Restoring 17th century floorboards

[Kate2603]

Hello,

Is there anything I can do to improve the appearance of these floors? Does anyone know of any ancient floor specialists in the Oxfordshire area? (yes, I've tried googling)

Photos here:

4 new photos · Monday, Jul 8, 2024 📸

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Many thanks,

Kate

 

[Toby Newell]

Hello,

Is there anything I can do to improve the appearance of these floors? Does anyone know of any ancient floor specialists in the Oxfordshire area? (yes, I've tried googling)

Photos here:

4 new photos · Monday, Jul 8, 2024 📸

Tap to view!

photos.app.goo.gl

Many thanks,

Kate

Yes. And no.

However I conserve ancient floors and I work all over.

You can add photos directly by clicking the paperclip icon below the message.

Hard to see what they are from what you posted, well pine, heavily waxed with a lot of worm. They could be original, do you have a date in the 1600s? Quite rare to have a lot of original pine from the early 1600s.

 

[Toby Newell]

Hello,

Is there anything I can do to improve the appearance of these floors? Does anyone know of any ancient floor specialists in the Oxfordshire area? (yes, I've tried googling)

Photos here:

4 new photos · Monday, Jul 8, 2024 📸

Tap to view!

photos.app.goo.gl

Many thanks,

Kate

500 to 850 yr old timber floor - full conservation and restoration in real time

The madness begins. Set up your mobile workshop. Clean the area. Mark the jigsaw pieces. Start to remove fixings.

www.periodproperty.co.uk

^^^ This is the oldest pine floor I have done, with a few oak bits. We believe it might date from 1550 when the upper storey was built. I think the ground floor might date from 1470.

Hopefully yours are slightly less 'crunchie-fied'.

 

[Kate2603]

Hello Toby,

Thanks for coming back to me. I actually emailed you a few days ago.

The house was built in 1650. The interregnum. I like that detail.

I thought the boards were oak so you've taught me something already.

I tried attaching the files but the files are too large apparently. I might be being stupid. It can't be ruled out, unfortunately.

 

[Kate2603]

The pics of the floor you posted - that's suffolk yank's house, right? I've been doing a LOT of reading about floors and old houses in general. His floor is the closest thing I've seen to mine...

It's a great thread. You did an incredible job. Rather optimistically, I think my floors are in marginally better condition. I haven't lifted the rugs though. The previous owner left them in situ and now I know why. I didn't lift the rugs before buying the place. An error, I have come to realise.

 

[Toby Newell]

The pics of the floor you posted - that's suffolk yank's house, right? I've been doing a LOT of reading about floors and old houses in general. His floor is the closest thing I've seen to mine...

It's a great thread. You did an incredible job. Rather optimistically, I think my floors are in marginally better condition. I haven't lifted the rugs though. The previous owner left them in situ and now I know why. I didn't lift the rugs before buying the place. An error, I have come to realise.

Yes, he is the Yank. Sorry, lots of enquiries. You didn't include any photos, they often take my attention first. I remember. Crouch Hill. We used to go to The Mountview Theatre every year for panto and I walked to primary school along Hazlemere Road. And I was born in the Salvation Army Mothers Hospital in Mothers Square 5 mins from Lescott Road in Clapton.

I digress. 1650, nice, that's really getting on for pine. 10 inch boards date from late 1700s, often 1600s boards are up to 12 inch. The boards in the photo are pine, that doesn't mean you don't have isolated boards or whole areas of oak or even the occasional elm or ash infill. You cannot presume on such an old floor, they are often a patchwork with a wide range of ages of repair and often several different wood species.

 

[Toby Newell]

The pics of the floor you posted - that's suffolk yank's house, right? I've been doing a LOT of reading about floors and old houses in general. His floor is the closest thing I've seen to mine...

It's a great thread. You did an incredible job. Rather optimistically, I think my floors are in marginally better condition. I haven't lifted the rugs though. The previous owner left them in situ and now I know why. I didn't lift the rugs before buying the place. An error, I have come to realise.

