Monday 28 October 2013

Doing up the bathroom: floor




I'm sure that I said that I wanted this project to just be a big clean up. I did, didn't I? I'm positive that I made that statement. Well, here is the bathroom now. J decided to become involved.

To be fair he was only showing that he was listening and removed the built in chest that I wanted gone one day. And decided that it would look nicer if the pipes were hidden under the floorboards. He quite enjoys plumbing so this isn't a big deal to him. Or at least it wasn't until he found how large the floorboards are. Now he's going to leave the pipework alone and just box it in along the side.

Why? It's hard to tell from this photo but the floorboards are wide. From 30-40 cm wide. This means that they are probably really old. Certainly older than the rest of the floorboards in our house that are Victorian (the house had a major makeover in the 1850's). These floorboards go under the bath and both walls. Some have been cut away from when the bathroom suite was put in but it seems a sacrilege to slice them up any further.

Going by the width of the floorboards they could be 17th century which would tie in with the age of some of our beams. They may have been cut for this property or reused from another. This is the problem with trying to use wood to date building work, decent wood will always get reused. We already know that our floor joists have had former roles, lots of interesting holes and pegs. I suspect that the floorboards are original. They are in the oldest part of the house and the rooms each side of the bathroom have had their boards replaced in the last 20 years whilst the rest of the house has solid Victorian boards. I wonder how it looked when those floor boards were first laid.

See also: Bathroom, before I start

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