Restoring Old Floorboards - Part I

One of the things I've been most looking forward to is restoring some of the period features of our Victorian house. For months I've been swooning over bedrooms with beautiful floorboards, like these white painted ones, these shabby chic ones and these shiny ones. Ours, however, looked more like this:

So we set about restoring them to their former glory. Here's a little guide for fellow aspiring floorboard restorers...

Firstly, you need to make sure the floor is sound- replace any dodgy boards, fix them all down securely and make sure to hammer in any nail heads that are poking up. Remove any skirting you'll be replacing to make sure you can get to all of the edges. If you're intending to stain the boards, it's definitely worth checking the colour and application of the stain first- we used an old board we'd taken out.

We hired a drum sander from our local plant hire shop. Drum sanders are pretty heavy, so I suggest taking a car (even if, like us, this means going at 7.20am in your work suit!) We got loads of belts, because you can just return what you don't use and it would be pretty annoying to run out halfway through. Our belts were 120, 80, 60 and 40 grit.

The drum sander is quite a beast, so lower it gently onto the boards, or it will make a groove (and then you'll need to sand the whole floor down to this level!) It's then a bit like mowing a lawn, except a whole lot dustier and noisier.

After a few hours of sanding, you'll end up with it looking a bit like this:

You then need to use something a bit smaller (we have a belt sander and a sheet sander) to get all of the bits between the boards and around the edges. You might want to hire a detail sander to make this easier- lots of places do a package hire deal with the drum sander.

You'll be knackered at this point from all of that sanding, so it's probably a good time to sit back and admire your handy work. Make sure when you clear up that you keep some of the (copious amounts of) sawdust back, as you'll need it later.

After a nice cup of tea, it's time to grab a filling knife/scraper and get to work removing the dirt from between the boards. It's amazing what can accumulate in nearly 150 years...

This will leave you with a clear idea of whether you need to fill the gaps between your boards (in which case, try something like this) or whether you're happy with the rustic look and that your boards are close enough together that you won't fall down between them! We went with the latter.

We had a few gaps that did need a little filler, so at this point, you'll need to get your saved up sawdust and mix it with a little PVA until it forms a stiff paste:

Use this to fill any gaping holes, but do be mindful of the fact that this may not 'take' the stain in the same way as your boards, so be conservative (or test it out on an old board if you're worried):

You can now call it a day and leave the filler to harden overnight, ready for round two...

Mauve

We have been blasting through the main bedroom this month as our target finish date of mid February approaches rapidly (sssh, don't tell that I'm blogging instead of filling/sanding/priming etc). Here's a little update...

We've started off like this:

(Yes we were sleeping in there!)

And then stripped it out until it looked like this:

And then we added some insulation and plasterboard to keep us toasty:

And after putting our plastering skills (acquired at a B&Q 'You Can Do It' course) and some not-so-well-honed coving skills to the test, we ended up here:

So then it was time for the exciting bit- choosing the colour! We spent aaaages deliberating over the relative merits of whether we wanted our walls to resemble to breath of an elephant or a mysterious lady named 'Joanna', before finally settling on Egyptian Cotton. So, once we'd done a couple of undercoats, I painted some on the wall:

And it was exactly what I wanted- classy, neutral and understated. So out I went to buy myself a tin of  Dulux Endurance and as it doesn't come in a 5 litre tin and I knew I'd need more than a weedy 2.5 litre tin, I got the nice man at B&Q to mix me some up at the Dulux machine, which he did. And since you ask, it is far cheaper to get it mixed that to buy 2 x 2.5 litre tins. So I walked home, all smug and happy.

Then I started cutting in and it looked all lovely and cottony and beigey:

And then I got my roller out and huffed and puffed until all of the walls were covered:

And then it dried. And IT TURNED MAUVE. Aaaarrrrrgggghhhhhhh.

Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic. And I can't really provide you with any evidence to judge for yourself, being as it is dark and all, but trust me, it's mauve. So I painted another coat and IT'S STILL MAUVE.

As we can't really afford to go out and splurge on some Farrow & Ball or Little Greene to make it all OK, I'm embracing it. You heard it here first, this season's new hottest colour- mauve.

Quick Update: Chalkboard Jar Labels

I am not going to profess that this is particularly 'home made', but this is a nice, quick update to make your food storage a bit more organised (and a little bit prettier!)

This was my jar storage before:

I purchased my chalkboard labels from eBay and my chalkboard pens from Amazon. I got a pack of 8 labels and 4 pens, as a 4 pack wasn't much more than a single pen and these ones had good reviews:

I was going to copy a font from somewhere and then I decided that would just be frustrating and difficult and would defeat the point of the 'quick' update, so I just free-styled in my normal handwriting:

I then carried on, carefree and stuck them on by eye, careful to avoid air bubbles, but not careful enough to worry about using a ruler, or any of that jazz:

And do you know what? I'm pretty pleased with the result. They help bring a little bit of cheer and order to our otherwise quite depressing kitchen (note the mastic on the bare walls behind the shelf!)

This wasn't the thriftiest update ever, with the labels and pens costing just under £13, but I now have 4 chalkboard pens for all sorts of projects and I'm glad I got long-lasting chalkboard labels (they're even dishwashable!) and didn't opt for something cheaper, as I think they look great!

PS In case you're wondering... our jars are mostly from the 99p Store, except the large ones, which are Ikea Korken jars.