Hi
Saw these pics of wooden floors in a magazine and thought it looked really good.Basically what does it involve......

http://upload.turbosport.co.uk/getpi...3828742397.jpg

http://upload.turbosport.co.uk/getpi...3828721854.jpg

...anyone got a similair set-up....is it easy to do,whats it like maintenance wise,do you like it,cost,etc,etc........

Any input or opinions gratefully received..
Paul.

Two variants to look at :-

real wood - expensive!!
laminate - plastic with a coating of real wood on top, kinda like veneer on top, varying thicknesses, thicker last longer.

We went laminate flooring with a wood veneer on top, there are two types of installation to look at (assuming you dont have floorboards, which if you have you can always sand, polish then varnish in colour of your choice).

1. - click together - various companies do it, connects like a big jigsaw, have to cut boards to fit in room or round awkward objects (fireplace etc) but can be walked on straight away and furniture put back etc and if a board gets damaged just undo the jigsaw and replace.

2. - glue together - lots of choice again, seem to remember its cheaper than the above, has to remain weight free (so no heavy furniture or walking) for quite a few hours, can be a pain to replace if any gets damaged, still have to cut to fit room and objects.

items both need -
1. both need (certainly if on concrete) some sort of damp proof prevention as water can mark the boards swell etc this is normally in the form of a thick(ish) plastic sheet, has some fancy name like polythene membrane.

2. both need (or can have) some strange polystyrene stuff on top of above membrane, cant remember what this does lol.

skirting, you have two options here, if older house you can remove the skirting and lay the floor under the skirting boards making sure there is a gap* (will come back to this) or you lay it so its almost to the skirting boards like we have done in ours (still leaving a gap between edge of wooden floor and skirting, which in its early days you will insert 'blocks' between edge of floor and skirting or the wall if you have chosen the first route mentioned.

If you have gone first route and under skirting, replace skirting mkaing theres a gap between edge of floor and wall.

If you have gone the second route and stopped before skirting place blocks between edge of floor and skirting. Leave the blocks in so that if the floor expands once laid if just takes up the gap between floor edge and wall. The floor company you have purchased from will normally have some angled thin pieces that are a few inches tall and about 6 foot long, this glues or nails onto the skirting boards and covers the above gap.

Another interesting point if you are doing more than one room are doorways, some floorers provide doorway sections (and also bits where it may have to join carpet etc) but we did ours so it looks like one big panelled floor with no viewable joins from room to the next, quite tricky cutting the right lengths etc but looks a lot better imo.

All this makes me sound like some diy expert, but actually im fekkin useless and i dragged my father back from portugal to help me, but the two of us managed to do the entire downstairs (including kitchen - which some people dont do due to risk of getting wet and swelling etc but excluding downstairs cloak) in 3 days which was about 1700 square foot of flooring and cost £500 (we got it cheap as a friend wanted the same flooring so we ordered in bulk from travis perkins on his trade discount).

If you buy your flooring from say for example travis perkins like we did you can buy fitting kits which include the blocks for the skirting, a 'persuading' bar that you use so you can click two pieces together then knock into alignment with a light hammer.

Things to remember from what i remember reading before hand, lay the floor so that it 'runs' to and from the light coming into your house, not left to right across.

Always order more than you need, if you are going the 'click' route for example remember you are possibly going to have to cut pieces to go round the edge of your room, which will mean you may be left with lots of offcuts, but it may not have the tongue or the groove depending which side has been cut etc. We must have butchered about two packs of flooring for off cuts.

Get a VERY sharp saw so you can create your off cuts smoothly with no nasty edges and do your off cuts at right angles preferable.

plus points -
1. easy to clean - just sweep
2. doesnt stain - or hasnt yet (touch floor)
3. looks great.
4. last a lot longer than carpet (providing you buy stuff with a good content of wood on it!).
5. Havent had any warping yet (been down about two years) and seems to have a higher tolerance for getting wet than we were led to believe.
6. Crayon/pen/baked beans etc from kids wasg off easily.

minus points -
1. bloody cold on feet.
2. VERY hard! remote, glasses, vases etc all will break on impact - oh and sore on feet if you stand on something solid as there's no 'flex' like a carpet.
3. fiddly doing the edges and round fireplaces etc.
4. large spillages - washing machine etc have to be cleaned up QUICK to prevent warping.
5. kids dont bounce well on it.

