We Have a Floor!*

*OK, half a floor. Three-quarters of a floor. At least a third-of-a-floor, at the time of writing.

Er, we’re in the process of putting down a floor, is what I’m saying… and it’s a long, hard process: for Terry, at least, who’s the one actually doing it. My contribution, meanwhile (And it’s a valuable one, I’m sure you’ll agree…) is to hover around, trying to resist asking when I can clean it, and if he REALLY needs to keep standing on it with those dusty shoes. (YES, is the answer to that one, apparently. And I can clean it when it’s done, and NOT BEFORE. I will wait patiently…)

Luckily, this is not Terry’s first rodeo – er, floor-fitting experience. He laid all of the flooring in our last house, and did the bedroom floor in this one, so he does know what he’s doing. This, however, will be the biggest project flooring he’s tackled so far (As I said, this floor will cover the hall, living room and kitchen…), and it was also one of the more complex ones, because, just look at the length of these planks:

That’s one of the boards from our last floor next to it, just for comparison. As you can see, the new one (Which is from QuickStep’s appropriately-named ‘Majestic’ range, which they’ve kindly provided us in exchange for a review) is both much lighter AND much longer, so we had to think quite carefully about the visual effect it would have. With our last floor, the planks were laid horizontally – so, if you were standing at the end of the hall, say, you’d see lots of plants, all running from wall-to-wall. With this one, however, we wanted to make the most of those long, wide planks, and lay them vertically, instead, like so:

OK, so it’s obviously not finished here, but you can see the effect, which basically draws your eye down the hall, and makes it look a bit longer. (Also lighter! SO much lighter! And, OK, this photo was taken on a sunny day anyway, but this hallway was always quite dark before, so I’m really pleased with how it’s shaping up, and how clean and fresh it’ll look when it’s done.

You’d think the house was almost back to normal… until you pull the camera back a few steps, and see this view, instead:

We’ll get there. Eventually.

As for the kitchen, meanwhile, it’s still floor-less, but I’m pleased to report that the cabinets are now all in place:

We’ve so far resisted peeling off the plastic wrap that’s still covering most of them at the moment: I think we’re going to wait until everything else is done, and then have a grand un-peeling – that’s the kind of thing that basically passes as a “party” in our house right now. Either that, or we’ll just turn into those people who never take the protective wrappers off their furniture, and everyone will secretly hate us: it could go either way.

Other than that, there’s actually not much else to report from this week – not even a spilled bowl of soup, or anything! – so hopefully my next update will contain the Before + After photos: fingers crossed!