Chestnut Flooring

Luckily for us our local timber yard in the village produces chestnut floorboards in varying sizes and degrees of quality (She also does lots of other types of wood as well)
The ones we have used are 20mm thick, 12cms wide and tongue & grooved all round. The lengths vary at 35, 40, 45, 50, 60, 75, and 90 cms. 
As long as you get the joists level it is easy to lay and you end up with very little waste. You can either then cover them for protection (recommended method which I didn’t do) or just cary on building once laid and just leave the sanding finishing to the end. With hindsight I wish I had spent some time covering them and the best and cheapest thing to use is the hardboard separation things just over a meter square that they use on the pallets of bottled water in supermarkets and which they are happy to let you have if you just ask 
If memory serves me correctly, we buy the mid grade that comes in at about 23 euros a square meter. I have laid about 65m2 upstairs in the master bedroom, the shedroom, the office and mezzanine above the office space.
Laying the joists out in the shed room (that’s the one at the back which is a homage to our sheds) is pretty straight forward and the joist size was dictated by the height of the floors of the landing and into the bathroom / office side of the house.




The joist timbers are 100mm x 90mm the span between the beams is a meter so the joists are beefy enough and set at 350mm centers.

Each joist is drilled (20mm hole through and into the main beam below and then glued and hard wood dowel pegged into the beam and cut flush the next day. 

The levels were checked as I laid out the joists and spacers were put underneath where required. 





Once that was done it is simply a case of establishing which side of the room you are going to start from and leaving a small gap lay out one run of planks. The only slight mistake I made is that for better acoustic insulation you can get this thin 2 or 3 mm hard foam that you put over the top of the individual joists and then nail the planks onto that and it reduces the "drumskin" effect.  

Make sure you have them all level then pencil mark the joists. Pick up the planks and get a straight length of chevron and nail it firmly along the line, leaving the nail heads about a cm out for ease of removal later. This gives you a solid base to work from and prevents the planks shifting sideways when you bash them with the nailer.
If you zoom in on the next photo on a joist you can see that you nail on the “tongue) and you can see the black oblong head of a nail in. 



You use a flat edge to make sure the planks are running staright and no unsightly gaps are appearing and away you go. 

You then need a secret nailer see photo, which your wood yard should lend you (for a price along with the nails) If not check out a hire center.
The mallet that do comes with it has a nylon/rubber head and a big metal weight on the other side. You use the nylon/rubber head to strike the gun and also to “tap” the planks into place for a nice neat fit without danger of messing up the wood edge.
The first couple of rows and the last couple or so you may need to use a hammer and the nails without a head or wedge shaped heads (pins) and a punch. Once you get the hang of it its pretty straight forward.




And here it is done 




And her is Mrs B checking out some dance moves  on it