Fat Tongue. Skinny Tongue. Green Tongue.

With all the bearers and joist down – we need a real true floor.

As I have mentioned before it gets pretty cold in our little dell, so we need to make sure that there is plenty of insulation.  Underfloor and all.

We have decided that the whole place will be wrapped in sarking – and the means the floor too.  Now sarking comes in different sizes (but not colours, so buying it is not as much fun as buying shoes or handbags.  Or wine), there are wide sizes for ceilings and walls and speciality sizes to go between the bearers, er joists, er... you know what I mean.

Right at the start of the jobs, we go to our local supersized hardware store to price it up, and discover that for the amount we are going to use – wouldn’t it be just as easy to buy heaps of the wide stuff, and just run it under the floor bits?  After all the specially sized stuff is much more expensive?

If you ever consider this – just to save $100 – don’t do it.  Really.  Don’t.

Use the specially sized stuff, and a staple hammer/gun thing and be done with it.  That way you will never know the pain of having to roll out 7 m of shiny silver insulation, sticking it to walls, steel, anything to get a good grip.  Using the new silver tape that has backing, and rigging up an old broom handle to act as a tape dispenser, nailing through it, only to discover the things are in the WRONG place, sealing up all the holes, and starting all over again.

As I said, spend the money on the real stuff.

Installing the real stuff takes about 5 mins per ‘run’.  It looks good, it is fun to hammer staple on and everyone is a winner.

After the insulation comes the flooring.

Because we are going to have a wet area, we needed to use two different types of flooring.

There is green tongue for the living/sleeping areas.  This stuff is made out of chip board, steam pressed to be kind of like a big sandwich of chips (mmmm, chips).   

It is supposed to slip together easily, and is glued and screwed into place.  The plastic joining piece is green.  Hence the name.  This comes in a standard size of:   3600 x 900.  It is pretty much this stuff – but slightly cheaper.

Then for the bathroom we have a weather resistant type of flooring.  It is fibre cement and is called Scyon.  It’s size is 2700 x 600.  Now for those of you who are observant, you will see that the two types of flooring are not the same size.  Remember that, it will come into play later....

All of the materials were sourced from Warwick and came out on a truck, to be transferred to Florrie at our builders yeard - more commonly known as Paul Fox's shed.  Thanks Paul!

Ready to lay our first sheet:



If only they were our cattle..



We have decided to lay the flooring in the sections that won’t get really wet ever, so the bedroom/kitchen/dining/study area.  It starts of easy, but takes a turn.

It turns out that the pedantic measuring wasn’t to pedantic.  So some of the floor holdy upy things needed *cough* encouraging into place.

With a hammer.  A very big hammer.

After that took place, the floor went down rather well.

The were placed, glued (with stuff like sikaflex)  joined and screwed.  The Amazing Walter and I spent time counter sinking the floor screws as well, so we can play “slide around in your socks” without pulling skin off the bottom of your feet now.

Like a bought one!  Note the skilled notching for the uprights and bracing.

It is funny how your perception of space changes. The shedhouse feels much bigger now and I am really looking forward to spending more time here.

The bathroom floor size means there has to be additional joists put in to accommodate the smaller size. *That’s the turn, as I write it in tow sentences it doesn’t explain the many hours of work that went into it*

Instead of trying to build of the walls (which are not 100% straight) the floor was built in from the existing floor sheeting, and screwed down with specialised screws and driver bits.  That fibre cement is HARD!

So we can now safely get in and out of the shed – walk across most of the floor and even have storage space for all the tools now!



No more packing and unpacking



We can’t put in the last ‘run’ of flooring – there is not way to keep it dry yet, so there is still a gap.  But as soon as we get our deck on, and our cafe/bistro blinds up, they go in as well.



There's a Deere in there