Wednesday afternoon Simon and I went to Andy's to finish off his floor. The part that is unstained is the bit we did Wednesday, the rest was done over three times (I only helped the first of those three.)
Thursday morning I went up to Simon and Constance's and loaded 81 pieces (220 cm x 15 cm, tongue and groove pine) of wood into their van. A little while later Simon drove the van down just as Andy arrived and we carried the wood into the house. We laid out the 'sticks', discussed the best layout, added two more sticks then started laying the floor. The first 5 or 6 rows went well. I was ecstatic! We then stopped for lunch (it was about 2 pm and I was ravenous.)
Laying out the sticks and thinking:
Back to work and the wood was getting stubborn: The tongues and grooves were not fitting. After banging the wood, thinking many bad words and trying to work out what was going on I went up to ask Constance's advice. She figures that as the wood has been stored outside for 3 to 4 weeks it has probably absorbed some moisture from the air and so has swollen. (Yes, yes, the wood was thoroughly wrapped in many layers of plastic and so was not wet. However, Taiwan is in the tropics and the mountains of Xindian are very humid.)
I grabbed a router and made the groove on a few bits of wood bigger (or groovier?) Andy and I then managed to put together three rows in about 20 minutes! Yea!
Clearly I will have to re-rout the grooves on the remaining pieces of wood (that's about 50 planks. Oh, what fun!)
The third that we finished yesterday got pegged and sanded this afternoon. I will varnish it tomorrow to protect it from muddy paw prints, hair balls and other little souvenirs from my furry friends!
Ok, alarm just went off. I'll add the photos then off to bed.
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