Herringbone Floor....

 

 Under Construction....

As you can see, Dear Readers, in the picture above, I briefly experimented with the idea of running the zigs and zags of the Herringbone pattern in the opposite direction. But I quickly decided that the initial pattern was the correct direction. I added a whole bunch of pieces to see if it made sense to try to count and space the rows before starting to glue them down. I estimated the distance from one zig to the next zag and measured a whole bunch of 3/4 inch spaced lines across the floor. While doing this I realized that I wanted to have a border of plain wood strips all around the edges. This would make all those tiny ending triangles less likely to chip and fall off the front edge at the very least. So I started there, gluing the edging in place.

 

 

I also remembered that I needed a hearth at the chimney side of the room,

 and made one to butt the floor up against. 

This is not attached yet so I can remove it to paint

 without worrying about the floor!

There are enough bump-outs and odd corners in this room

 that it makes sense to me to have a clean edge

 to work from with the herringbone pattern.

I made the edge two "boards" wide.

And then I started gluing the herringbone pattern...

starting roughly in the middle.

I made a little "square" out of legos

 (I raided my son's stash!)

which proved invaluable for keeping the rows aligned!

(My son has tons of fancy legos, 

so I was able to add a handy handle!)

There is really no fast way to do this!

Especially since my pieces are a little irregular...

They needed to be tested for fit before adding the glue.

And you need to be very careful to not get glue

 on the "right" side of the wood!

I got this far on the first day.

I love the way it is looking!

But I needed to see how the edges were going to work...

All those tiny pieces by the doorway....

And you have to get the wood grain running in the correct direction...

I'm not sure I'll be able to fill those tiny gaps at the corners...

Oh look! I did fill one of them!

And all the rest of the back alcove is finished too!

But that's as far as I got on day two, Dear Readers.

The herringbone floor is under construction...

and is more than half done!

I just Love the way it is looking!