Historical Cow Hill in Norwich

So this month I’m mostly working local again.. well apart from 10 days in Aberdeen doing hard surface and French polishing repairs on a job I’m unable to discuss..

So back to my challenging job in the centre of Norwich on the historical Cow Hill, which involved sanding a 350 year old pine floor in what was once an all girls school then became property of the neighbouring church before eventually becoming homes.
First thing first with a floor this old was to remove loads of staples that had apparently been holding down old lino, then punching in probably 80% of the nails and filling most gaps with 6-8mm pine splints…. but the biggest challenge came in trying to sand out the several 100yrs of soot and grim that had built up, with in a couple of boards our belts would be clogged but eventually by alternating with the brilliant Lagler Trio and belt sander got us back to bare wood.
The client had picked Osmo oil white tint,
From an old black dirty floor it now looks clean and fresh yet in keeping with the listed property.

My recommendation for anyone with a very old floor that may have bitumen on it, is to get a professional in… this is very hard to clean and needs a combination of very course sandpaper and scraping, plus it’s a very dirty job with the 100+ years of soot in the boards to get out too… but all the best if you’re a diyer and giving it a go.

Piled on Osmo white tint.