New new floor

Yes, there were supposed to be two 'news' in the title. It will all make sense if you keep reading.

When we had the house renovated, one of the last jobs to be done before we moved in was the laying of the (engineered) oak floor throughout most of the downstairs (everywhere except the snug.)

Here's the hallway.

And looking through to the dining area.

Dining area through to kitchen.

End of dining area through to living area.

Living area looking back to kitchen.

And then we moved in and filled the house with furniture and toys and mess and stuff. After about 18 months (mid-November 2012) we got round to having an island fitted and we finally felt like we were a good way towards being 'done' in this room.

And then we went on holiday for 2.5 weeks. While we were away we arranged for the people who had fitted the wood flooring to come round to do a couple of minor repairs, plus a sand and oil of the entire floor. Except things didn't quite go according to plan and we came home to find this:

Yes, that's right -  a whopping great chunk (approx 7 metres across and maybe 1.5metres deep) of wooden floor no longer there. This was all related to a little incident with our dishwasher which several months previously had sprung a leak; not a gushing Biblical flood, but a little drip, drip, drop which we didn't even know had happened until an error code appeared on the display. So, we got a man round to fix it and thought no more of it; until we were on holiday and the flooring co. phoned to say they'd had to take up part of the floor because it was wet underneath and would never dry out (due to waterproof membrane) unless taken up and exposed to lovely fresh air. And so we spent all of December, and January, and February with a lovely section of concrete floor and a nice little lip of wooden floor ripe for tripping over/stubbing toes on. Until finally, when we went to Shanghai (or Wigan for DC), the floor had dried out sufficiently and the flooring men were able to come in and fix us.

Hooray.

All except for this section which we actually asked them to cut away. And one day, in the not too distant future, I hope to be able to show/tell you why...