so I jiggled them around slightly to hide the damage, only to find the original oak boards ran underneath.
I pondered for a while on how to progress, given the originality and beauty of the oak. However, the boards weren’t in great enough shape to restore without a lot of patching in. And doing so would also have required relevelling my landing where they also ran and having a dividing wall floating by 2 inches to deal with! And frankly, for a bathroom the slight void between the boards was very handy. So I stuck with the gorgeous Georgian pitch pine and left the original oak as I found it...
I pondered for a while on how to progress, given the originality and beauty of the oak. However, the boards weren’t in great enough shape to restore without a lot of patching in. And doing so would also have required relevelling my landing where they also ran and having a dividing wall floating by 2 inches to deal with! And frankly, for a bathroom the slight void between the boards was very handy. So I stuck with the gorgeous Georgian pitch pine and left the original oak as I found it...