The current floor is (I reckon) the original from the conversion of the school to a house in about 1861; the photo (right) shows it as it was in 2010. We left a small part of the old floor near the under-stairs cupboard (left of the stairs in the photo) as it's not in bad shape.
The limecrete floor will be constructed with a base layer of "Geocell" Recycled Foamed Glass (RFG) (see www.mikewye.co.uk/limecrete-floors/) as opposed to the Light Expanded Clay Aggregate (LECA) which I used for the kitchen floor (see entries in March/April 2011).
The RFG (being loosely laid, left) has several benefits (compared to LECA), one of which is that the depth of the floor is less and hence there is less to dig out! I have already been caught out by the volume of the removed floor - it seems to have expanded massively (like, doubled) in volume and so is filling more bags that I expected! It was very well compacted.
We have also removed the horrible concrete skirting (which was painted BROWN before we moved in! I re-did it in white) which will be replaced by some pretty profile in pine to match what I fitted in the lounge.
The removal of the old floor left a huge hole between the door to the lounge (at the front of the house) and the door to the kitchen/diner (at the back). I solved this by fitting a bridge using two 3 metre bits of 75mm x 50 mm C16 covered with bits of old floorboard from the firewood pile.
As an added refinement, I have covered the boards with a piece of carpet (as laid on the stairs and landing); the stairs are easily accessed from the bridge.
An unforeseen problem: in one corner of the hall we uncovered the mains water supply (which I knew was there but had ignored for the last 10 years) - photo below.
Below the tile level it was badly corroded and so it has to be done NOW, not later; so now outside there is a large hole and I have a plumber coming on Friday to fit a plastic pipe through the wall to the mains supply outside the house (photo below - note how the water pipe comes out from the wall and goes under the rainwater drain at an angle). More expense but it's worth it (as I keep telling myself).
The original plan was to re-fit as many as possible of the existing tiles supplemented by similar ones bought at local reclamation yards. Sadly, yesterday I took my other half to a reclamation yard as I needed to buy some more reclaimed tiles - the re-useability of the lifted ones is just over 50% (even worse than I had gloomily expected).
This visit was a mistake - first I was gently told off by the owner for sorting out suitable good condition tiles (!), so I didn't buy any at all. Then, second, once the other half had seen for herself the difficulty of finding acceptable old quarries, she decided that we should buy some proper stone flooring instead. Aaargh!
So I now have available a large number of mostly one inch, good clean reclaimed quarries (a variety of red, red/orange, proper Staffordshire blue and other blue/black), plus a lot of good ones waiting to have their grouting etc removed, plus a lot more of rejected ones (suitable for outside use only). At least I don't have to do any more grouting removal and also the retained small part of the original floor will now be done as well.
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