Ive (probably) just purchased a parquet floor...

[sardine]

I salvaged and relaid a parquet floor, I sat down with the pile, and a gas torch and melted and scraped the bitumen off every block, laid it then finished it with a floor sander, I don't think you will need to use a planer on them if they're from the same floor. Make sure they are not damp when you lay them or else they will shrink. They need to be " seasoned" indoors for a while.

I ran out of blocks and needed about ten more, when I went back to the abandoned building where I got them from there were tramps sleeping on it, those last few blocks had a special " fragrance" of their own !

 

[julianf]

The car smelt like chimney soot on the way home....

The thicknesser is about 50x quicker than scraping the tar by hand - that's my main interest.
Maybe i wont bother skimming the tops, and just do it with a sander when they are down.

 

[Nomad]

I lifted 60-year old carpet/lino, then sanded the original floorboards back to good. The corners of the room were a nightmare to access.
In your case I'd prep the tops before fitting, not after.

 

[Dieselman 63]

Could well be that they are specific for a particular pattern. When I was at school they had 3 vertical, 3 horizontal pattern, but I have seen the herringbone pattern in other buildings. Personally I prefer the latter as the 3x3 just reminds me of school!

 

[Cobbler]

Someone at work moved into a house with a woodblock floor throughout the ground floor, he took it up & fitted a laminate one ..... Hmmmmm!

 

[Dieselman 63]

Someone at work moved into a house with a woodblock floor throughout the ground floor, he took it up & fitted a laminate one ..... Hmmmmm!

Woodblock or parquet? There is a difference... Big old workshops used to have block flooring, Wadkin woodworking was one I know for sure. The only bad thing is it adds about 2" to the level of the floor!

 

[julianf]

I had a bit of a play, and i think Bob is right - if there was another tongue it wouldnt be possible for them to be laid herringbone.

Ive tested some, and the thicknesser is fine for doing the faces, but im now wondering how i can automate the grooves. I guess a router table.

If i dont get the grooves pretty much spot on clean, they gap when assembled (or so ive found with the handfull ive cleaned up so far)

Ton-up mentioned a moulder before - thats just a high class router table, right? (ie a router table is a poor man's moulder?)

 

[Dieselman 63]

I thought a moulder was a standalone cast iron unit - like a Wadkin BRS.

Great for losing fingers in if you don't know what you're doing.

 

[clift_d]

I've just finished about 90 sqm of that stuff in our house, as the OP says it's cheap on cost but very expensive on time, although the result is worthwhile.

A few lessons hard learnt (trust me I have the scars):

• Unless the adhesive on the back is really lumpy, I wouldn't bother removing much that isn't loose, as you can use a compatible adhesive to bond the blocks down. For adhesive we used F. Ball Styccobond F21 - it's a bitumen based dipping adhesive. Pour some in a tray, dip the base of the block in it and lay. After you've done a couple of square metres, and at the end of a day, it's worth running a garden roller or similar over the stuff you've just laid to press the blocks down firmly as the adhesive is setting.
• With a batch like you have in your picture you're bound to find a proportion of the blocks have been sanded down more than the average by a couple of mm and these should be set aside. If you lay these thinner blocks in the floor then you'll have to take the rest of the floor around them down a long way to get a level surface.
• Be careful about setting out your pattern, and keep a close eye on any gaps that start appearing in the floor. Small errors that start appearing due to minute differences in block size will soon magnify into large gaps once you you've got half-a-dozen rows further on so you'll need to correct as you go.
• In terms of pattern, we did herringbone with a 2 block stretcher bond border, and for us the best strategy turned out to be border first, then meticulously setting out and bonding a few rows across the centre of the room and then going out from there to the two opposing sides of the room. Doing it that way meant you'd halved the number of errors that appear in either side of the room by the time you got to the edge. It took us a little while to realise this.
• Don't forget your cork expansion strips to the edge of the room, and if you can do it, you'll get the best result by removing your skirting before laying, and then putting it back over the top to avoid naff edging beads.

Good luck with it.

 

[julianf]

Thank you.

I wasnt planning on bodering the herring bone. The room is an odd shape and nothing is parallel, or, in the case of one wall, even in a straight line, so any border will just draw attention to this.

