Sunday, January 26, 2014

Carpentry

I've spent the last couple of days replacing the flooring in our back porch.

Ever since we've been in this house (that's about 25 years now) the back porch floor has been a shitty crappy piece of particle board. It lasted surprisingly well, but it was ugly, and finally it started crumbling away where it got repeatedly rained on and created a hazard to life and limb.

I'd have liked to use matai for the floorboards, to match the rest of the house, but alas that would have cost about a bajillion dollars. I considered kwila as sort of an equivalent, but that's also a little bit pricey, and a pain in the arse to lay as all your nail holes have to be pre-drilled to prevent cracking. So instead I just used H3 treated pine decking, which is cheap as chips.

I foolishly thought this would be a simple job, the work of a few hours. Then, once I'd managed to lift the remains of the chipboard to get at the framing below, the true horror of the situation was revealed.

There is nothing about this floor that is straight, square, or level, and the framing was... let's just call it minimal, which does kind of explain the slightly trampolinish nature of the old floor. However, I beefed it up substantially and now it's good and firm underfoot. It's still not straight, square or level though.

I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to stain and varnish the floor, or just paint it. Probably just paint I think, as frankly, the timber isn't really all that attractive.

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