Carpets and Floorboards

The day had arrived, and we would soon have new floors. But first, moving everything downstairs, Greggs breakfast and screwing down the floorboards.

While Merilynn went to Greggs, I pulled up the laminate in the bedroom. I also screwed down a LOT of floorboards, both the night before and working just ahead of our carpet fitter.

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Screwing down floorboards was a bit of a hard game. I had to keep pulling them up first to ensure I was screwing into a joist and not a pipe or a wire. Someone from a boiler fitting company recently told me that generally wires and pipes will run the same way as the boards to keep everything neat and to avoid cutting joists.

I wish he’d also told whoever plumbed and wired this house 🙁 – every single one pretty much ran with the joists. In some places there was no joist left to screw down to, but I did my best, and now there is only a single squeaker, which was entirely unavoidable.

Now for the carpets!

The nice fella from Phab Flooring arrived at 9am (alone, his coworker pulled a sicky) and had everything in and tidy by about 3:30pm. I did have to take the doors off for him, none of them would open or close otherwise. That’s another thing to sort! They remain leaning against a wall for the time being…

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We’re incredibly pleased with the new floors, it’s brought the upstairs kicking and screaming into the 21st century. We reckon the carpets were almost 30 years old, and never good to start with. We braved some red wine after this to celebrate. Perhaps not the wisest choice!