We’d ummed and ahhed about the lounge floor for a long time. My preference would have been carpet, but Chris wanted hard flooring. While I’m happy with wood or tiles in other rooms, the lounge is a room where I like to lie on the floor and I wanted something warm. In the end we compromised on cork, which is very insulating material, and therefore warmer than wood. It’s also very sustainable, and I’d been keen to try it out somewhere if possible.

The cork comes in retangular tiles. To prep them they needed to be painted with adhesive and left to dry for 30min, with the same adhesive also being painted on the floor. We found the most efficient thing was to have one person preping tiles, while the other laid a previous batch.

The nice thing about cork is it’s flexible, allowing a little give and take on our very wonky floor.

The biggest challenge was keeping the dog out of the room, as he naturally headed straight for the glue.

We started in the center of the room, and cut the tiles to shape once we reached the walls.

It was a very late night by the time the last tile was laid, however, the floor needed three coats of hardener, with four hours to dry between each coat, so we were keen to get one coat on before bed.

In the morning, Chris got up early for a second coat, and I lightly sanded the floor before applying a third coat at lunchtime. It will be nice to move the furniture back in from the crowded kitchen, but the advice is the let the floor bed in for a while before heavy use begins again.

I quite like the finished look, though we need the furniture back in to really see how the room will feel. We chose quite a large grained cork, which I think looks quite like wood.

While the furniture was out of the way we tried to get a few more jobs done, including filling, sanding and painting where the radiator used to be, and painting the water pipes with primer ready to be painted the same colour as the walls.

Very boringly I took the sockets off the walls to clean them and run caulke along the outside edges.

Chris opted for a more interesting job of building the TV unit he decided long ago would sit at the base of the bookcase.

These more interesting jobs can feel like a time drain when we have lots of boring little jobs we could quickly tick off, but with the list getting shorter by the day it’s OK to have a few detours.