Jonathan technically “just” designed and built the furniture for my kitchen-diner but he was also my right-hand-man when it came to some key decisions. Jonathan works in lots of cool houses. He knows stuff.
When we first chatted, I was debating between rubber, parquet and stripped floor boards. He didn’t tell me what to choose. He just told me that if I picked one and used it throughout the ground floor, it would make the space feel bigger. And he was right.
I plumped for parquet in the end. As you can tell from the finished kitchen, I really love wood. It was laid by Damyan at Sanding City Service, who had sanded and varnished my floor boards upstairs earlier in the year. He got a load of top-grade oak parquet delivered here, left it to acclimatise for a few days, and then he and his crew set to work laying it.
First I got them to add insulation under the suspended floor. Underfloor heating was too pricey for me but I put 100mm thick thermal boards (the same material used to insulate the extension roof) between the joists before we laid the wood floor, to reduce heat loss.
The parquet-laying process was impressive. First Damyan and his crew covered the entire ground floor with 6mm plywood, being careful to get everything level. Then they lay the main, central line of the parquet’s herringbone pattern. The next day, they worked their way out from the central line, carefully leaving a double border around the edges. And finally they sanded, filled the gaps and added three coats of lacquer.
The flooring only took about a week but it was very disruptive (loud, lots of people and it took over the whole downstairs) so the kids and I escaped for a cheap AirBnB weekend just to leave them space in which to work. It was the only time we did a last-minute escape, we probably should have done it more.