I also can not fit a skirting to at least one of the walls. Its cob (finished in lime) built on top of stone. Ive left the stone visible, so i really want to just bring the floor up to the stone, and leave it at that. Would be 100% possible with the slate that i was trying to avoid spending out on... ! : /

I think this floor could be good, and will be a warmer finish than the slate, but i do wonder if im doing the right thing. Slate is dead easy to lay, without any fancy (pricey) adhesives etc.

Either way, ill set about refinishing these for starters, and see how i go. I mean my neighbour buys in dumpy bags of logs for his fire, and, weight for weight, im sure these are cheaper than his logs! (not that im planning on burning them, but just to illustrate that have nothing to loose really)

If i can sort out a way of cleaning the grooves then ill be sorted.

 

[clift_d]

With our parquet the tongue didn't go all the way into the groove so the key wasn't cleaning groove, but rather a case of cleaning the block edges either side of the tongue & groove to allow a tight fit at the surface. For this I just used an old chisel which I kept semi-sharp, which was enough to scrape the edges clear of gunk that might stop a tight fit.

 

[awemawson]

Pricey Adhesive: I just blagged a couple of tar blocks from a roofing gang and chipped bits off to melt in my pan on an electric ring - no clean up other than final sanding, no cost to the adhesive (I may have crossed their palms with a bit of silver ) and the job was good for the decade it was down before I moved house.

 

[Nomad]

I've recently started using a biscuit-jointer to cut various slots, it's a very cheap and versatile tool.
You'll need a simple jig to hold the timber (workmate + couple of clamps), depth of cut is adjustable, the width of the cut might need 2 passes if you can't find a cutting blade the size you need.

 

[julianf]

Ive been having a look at this today.

A sizable amount of what ive looked at is damaged. I accounted for 25% wastage, but its more like 1/3. Which is a bit dissapointing.

I paid less than firewood price for it, so its not like ive been done, but i need to work out what to do now.


The issue is that a lot of the tops are broken along the long edge where the groove is. Irritatingly its always the tops, and not so much the bottoms! But the bottoms are different, so i cant just flip them.


Im wondering if i should look at them as expensive fire wood (the £33 i paid is expensive firewood for us!) or if i really want to get involved with re-making them! And even if i could - id loose aprox 10mm off each one, which isnt quite my 25% wastage allowance, but things get a bit slim.


I presume re-making them would be a case of taking off the long grooved side, and re-cutting the groove. It would change the shape of them slightly, but, in a herringbone patter, i dont think that would matter?

 

[angellonewolf]

if useing them in the front room do a very big border and a rug level with the parky flooring ? in the middle ?

 

[angellonewolf]

or if there is a door way in where you are laying them put that door mat meterial a large ish square to take up some of the area up

https://www.slip-not.co.uk/size/Pre...=6d39fd351a8f04a7afdb31008b741e80&fo_s=gplauk

i done this in a conservatory as had some prelayed laminate but not enough so put a 1mtr x1mtr square infront of the door with carpet edging round the side looked great lasted years we sold the house like it

 

[julianf]

What im wondering at the moment -

If i take of the tongue and the groove, will they still lay? Its only a small floor (15 sq mtrs) with low traffic.

Those block floors where you get a square of three blocks, and then the next square at 90 degree rotation - they are not grooved, so far as im aware. These ones -

Im thinking that, if i dont have to mess about with the tongue and groove, i can normalise them all on the thicknesser easy enough, then think up some clever way to strip the tongue and the groove from them, and then re-lay.

Obviously the tongue and groove is there to stop them comming up, but theres a load of difference between my room, and the footfall that some school hall gets?

 

[angellonewolf]

whats it layed on concreat or wood flooring ?

 

[julianf]

concrete - hand trowled (by me) so flat and smooth

is that a good thing, or a bad thing?

 

[julianf]

i could make up a sled for the thicknesser, to remove the existing grooves easy enough, so i would end up with nicely normalised lumps of mahogany. Sure, it would take a day to do the lot, i think, which, to some people, wouldnt be worth it, but jobs like that are always kind of fun the very first time you do them (and then never again!)