Answer to Friday's Floorboard Question

You may remember that last Friday I posted a couple of diagrams concerning how the floor would be made up across the top of the steels. At the time I wasn't sure which option was going to be taken. Well now I do, because the floor in that room is completely finished.

The ply was used as a filler atop the steel, with floorboards over the top. i.e. as depicted in my first diagram, and as recommended by the builder, but not the structural engineer. Time will tell whether this is ever a problem. If the floor starts to bulge in 5 years we will know why !

The floor is half done in the other main room too. The builder asked me how I wanted the boards to finish against the square well for the spiral staircase. This isn't something I have thought about. The opening is currently square, but my guess is that this will be made into a round hole when the staircase is eventually commissioned. I said to the builder to finish the boarding on the edge of the square hole, but now I am thinking about it some more, maybe it would be better to put a temporary spar across the middle of the square opening, and continue the boards to there. They can then be cut back to their final finishing positions when the staircase gets installed. This will avoid having a whole series of adjacent floorboards all jointed on the same joist. I will try and speak to him about this tomorrow.