Week Seventy-six

Week beginning 13th November 2023.

Our main tasks for the week ahead are to prepare for the arrival of the floor grinder/polisher kit and then start the process of finishing the floor ready for densifying and hardening.

Pete has to work this afternoon, unusual for a Monday but he has been involved in organising an event on Saturday, so we have to get on with some prep straight away. We are cutting strips of plasteboard to go along the bottom of the boards in the bedrooms, boot room and hall. These will make it easier when fixing the skirting boards later. For now we are just cutting the plasterboard and writing on it where it is to be fitted. This is so that when we grind and polish the floors we can get right up to the edges and have a neater finish.

We now need to cut up the left-over plasterboard and bag it so that we can take it to the dump later.

Pete has gone and Molly is left to finish the tidy-up in the house before Ross and Kathleen arrive, they are coming to help for a few days.

They have arrived and have had a cuppa but are now getting stuck into a bit of wall prep before it gets too dark to work.

Pete is just back from work, a bit late but we have kept him some dinner.

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Pete left very early to go to Edinburgh for a two day training course so it’s down to Molly, Ross and Kathleen to get on with prepping the walls before the grinding begins. Before they can start to glaze more of the walls they have to move the scaffolding plaforms and some ladders out of the house so that the floors are clear. The glazing will allow masking tape to be used, without leaving marks on the plaster, to tape plastic sheeting on the walls to protect them from the dust and any splashes caused by wet grinding and polishing of the concrete floor.

The rollers and trays are in good use and the three are working hard as there’s a lot of wall to cover. Kathleen is giving a first coat of special white paint to the bathroom walls and ceilings. Molly and Ross are concentrating on glazing the walls where the plaster is the finish.

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It’s Wednesday and we are expecting the grinding/polishing kit to arrive from the hire company and sure enough Molly has just had a call from Pete to say the delivery driver has called for directions and will be here in five or ten minutes. The kit has arrived in a metal container with the top covered in plastic.

Kathleen is getting on with painting the en-suite and Molly and Ross are carrying on with the glazing. They are glazing the bedroom’s, hall and boot room ceilings as well as all the walls, a big job.

Ross has some glaze left so he is doing a wall on the return stair and one on the straight stair. Molly is moving more stuff out of the house so that they can give the floors a good clean.

Now the three of them are unpacking the delivery and moving the hire equipment into the house. They have removed the plastic covering the kit and immediately notice that the handle of the dust extractor is damaged. Molly is taking some photos to send to the hire company so that they know. The machines are quite big and heavy but they are in the house now ready for use tomorrow.

Pete is back late again but this time Molly, Ross and Kathleen have waited for him before starting dinner. Pete is eager to hear what progress has been made while he has been in Edinburgh.

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It’s Thursday and Ross and Kathleen will be heading home later today. Pete is keen to give the grinding a try but first he is inspecting the machine and checking how heavy it is. It is clearly going to be quite heavy work guiding the machine around the floor and making sure that every millimeter is covered.

Danny from PWM, the hire company, has advised us to use 50 grit grinding discs to start with, this is quite coarse and will eliminate anything sticking up, then 100 grit and finally 200 grit. To get an even, level surface, as far as is possible, the grinding should be done in a cross-hatch pattern.

The grinder/polisher has a large rotating disc onto which six small grinding discs are attached using a hook and loop system.

Pete is starting in the master bedroom where the floor is quite dimpled and right enough the grinder with the 50 grit discs makes short work of that. Ross is quite interested to see how it works and how well it works and seems suitably impressed, even though it is very noisy once the dust extractor is turned on.

There isn’t much for Ross and Kathleen to do so they are off for a walk. Pete is getting on with the grinding and Molly is finishing off the spice rack she made some time ago with a plywood backing and working out how to fit the sections into the kitchen wall. It’s a tricky job because it is an awkward shape and the finishing plastering is complete but a bit fragile around the edges.

Ross and kathleen are back in time for our daily coffee break and have decided to leave before lunch. They have been a great help and have worked very hard to get things ready for the floor finishing. They have come many times and have put a lot of effort into our house and we are very grateful to them for that. Thanks Ross and Kathleen.

It’s been a hard slog grinding the floor but Pete has managed to do the whole ground floor with the 50 grit discs and it’s looking pretty good. There are going to be tiny little pits here and there but some of the bigger flaws Molly has filled with a concrete repair mix and that seems to be working quite well.

We are giving the house a bit of a sweep because although the grinder and dust extractor catch most of the dust there is still a fine layer left to be vacuumed up.

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It’s Friday and we need to get on with the floor if we are going to finish it before the end of our week long kit hire. Pete is getting right into it with the 100 grit discs. The whole grinding process is made a bit challenging because of the extractor hose and the long cables that just seem to endlessly get in the way and cross-hatching with the machine in the smaller spaces, such as the shower rooms and the boot room, is very tight and awkward.

Molly is finding fitting the spice rack she made to be a bit of a challenge because we didn’t work out a system for attaching everything post plastering sufficiently. So it is a trial and error process for Molly and a case of making lots of little adjustments.

We are at the end of the day, well not quite, and have managed to get the spice rack to fit and ground the whole floor with 100 grit discs so we are pretty satisfied with today’s efforts. We now need to go to Oban to set up for the event that Pete and his colleague Ali have organised for tomorrow.

It’s been a long day!

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Pete is off bright and early to finish setting up his event in Oban and Molly is on the bus heading for Edinburgh for a birthday celebration and to spend time with the family. It’ll be a nice change and a bit of a rest from all the hard work but we’ll need to get right back into it tomorrow.

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It’s Sunday morning and we have to get ourselves into action and get on with grinding and polishing the floor.

Molly is taking charge of the grinding and we have fitted the 200 grit discs. Two passes at right angles to each other over the whole ground floor is our first task. Pete is using the hand grinder in the guest bathroom, boot room and hall to do the edges because the big machine can’t get close enough. He’s having to do a wet grind and polish to avoid dust but it is a messy business with a horrible sludge being created.

After the 200 grit grind we need to sweep and vacuum the dust before we can start with the first polishing discs. It’s hard work and we are getting weary so we have decided to stop for lunch. Hopefully some food will give us the ernergy to carry on with the job.

The lunch break did the trick and we have managed to polish all the ground floor except for the hall and the boot room. That means we are ahead of where we thought we would be by now. Our final job of the day is to sweep up again but interestingly as the floor gets smoother from going through the different grades of grinding and polishing the dust gets less.

We are both really feeling the effects of all our efforts and are pretty knackered but we are pleased with our progress and we are optimistic that the floor will look good.

We are about to have dinner then Pete has to go out to play badminton. It’s another long day but it’s important to have fun too.