The smell of the chip shop

Nov 26th, 2019

The smell of the chip shop

My mum and dad bought me flooring to put down in my dining room as an early Christmas present. I am coming round to the idea that it is much better to have practical things that you actually do want for presents rather than ending up with a whole load of tat that clutters up the house. Anyway I asked for this flooring but my god it has not been an easy job to lay.

First of all I underestimated how difficult it would be to get the existing carpet up. The carpet itself was not difficult to remove once I got it going, but then there were grippers all along the walls. At first I thought these would be easy to remove as just putting a chisel under them and giving a few gentle taps with a mallet removed the whole strip. Then I got to the ends of the room and discovered that for reasons that are not clear to me the original installers had fixed the grippers to the floor using long flooring nails. I had to enlist the help of R but eventually we got them out.

Then I cleaned the floor and laid all the boards out to test how they could fit. This was a big job as the packs weigh 20Kg. Got all that done and then started to spread the adhesive to secure them to the floor. My God, that adhesive is evil stuff. It is not easy to spread and if you get it on your hands it just won’t come off. In spite of wearing rubber gloves (which got sticky themselves), I managed to get some on my hands. I had to go and look up how to remove it on the Internet and discovered that the best methods were acetone (as in nail varnish remover) or vinegar. Not having the former, I had to try the latter and I will say that it largely removed the sticky, although it has left me smelling like a fish supper.

I will try to get this finished tomorrow. Here is the room part done.