The First Few Days

Before anything else could be considered the old floor coverings needed to come up. The previous owner, must have kept his dogs locked in the house and all the old carpets reeked of dog pee. A weekend of work for myself and my 16 year old son Reuben soon had all the old carpets up and ready for a load to the tip but here is where the first of our problems began.

The old rubber underlay had been glued to the original floorboards in some places and stapled in others. Before any further restoration of the 6” Baltic pine boards could continue this old stuff had to go and there was no easy solution.

Pulling staples and punching nails.

Whilst I set Reuben about the task of dealing with metal fixings such as the staples and nails (at least he has his headphones), it was my task to remove the rubber underlay that had been glued down.

An inexpensive floor scraper from the local hardware store turned a back breaking job into a simple back torture job. My tip to you is buy a more expensive floor scraper with a short stiff blade rather than a longer flexible one and do this sort of job in a series of short spells.