I've found some old 1950s lino under my shite carpets!!!!!

[morningpaper]

It's really nice! Dark brown sqaure tiles with black edging.

How do I clean it up? I have scrubbed two or three tiles for 10 minutes and they look great. But I'll die before I do the whole thing by hand. I need ... a company with a machine. But I can't find any companies that say they do lino.

Any ideas?

what about one of those hoovers that washes carpets, that may work.

Yaouw need sugar soap me dear

sugar soap do you think? How toxic is it? It's impossible to do without the two smallies crawling through it...

you need to hire a buffer like they use on school / hospital floors - the places that hire sanders for refinishing floorboards often have them.

We had some shite lino under our 1950's carpets......

The newspapers lining the wooden floorboards underneath were quite interesting though...

Hmmm. You should be able to hire one of those solid floor polishing machines and fit not very abrasive pads to is (ones that look like the green plastic things that you use for the washing up). They may not say that it's suitable for lino, but it should work.

Alternatively, if you can get hold of a rotary sander, you may also be able to get the same sort of pads for that - depends on how much you are doing.

And sugar soap isn't great on bare skin - Ecover do a really good floor cleaner with linseed oil in which would be great for the lino, but depends how dirty it is.

I am very at your lino btw

A friend discovered old newspapers under their carpet from her actual date of birth. How spooky is that?

That's the very thing, Mrs Badger, that my pregnant brain was grasping towards!

oh, I meant to do too
we found slightly knackered 1950s woodblock flooring under our shite carpets but DH said it looked like a school hall and we had to have carpet.

We did find quarry tiles under the extremely shite cat-pissy carpet in the conservatory though