Floor update! I think some of you are waiting for it after a few dramas we had doing it. Three weeks of hell, really (we were working as well). Think twice, my friends, before renovating a pine floor - Hive account@littlebee4 will back me here!

So, if you can remember the problems we were having with the grey stained boards where the laundry was? We tried everything - oxalic acid, bicarb, sanding, planing, bleach - nup. When we took off the boards we found out why - whatever it was had soaked right through to the beams below. So we found some recycled boards at a demo yard and Jamie put them in instead. Even with a sand, they were a darker yellow, but we were losing our patience. Jamie joked it was his invisible fix, and it was funny - boom - because it wasn't invisible at all.

Then we had the 'abyss' to do - the bit under a removed wall where the pine boards didn't neatly meet. Jamie set to it with a saw. The plan was to put a board perpendicular in a kind of intentional way.

There was also pinky bits we couldn't get rid of, though we tried all the tricks. We were about to tear our hair out and then just thought, well, fuck it, there's worse floors than this in the universe. I was getting increasingly jealous of Hive account@ericvancewalton's gorgeous hard wood floors. I told myself that one day we can always put hard wood floors down one day when we can afford it. For now, imperfect would do.

So we set to work with the primer (with a UV protective coat in it - pine yellows in the sun even with more stable water based polys they have these days) and then two coats of poly. It actually started looking okay, though I did wish we put a whitener in as well - however, I couldn't convince Jamie of this.

Whilst the photo looking from above shows clearly the 'invisible fix', it's not offenive at all and shows the history of the place. And I love, love, love the board going in a different direction to the others - it's quirky and interesting. It looks way better than butting up the boards to each other and risking a crud gap.

Ignore the grey on the bottom left here - that will be hidden by the kitchen cupboards, so we didn't care about sanding that perfect. And where we put the rug, that's covering some sins as well, that will be covered by a Europeon laundry, which is what we call small laundry cupboards here (rather than havin a huge room, which is also very Australian).

So now I've made some excuses, look and admire these boards instead. Don't they look beautiful? Ignore that we don't have skirting boards yet - we measured up for them today. The floor looks whiter in this photo.

The paint (we used Loba 2k Duo which is lovely and easy to use) is also matt satin, which is more matt and less shiny which makes it look more natural. Can you remember the freaking awful orange it was to start with?

I'm starting to like the orange vintage lights too. I mean we can't afford other hall lights, so I have to like them but now that everything's freshening up, maybe they'll work.

This is my bedroom - I ended up putting wooden venetian blinds and linen sheets. The room looks tiny, but it'll work. More on this later - we can't put furniture in til this weekend and we need to leave the old place furnished until we sell it. Wish us luck with that - I am dying inside paying the mortgage for the new place!

All in all I'm pretty happy with the floor. Sometimes it is a good idea to see what it looked like before to understand just how much better it is now. Note the grey mess we had to patch and the orange varnish. Yep, it's a improvement.

OH, and the title? It's been in my head all week. It's Magazine, a really underrated band, and a song that often gets into my head. It's kinda appropriate for this time, constantly looking at floorboards. The lyrics are great: 'I am angry, I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin' - yep, that's the pine floor boards - but also, 'I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it' - aint that the truth, gorgeous pine floorboards.

Used to make phantoms I could later chase
Images of all that could be desired
Then I got tired of counting all of these blessings
And then I just got tired
This is a song from under the floorboards
This is a song from where the wall is cracked
My force of habit, I am an insect
I have to confess I'm proud as hell of that fact

May as well make this my second #threetunetuesday for Hive account@ablaze this week, whilst I'm at it. It's Tuesday some where in the world, after all. Magazine were these great post punk English bands from the '70's. I had them on cassette. No one seems to ever know them!

I think one of their guitarists were poached by Siouxie and the Banshees. People in the know always list them as one of their favourites - particularly the album 'Real Life'.

Have you heard of them?

With Love,

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