There are jobs where before we proceed with sanding floors, we have to do some repairs and structural work. This one was one of these jobs.
It was a lovely cottage just outside Salisbury. Being over 200 years old, state of structural wood leaves a lot to be desired. Once we started lifting some bad floorboards, it was clear that most of joists are completely falling apart, confirming our client’s initial request – rebuild the entire floor from scratch.
It was clear that the problem was already there for many years. Once we lifted floorboards we exposed many rotten floor joists, which were not supporting the floor properly anymore. After consulting the client, it was agreed that the floor needed to be rebuilt from scratch while still reusing original floorboards on top.
The original floor was completely disassembled. Any rotten debris was cleared to give us a clean starting point to start rebuilding the floor structure.
Additional brick supports were build to better support new floor structure. New joists were laid. They were treated with wood preserver to make them last much longer than original joists. Once the structure had been build, we were ready to fit insulation panels in between the joists.
We used 10mm insulating panels by Kingspan. The panels are as tall as the joists themselves to provide maximum thermal and acoustic performance. Any remaining gaps were filled with insulating expanding foam.This way we have build flooring that is warm, quiet and future proof.
Majority of original floorboards were fitted back on the new floor structure. Rotten ones were replaced with matching reclaimed floorboards. Thanks to this approach we managed to go back to original look of the flooring. A person who would not be aware of the work undertaken, would not be able to tell the difference between original and restored flooring.
The project was completed with our standard floor restoration process. Gaps between floorboards were filled using larch wood slivers, the floor was sanded and sealed with heavy duty varnish by Bona.