Oh, that was a 100% 'condemnable' floor, no one would of repaired it. Maybe the V&A or someone like that, it was toast, some of it literally thin and crumbling, it needed to be rebuilt. It's really a bionic floor. I thought I would give it a go and it appeared to work, extreme amount of work though, that bedroom floor would look good in the V&A. If you can get away with not lifting everything and fitting ply underneath, that's great. It all depends upon your joists, fingers crossed they didn't cut the end of the bressummer in half and remove a third of the original joist fitting a bathroom. But you never know. That's the 'fun', it's like a black comedy.

 

[Kate2603]

The floor in the main bedroom feels very stable underfoot. Remarkably uncreaky. I twist my ankle every night on the gouged floorboard in the pic but it's my bones, ligaments and tendons that give way, and not the floor itself. Gives me hope for the joists but what do I know?

 

[Kate2603]

I lived at the junction of Haslemere Rd and Crouch Hill and (I'm clutching at straws here but hopefully they're in better condition than the house I've just bought or it's all over for me), I could *almost* see Mothers' Square from the back of my flat at the top end of Clapton Square. (Goulton Road was in the way, alas)

It's fate. Please consider mending my floor.

 

[Toby Newell]

I lived at the junction of Haslemere Rd and Crouch Hill and (I'm clutching at straws here but hopefully they're in better condition than the house I've just bought or it's all over for me), I could *almost* see Mothers' Square from the back of my flat at the top end of Clapton Square. (Goulton Road was in the way, alas)

It's fate. Please consider mending my floor.

Lol. Well, forget fate, it's all about time and money.

First of all you should spend money on more important things, like services, making things water tight and breathable etc.

Secondly you need to make sure you have laid all the services, pipes, cables etc that you need, the way I repair these old floors is to make them very strong, which means it's very hard to lift boards afterwards.

Thirdly, if you are time rich then this is a job you can do yourself. Yes, there are a lot of steps, it will take you a long time and you will have to buy tools probably, but every step in itself, most of them at least, aren't actually very difficult.

With floors such as yours you can forget aesthetics, at least until the end. They look nice even unrestored partly because they are old, broken, wonky and worm eaten, that they have history, age and a connection to the house.

I call this work conservation because 80 to 90% of it iis ensuring the sub floor is sound, the boards are sound, filled, supported, fixed and adhered so that they move less. Excess movement kills floors, small cracks will appear, or enlargen from weak points and these grow over time due to movement. I often sand at the start just to clean the boards so I can see all the damage and find all the fixings. It's weeks of cutting, glueing, levelling and fixing so that you have a solid floor. The fact it feels solid to you already is encouraging. Hopefully it means some joist work has already been done.

The last sanding bit is just the cherry on the top. The colour of your boards will be heavily ORANGE flavoured, although you could stain them dark, which might be partly sacrilegious, unless you have some old darker oak to match to (often the case)

Feel free to go back to email or whatsapp and send me more photos, the more the better and give me details of the dimensions. Pine is cool, especially of that age as relatively rare, but fingers crossed you do have some oak in there, 1650 oak is a fabulous colour and is amusingly hard.

 

[Toby Newell]

Is there anything I can do to improve the appearance of these floors?

I should read more, it can be helpful. If you simply want to improve the looks then the boards in the photo have been sanded and waxed at one point. You can simply strip with Paramose DCM stripper, tons of white spirits / turpentine or boiling hot washing soda, then apply one coat of a heavy, waxy shellac, like 4lb cut button polish and wax, or another solvent finish. Obviously if there are no repairs then not sanding is the best form of conservation, if you can chemically strip the surface.

 

[Toby Newell]

The floor in the main bedroom feels very stable underfoot. Remarkably uncreaky. I twist my ankle every night on the gouged floorboard in the pic but it's my bones, ligaments and tendons that give way, and not the floor itself. Gives me hope for the joists but what do I know?

View attachment 13665

It's a shame you have to sand the floor after filling, your floor already has a great colour, in an ideal world with no filling or repairs you would simply scrub off the old wax and apply new wax.

 

[Toby Newell]

If you have any money left in a years time this thread might be updated