Thomas has finally finished slicing all of the parquet flooring blocks, using the Parquet-Muncher. He used 2 saws and around 5 blades to do 90 bales, each with 40 blocks, so probably about a kilometre of sawing, across the width of each block. Here is a drawing showing the basics of the Muncher, which is essentially a guide to allow small blocks to safely pass through a powerful table saw side on.
Yesterday Moira, Pop and Thomas had a mass production system going involving munching, scraping and sanding. The munching involves cutting each block in the finished floor plane, removing the bitumous back (and concrete in some cases). The scraping removes most of the bitumen and built up dirt from the sides of each block. The sanding smooths it off to a nice square smooth edge.
This weekend Pop was here for a couple of night, so was able to do loads of painting in the link room. He, Thomas and Bridget also made a start on the huge pile of parquet blocks to be cut, scraped and sanded in advance of laying the link room flooring.
On Sunday, Thomas’s dad helped Thomas to paint the plywood ceiling and timber roof joists with the HR PROF fire proof paint treatment. After a second application, and 24 hours to let it dry, tonight Thomas and Bridget started painting the ceiling white.
Today Nana and Pop were up, so while Nana watched the kids, Bridget worked on the roman blinds and Thomas and Pop tried to finish the plasterboarding in the link room.
At last we are inhabiting the extension, just under 2 years after first breaking soil… Not exactly the timescales we’d originally planned!
Thomas has been lying awake in bed at night scratching his head over the wiring of the pump and various other bits for the underfloor heating manifold. Last night he finally got it running!
Nana and Pop were here on Saturday, so while Pop and Bridget continued to paint the middle room, Thomas finally fitted a real door in the bathroom, removing the temporary electrics for the short term (!!) lighting and making-good the plasterboard on the end wall. Thomas’s dad came on Sunday and helped Thomas to refit the toilet properly and move the bath into its correct central position.
Borrowing the Dremmel tool from work, Thomas was able to cut holes into the charity shop cups to make Bridget’s lights.
Thomas decided to tackle the much dreaded network connections in the attic. All of the various Ethernet cables and co-axial aerial cables gather in the storage attic, where some kind of hub will eventually live. At the moment Thomas gas started wiring each into it’s own socket so that short patch cables can be used to connect things up flexibly, a bit like in a server cupboard in an office.
Pop loves a bonfire, and Holly and Theo have wanted one for ages, plus a big pile of scrap wood and cardboard boxes has built up, so a still crisp winters day was perfect for a good bonfire!
 | Jaimin on Planing some larch |
 | Lucy Jethwa on Parquet varnished |
| Jaimin on Laying the link room floo… |
| Jaimin on Preparation for flooring the l… |
| Jaimin on The Parquet-Muncher |
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