Preparing the Floor

We prepare the floor for the wood floor to go down. We chip away a layer of concrete that is a couple of centimetres above the rest of the floor and expose a huge hole between the original floor boards and the concrete. We aren't expecting that. The dark crevice is a 3 foot drop, so pouring self-leveling concrete will not work. Nigel mixes up some sand and cement while I figure out a way to block the hole. His days in Bolivia mixing cement and building are coming in handy. Meanwhile sitting outside are all our fix-it project. Here we have an expensive high cistern which we got for really cheap used, but somehow got cracked. I am puttying the insides, but it is still leaking. I need some silicone. Our 800mm wide Belfast sink is more of a success. We buy it from a builder ripping original features out of another house for his client. It has a few chips which I fill and resurface. I love this sink. A child could bathe in it. Oh, did I mention the other hole in the floor. It all seems to be taking way too long. But we admit we got stuck on floors and had trouble because of our surface. The hole is filled. We have been to so many flooring places and have so many samples that we have started our own patchwork floor. Some of these we can't use as they are out of stock or solid wood (more complicated to lay). We choose the widest board you see here (in the middle beside the two lightest ones) which is an engineered wood floor (a layer of real wood with plywood underneath. This limits movement). We also have to pry off the laminate squares (see above photo)...TWO layers of them! Okay, the room is ready. The last hole filled. And a sample of our floor board.