We was booked in to carry out restoration work on a family home in Balham. The original pine floor boards on the first floor had never been touched and you could still see where the old carpet laid once before.
Our client required a floor that would stop things falling down the gaps between the boards and stop dust and dirt coming up, we showed our client samples off the filling options we provide and she eventually decided on reclaimed wooden slivers, this leaves a flush look to the floor and a really nice look.
There was a hearth that needed to be taken out and levelled, once we did we had trimmed back some off the existing boards so the repair would be staggered and harder to see
So then our repair work had been done, some boards needed replacing which we replaced with reclaimed pine and the match was really good. We then started our sanding process before inserting the slivers as we needed to have a flat floor before we done this.
So our first pass was with 40 grit at a slight angle, we did this in the opposite angle after to really get the floor flat.
When we had got the floor flat we then cleared all the gaps so there was nothing blocking us from inserting the wooden slivers, this part is more time consuming than you would think.
So the gaps are now clear and we started dipping the wooden slivers into glue, inserted them into the gaps and with a mallet whack them in so they would not be coming out!
We hand cut any slivers that where needed for the small bits and done the same process, we then left everything overnight to dry and go hard. The next day we was back and with our multi tools we cut the slivers flush to the floor.
We repeated our first pass with the 40 grit to remove any excesses glue or high slivers, once done we moved on to 60grit. The next stage was to hoover the entire floor and with a flexible filler fill anything that was too small for slivers, the flexible filler is great, because as with the slivers they will not come out.
By the time the filler was dry we sanded the floor again with the belt sander using grit 100 followed by the trio with 100grit and 120grit, the floor was then hoovered and tacked and ready for our base coat.
We used Loba EASY prime for the base coat going across the grain and then with the grain, left over night to dry then the next day we etched down the raised grain hoovered and tacked once more and moved on to applying our finish which our client choose was Loba Fusion semi-gloss.
Our client was happy with the work and had the floor that they wanted.
