What a pleasure to have a splendid wood floor! The trend over the last 10 years has been strongly in favour of wood flooring and when you see a well-laid floor, this comes as no surprise, because the result looks spectacular and can be a sure way to add value to your home. There’s a feeling of warmth about a real wood floor, and it’s a long-term investment because your new floor can last several lifetimes if it’s well maintained. There are some aspects that need careful consideration, however, before you decide to lay the floor yourself or even before calling in the professionals. For example, consider the type of sub-floor your new floor will be laid over and where access to plumbing might be necessary. Should the flooring material be engineered wood or solid wood? How will the floor be fixed and to what? What about the floor edging for a professional finish? Will any ventilation grilles in the floor be necessary? If you’re tackling the job yourself, what hand tools will you need?
Sub-flooring
Your sub-floor will most probably be a concrete screed or an existing suspended timber floor. If the latter is at ground level, it’s important to ensure there is adequate ventilation provided to ensure that the moisture content in the timber is maintained at equilibrium. Overlooking the aspect of adequate ventilation can cause long-term problems because the enclosed void beneath the floor might develop nasties such as the dreaded dry rot, which of course you will not be ware of until it’s well established. The importance of the type and quality of the sub-flooring can’t be over-stressed. Even if you’re competent at laying your new floor yourself, getting professional advice about your sub-flooring before you make a start is time and money well spent.
Your Wood Floor
Having established a suitable sub-floor, the next consideration is the type of wood flooring that will meet all your practical needs as well as fulfilling your vision of the perfect finish.
Solid wood flooring—For many generations pine or deal board were the standard flooring materials, and many such floors still exist today, while in grander houses the floorboards are often of oak, and both can look very beautiful, especially if the boards have achieved a lovely patina over years of use. If your existing pine floorboards are in good nick, you can give your floor a new lease of life by hiring a floor sander and giving the boards a careful makeover, followed by a proprietary sealer coat or two and a wax polish finish. Wider pine boards of 8- or 9-inch width or more look great but they are hard to come by these days; however, sometimes, reclaimed boards can be found at architectural reclamation yards. (A word of warning on reclaimed boards: make sure any boards infected with woodworm are either thoroughly treated or better still discarded.) If we assume you’re laying standard tongue-and-groove pine floorboards, the lower the moisture content the better, because solid wood floors ‘move’.
Ideally, store the boards you intend to lay in similar atmospheric condition to the room itself because, if you lay the boards when their moisture content is too high, they will dry and shrink when laid, and then you’ll have gaps between the boards to deal with, which will mean removing the fastenings and cramping the boards up again. With your new pine floor laid, you will in any case need to hire a floor sander in order to smooth out any uneven cupping or tenting that inevitably occurs, and thus achieve a perfect finish. Much of the same advice also applies to hardwood boards such as oak or chestnut, although the specialist suppliers will be providing you with kiln-dried stock with low moisture content, so you can start laying the boards right away. A practical choice is to buy hardwood floorboard packs which most of the big DIY retailers supply. The advantage here is that the boards are already surface finished with a large range of finishes to choose from—from the darkest finish to the lightest—so you won’t need to do any sanding.
Engineered wood flooring—This is a relative newcomer as a wood floor option, thanks to sophisticated machining methods, advanced gluing technology and lamination processes. The significant advantage here is the stability of the material and the cost—which is considerably less than the solid wood equivalent. Because the oak or other hardwood surface is a veneer only a few millimetres thick, this type of flooring might be less suitable for floors that have heavy footfall or rough use, however, for the average family home the engineered wood floor is proving to be a popular long-life choice when treated with reasonable care.
Practicalities
With your sub-floor sorted and your flooring materials delivered, you’re ready to start. Bear in mind, this is a fairly demanding project so make sure you’re confident about your DIY skills—there’s nothing worse than having to call in a professional to finish a job you’ve started. It’s best to remove the skirting boards first because flooring should always butt up close to the wall, with the skirting then re-fitted on top of the flooring to ensure there are no gaps. It’s possible to fit your new flooring against existing skirting but you would then need to fit a strip of quadrant or scotia all around, once again this ensures there are no gaps, although this doesn’t always give you the best looking finish. If you need to replace the old skirtings with new, remember to mitre the corners but scribe the returns to overcome shrinkage gaps.
Remember, too, that underlay is required for laminate or engineered wood so-called ‘floating’ flooring. Wood flooring underlay also gives the wooden top surface more flexibility, preventing damage and absorbing some of the excess noise and vibration. Your tools of the trade can be minimal. For traditional pine floorboards set on existing joists, you’ll need three or four specialist floorboard cramps (although it’s possible to cramp the board up tight with wedges), claw hammer and nail punch for the task of secret nailing through the tongue and groove, and of course a carpenter’s square and a sharp panel saw for cutting board to length. The fixing of engineered wood flooring is, by comparison, less demanding and fewer tools are need. Many laminate wood floors have ‘click-lock’ systems but there are at least two choices of fixing, such as the click-lock method just mentioned for ‘floating’ floors which calls for no gluing, and then there’s the fully bonded gluedown wood floor.
Phil’s Final Word
Whichever option you choose, Phil’s best advice for those of you considering tackling the laying of a new wood floor, either solid or engineered, is to ‘do your homework before you embark on the task. With all the information you need to hand and your DIY skill to the fore, you should be able to achieve a finished result to be proud of, together with a long-term improvement that will add value to your home.’
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