Nearly 12 months ago we took possession of our new house, and I spent 2 weeks of literally back breaking work laying the floor in the new house, timber laminate was all that we could afford at the time, mind you, it was still $6500 just for the laminate. About 3 months later the floor started to lift, at random places the floor buckled and occasionally broke. We later found out that slabs on a new house (in Australia houses are usually built on a concrete slab) take 12-18 months to “dry out” and that essentially moisture from the slab had caused the problem, and there was not a thing we could do to fix it, bar rip the floor up and start again. Today marks the start of Operation Floor Lift, where I’ve got 1 week to lift 220 sq m of timber laminate and dumb it into a miniskip prior to the new floor being laid next week, and we’ll be out of the house for at least 2 weeks as well after that: the new floor consists of proper timber: local BlackButt (Eucalyptus patens) which is costing an arm and a leg and takes 2 weeks to lay and finish off. I’ll be working from the laptop starting Saturday presuming the floor lifting doesn’t kill me in the mean time, laying at nearly did. Moral of the story: seal your slab prior to laying flooring. Now if only someone had told me that 12 months ago 🙂
Operation Floor Lift commences