Bottom line, is it worth it - YES
do i prefer it to a good quality carpet..... to look at yes, as a permanent bare footer to walk on no.
would i have it again....YES (but most learn to wear slippers)

think that just about sums up my eperiences with it.

Ok mate.....thanks for the reply.....

If i do it i think i might get a carpet for the centre area,re picture number 2,....this may lessen some of the minus points like breakages,cold on feet etc.

What about life expectancy......how long would you expect it to last.Also what about scratching?...stuff sliding about,etc.
From what i read you went the 'clickable 'route......is this the most popular....

Paul..

It seems to last very well, as i said ive had mine 2 years, thats with a family of four, two cats and a dog.

It does mark up when sliding furniture etc but you can polish out if its light, or unclick if you have gone that route (which i did), i seem to remember most of the companies offer a guide, where they have placed it on a test to see how many revolutions it can last to simulate wear etc, the one we got was pretty high (large wood content).

We have tried a few small rugs but find unless theres something pretty heavy on it it can slide around (specially with kids bombing around) and if its to large you dont see much of the floor so kinda defeats it. Personally im not keen on second pic as you have a nice floor with 70% of it covered up, also i dunno about your room etc but i cant have much furniture in the middle of the room (cos of kids, dog, ease of walking through etc) so if large rug went in centre and furniture around the outside (like in most modern houses were living room is so small you dont have a choice) you would see nothing of the wood floor!

I don't think there's any 'wood' in this laminate flooring - it's MDF with a paper wood pattern and a hard resin surface.

If you look closely, you can spot the wood pattern repeating on different sections. Still looks good though!

good answer from meester holt, but if you do it right you should only end up with one offcut. I'm having great difficulty typng now, so i'll ry to log in tomorrow an demnsate how you do it :D:D:D



(p.s. - Lay it when you re sober(

Kevin - You're right, laminate is just pulp with a picture of wood on top then laminate on top of that. This stuff is cold to walk on but if you buy the real wood - usually a laminate/pulp base with varying thicknesses (sp?) of real wood on top then this is warmer to the touch as its a natural material.

The stuff we have got is a softwood base, with a layer of hardwood on top. It's 100% real wood, but technically is still a "laminate".
In the blurb with the wood, it says that it should last about 10 years with constant wear before it needs sanding down, but being real wood, it CAN be sanded down (something you CANNOT do with plastic laminate floors). The thickness of the hardwood laminate means it can be sanded three times.
We got the stuff with the Click-lock system (i.e. no glue), and it was so easy to put down that it was untrue. Our whole living room (4m x 8m) took about 1/2 day.
The laminate real wood flooring is supposedly less prone to expansion and warping than solid real wood, and is is considerably less expensive. We paid £28/sq-m, and in our opinion it was worth every penny.

can't remember the real description of mine, but it does have a plastic bottom side and a layer of wood on top.

Still have a few packs in the garage so will inspect and see what it says if your interested.

we ended up with a damn sight more than one off cut though, the length of one wall had to be made from off cuts, then had to go round fireplace so cutting there, then through double doorway from lounge to dining room, then dining room a different width to lounge so more offcuts there.Then because we had decided to do the whole downstairs out of lounge door and through hall, bottom of stars, kitchen door then around units etc so plenty of off cuts for me.

Does anyone know......

My new flat has wooden floorboards but carpets on top at the moment. Hopefully i can take up the carpets and find that the boards (havent seen them yet) are all equal lengths so they look good and in good condition so that i can sand them, varnish/wax them. BUT....if they are pretty sh1t could i then lay new click together wooden flooring on top without any trouble? Anyone done new wood florring onto old floarboards?

