Eco-Friday blog post
This has been a week of great excitement (and extreme exhaustion). We also learnt the true meaning of hard wood, which has nothing to do with it’s dense composition, FYI.
This week has been ‘floor week’ and we are beyond delighted with how our flooring is taking shape. It has been a real journey with each and every one of our mixed Australian hardwood boards. From when they were milled on site over a year ago, they have seen sweat, tears, a torn knee ligament, and many (many) hours of work.
Once the boards came off the mill at 4.5m in length, they had to be stacked in a series of six stacks, each one 10 boards across and 25 layers high. Each stack had six threaded rods installed, which with the aid of nuts and wrenches, allowed us over time to tighten the bolts and straighten the boards. They were covered and left to ‘season’ naturally.
When we were ready for them, they then needed to be loaded by hand onto several trailer loads and carted to site. Once on site, they were individually fed through a thicknesser - 5,000 linear metres of them - ready for installation.
And this is where the real pain started. Far from being ‘click and clack’, each board needed to be begged, then forced and coerced into laying straight next to its neighbour. We learnt a lot about how pliable even the most offensive ‘banana’ boards can be if you know how to treat them!
I feel like each board is an ode to our dedication and commitment to this project. There have definitely been moments this week where I have thought longingly of tongue and groove engineered flooring, but I know the end result will be worth all the pain!
It is deeply satisfying knowing that they are bespoke floors, made out of local, sustainably sourced, native hardwoods. We might not always remember that the board four in from the top nearly broke my wrist trying to pull it straight, but we will always know that it was a battle worth fighting!
Although that said...we still need to cut the perimeters, sand and oil them all....so make sure you ask me if my opinion is the same at the very end! 😂
