Nearly two years after building the classroom, we thought it was about time that the floor got finished. It’s lovely Douglas Fir, and was getting progressively more filthy, but deserved better. Somehow we managed to find a home for the not inconsiderable collection of things that had found a home there, and suddenly the room seemed huge. An hour with a belt sander confirmed that this was a job for a more substantial bit of kit, so I ran out and hired a proper drum sander. A day and about a quarter of an inch of floor later, and things looked rather better.
At this point we had to run a spoon carving course, so lots of sheets of plywood, plastic and protective rugs went down while the carvers did their thing, and a fine time they had too.
Then another day of removing dust and cleaning the surfaces before the five hour task of oiling the floor with Osmo Polyx Oil. Three days running. Rarely have I been so glad to see the end of a job, but the results are rather fetching and we still haven’t been able to bring ourselves to put any furniture back in the room.
Now of course the room is strictly no-shoes, and so in order to make that simpler, we needed a porch (these things have a habit of snowballing). A couple of days later….
a simple pad foundation using concrete blocks and leftover foamglas, with a 4×2 timber frame on top. Then we clad it with roofing membrane, added a door salvaged from neighbours, and are cladding it with pallet wood. The roof will be turf shortly.
One side is completed and we used up some of the old double glazing collection that has been gathering for years…
The pallet wood is going straight on without doing anything to it, and it actually matches the existing larch rather well. Dismantling and de-nailing the pallets is a chore though and slows the building down a great deal. We’re lining the inside with pallet wood too –
which gives interesting textures and which will give us lots of room for all the coats, boots hats and paraphernalia that seem to accumulate inside our front door. Another week and we might have finished it, if we’re lucky..
