Well, I hoped to finish the black limestone flags on Wednesday a week ago; I'm pleased to say that I actually achieved this on the due date, to my surprise! They are not perfect, but then they were never going to be, considering that I'd not done this job before. Believe me, just because you've laid a few wall and floor tiles of the ceramic variety, don't think that qualifies you to lay a 40mm+ mortar bed and large (i.e. heavy) limestone flags of up to 30mm thickness; it is VERY hard work when you are mixing, levelling, cutting and laying all by yourself. Apart from the second day, I did two mixes every day and found that this was a decent amount of work which left me tired but not (quite) exhausted. On the second day I did three mixes and realized my mistake when I sat down in the evening and didn't move for four hours!
Levelling the bed for the individual stone thickness, so that the stone was at the correct height in relation to others, was one problem I had anticipated; I had not realized how difficult it would be to get the heavy stones perfectly square in relation to each other, and with the right gap. Either they were level but too high, or were sloped, or angled, or the gaps were not right.... or all of these! You also have to be careful with the order of laying as you obviously don't want to lean on ones just laid. Since I was doing two mixes and then calling it a day, this wasn't too much of a problem, apart from where I was cutting an edge. In an ideal world you would lay the stones in the middle and work out to the wall, but then you have to cut and lay the ones at the edge with the wall, so what do you stand on to do that? My solution was to work with my back to the door (see above), so that the last one was in the doorway, which meant that I laid cut stones against the wall and worked away from the wall. However, this was my undoing as I dropped the last one in, lovely and level, one cm below the door, and found that it was too small! Instead of 10mm, I had a 25mm gap either side of it, which could have been largely avoided had I measured and cut the edge ones more accurately to suit. Hopefully, the grouting will hide this sort of blemish, and no-one else apart from Chris will notice where the floor is not level.
I mentioned last time about choosing to use an irregular floor pattern, but forgot to mention how I did the actual irregular design. I only had three widths of flagstone, 45cm, 60cm and 75cm, all 60 cm long. I found some unhelpful advice of the internet which suggested that five different sizes was the minimum for an irregular floor. However, I didn't want to cut them except where they abut the wall as the edges are attractively dressed and I quickly proved that dressing is another skill I don't have (quite apart from the effort in cutting up to 40mm of limestone!). So I just sat down with a pencil, eraser and squared paper and tried it until it looked right. Being multiples of 15cm, it was just possible to achieve a layout which looks random, but it was actually hard work, even for an engineer. The trick with the layout was to not work from the edges; I started designing at the doorway to the kitchen, and moved towards the centre, then worked back towards the edges, as those edges would be cut if needed. There are two basic rules for an irregular floor. Firstly, never have four stones meeting at one corner; you always need to have a T junction, not a crossroads! Secondly, don't have long joints covering several stones; for the sizes I have, I decided that three stones was the longest joint I wanted but had to go to four a couple of times.
Having finished the flags, I moved on to do the floor in the loo and utility (i.e. carrying on out of the door in the photo to the external back door). The floor in here will be ceramic tiles (450mm square and about 8mm thick.) These are much easier as they will be stuck onto the bed once it is set, thus giving myself two goes at getting it all level - once with the bed and once with the adhesive. You've got to make life easier for yourself where you can! I've done the bed and am now waiting for it to set, so I've gone back to grout the limestone flags.
NB In the photos above, I'm quite pleased with the ledged and braced door you can see. This is re-used from the old extension, and is fitted in almost the same place with the original latch. I did have to buy some new T-hinges but even these are identical to the ones I threw away. I might have to paint it somewhen...
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