Ok....thanks......

Dharbige......my living room is about the same size as yours,..32 metres square,which comes to about £900ish.Not being up on DIY where's the cheapest place to get it,.....B+Q?.
btw....i'm only thinking of the living room,not the hallway etc,...

Paul...

I can get real wood, tongue and groove flooring.
70mm wide x14mm thick Chestnut £19 p/sqmtr
70mm wide x23mm thick Chestnut £23 p/sqmtr
100mm wide x23mm thick Chestnut £29 p/sqmtr
135mm wide x23mm thick Oak £47 p/sqmtr
Supplied in a bound bale of 20 pieces of equal length.
All those prices are including VAT but add £45 for delivery upto 80 sq/mtrs.
They come in varying length pieces, 35/55/60/70cms.
The oak is lovely. Just bought some 14mm chestnut which looks greeat when it's down. The guy I know who gets this has just finished his lounge and it looks good.

http://www.rich-b.co.uk/jam/floor.jpg

He can supply the stainless skirting boards and the custom made glass sliding doors too.

But seriously, our living room is about the same size and we had a Tarkett real maple floor put down in the lounge/dining room/hall/study about 6 months ago.

The two main things to watch out for is that solid wood tends to be around 20mm thick for stability, and the laminated type woods such as ours (3mm of maple on pine base) are about 14mm thick.

With the former, you need to do some serious door chopping to clear, and the step down into other areas such as hall, kitchen etc will be quite severe. The thinner laminated type woods are not much thicker than carpet plus underlay and in many cases will clear under existing doors, plus they look more natural where they meet other floors.

We are just about to move, and just got a quote for 87 metres of Deco Marty maple flooring - ouch:eek:

The Kahrs wood that we got (Oak Copenhagen woodloc) we got from a company called 1926trading.
Their prices are the best we've seen, although their not interested in small quantities (we actually did the whole of the downstairs).
Best to call them to see if they will supply the amount you want.
They also do an excellent underlay called "Cush n' Wood" which incorporates a moisture barrier (which we didn't need), and a layer of "foam crumb" insulation which is wonderful at reducing echoes at reducing echoes.

I personally wouldn't by any of the ****e you get at run-of-the-mill DIY places like B&Q, but then I'm a bit of a snob like that.

Dave......my living room really is 100 ftx100 ft...LOL :D:D....

..ok..thanks for all the info.....gonna have to have a think about it...
Paul..

Tarkett is the stuff to get. It comes in different grades, economy, and the expensive stuff.

Si

Cheers guys I was about to post a similar question. Am thinking of doing our living romm and hall.

As for the carpet in the centre of the room, if you get the carpet edging strips and lay it round the edge of the centre you can lay the carpet into the hole and it will line up with no dip or rise in level, and you do not have to pay to floor under the carpet section. This is what i am planning on doing, will let you know how it goes, but will not be doing it until August when I get some time off to do it.

:D:D:D

Paul, you know I said I'd help!!! :D :rolleyes:

Thanks for that contribution Clare:p:rolleyes:;)

We recently got rid of the carpet downstairs in our house and had the whole area re-floored with a decent-quality light-oak style laminate. It looks *very* good, and is massively practical - particularly as we have 3 cats (also provides huge entertainment, as the 3 of them try but fail to corner quickly on the smooth surface).

We didn't lay it ourselves (I'm a DIY disaster) but had it done professionally, and it was well worth doing (and we had Amtico laid in the bathrooms too whilst they were there).

I'd recommend it to anyone (although in our next house we'll be going the extra step and having real hardwood flooring, rather than laminate).

[Edited by MarkO - 7/12/2002 7:32:17 AM]

Cool....a 100 foot X 100 foot living room (or did you mean 32 square metres LOL ;) :D ).

[Edited by Dave T-S - 7/12/2002 1:54:12 PM]