Floor repairs – when a friend in need is a pain in the backside!

It was our mate’s fiftieth — big one. The sort where most people pitch up with a fancy bottle of red or some gadget he’ll never use.
We thought we’d do something useful instead.

See, his old stair runner looked like it had survived the Blitz — loose threads everywhere, a proper trip hazard. And that front door mat? Bit of old carpet pretending to be coir. Absolute state.

So we did the decent thing. Gave the runner a proper fix-up, edges tight, stairs looking mint. Then swapped that sad mat for a new 17mm coir beauty — neat fit, sharp corners, cleaner than his kitchen worktops.

Cost us a fair bit too. Proper materials, proper job.

He comes home, glances down, and goes:
“Hmm… something’s different.”

That was it. No thanks, no “you shouldn’t have”, just vague curiosity.

But that’s what happens when your mates live off Northcote Road, Battersea SW11 — you could pave their hallway in gold leaf and they’d say, “Oh… did you change something?”

Still, the coir mat knows and maybe we could have even stretched and made a made-to-measure stair runner. But that’s enough for us!