The smoothing of the boards...

Quite a few years ago, a rookie surveyor Scrobs was working on a sceme for a client, who turned out to be Andrew Timothy, better known as the Producer of The Goon Shows, but that's not the story. His builder was knocking two cottages into one, and we were there just to make sure he wasn't being ripped off!

Just the other day, I was flicking rough some local adverts, and noticed a company which operates a sanding device to clean up old wooden floors, and then reseal them! This work sure makes a better effect than the laminates and fake plastic stuff around these days, and I pondered on why I was remembering the detail from these two cottages - for some considerable time, I might say!

It turned out to be the flooring from a Nissen Hut that was being used! 

Now this seems a bit mundane, but thinking back, when these huts were originally built as temporary accomodation, storage buildings etc, they came in all shapes and sizes, and also with flooring varying from concrete to timber! The materials would have been pretty robust, despite their Spartan appearance!

It turned out that the flooring being used here was indeed beech planking from an old hut, which had been lifted and stored for reuse at some stage. The bulder had lovingly relaid the boards, and then applied a sander to the whole area, and, because there were imperfections, dents, holes, etc., the effect was absolutely stunning, as there was still some sign of the original usage, while the 'raised' areas were taken back to a new state! I wish I'd taken a picture of the result, but didn't even have a camera, so that was never going to happen!

Even these days, whenever old timber becomes available, I keep some back - like some beech pieces from a couple of pallets I rescued a couple of months ago, and have even started to try out the Black and Decker sander...