The living room floor

Sanded, polished and varnished. Job done!

This weekend, the living room floor was finally finished.

After months of inactivity (in DIY terms at least), failing to finish the sanding and general busyness doing other things, we finally managed to varnish the floor, and now it looks great.

It was spring of this year when we first decided to pull back the old carpet, to find out what sort of state the floorboards were in and whether it was worth having them exposed.

It was a tough, dirty job to scrub off the old felt underlay that had been glued to the boards, possibly for decades. Hours of steaming with a wallpaper remover, scrubbing with sugar soap solution and scraping later, the dirty, dusty and in parts cat piss-infused underlay was removed and the wooden boards were at last revealed.

Before sanding

They weren't a pretty sight! The boards were dirty, discoloured and flecked with old paint. Clearly they would need sanding, and then varnishing or painting if they were going to be on show.

And that was the situation all through the summer, as we did very little DIY, apart from painting the walls. We carried on with our lives, with depressingly dirty old boards on display in the most-used room of the house.

Last month we made time for the job, hired a floor sander and got stuck-in to the dirty, dusty, slightly back-breaking (but immensely satisfying) job of sanding the boards. Although as I mentioned in an earlier post, I had naively chosen not to hire an edging sander at the same time, thinking I could do the parts the drum sander couldn't reach with a hand sander.

Sanding completed, ready for varnishing

Mistake rectified last week (edging sander hired, sanding completed, back on with the dust sheets to protect the floor), the boards were ready to receive the varnish.

So the dust sheets came off, the floor was hoovered thoroughly and the boards were wiped down with white spirit.

3 coats of Ronseal medium oak varnish later, the job is done. Of course, now we have to do the skirting boards again, and the room is still not finished, but it is at least ready for the next job - and this year's Christmas tree!