Getting Started on the Floor

I've had a welcome break from DIY recently. After all, working to raise the money to pay for the house is far more important.

The pressure's on to get the parquet floor laid though. The deadline is "beginning of December", when the new sofa (settee, couch whatever) arrives. This gives me a couple of weeks to lay the concrete floor and the wooden tiles on top. Today I made a start but then had to stop when a friend let me down.

As you can see I've been busy amassing everything I need:

Using some cement and 16 old tiles I had knocking about, I've laid out some "spots":

Starting at the end of the room which I want to be "the level" I laid the first tile. Then, using a the long spirit level, I laid each one about a meter apart making sure it was perfectly level. The result is a level grid like below:

I can use these level points to work to when laying the scread. The result won't be perfectly level though and this is why I bought the bag of self-levelling compound as well.

It's no surprise that the original floor is really un-level. At one end of the room I need to raise it about ½" and at the far end it's more like 2". This difference means I need more aggregate that I had originally guestimated. So much so that I'm thinking of getting it delivered.

With so much to mix I don't want to do it by hand. Instead I am going to borrow my brother's cement mixer. Today my so-called friend was going to bring it over in his van. Instead he's sat at home with a hangover and progress has ground to a halt.