does anyone have any experience with removing and replacing timbers and flooring?

[cantmummyhaveabreak]

Basically our house has rotted timbers and floorboards... we paid for a builder to replace the dining room floor a few months ago, that cost just under £1000... we still need to replace the living room floor and hallway (which isn't anywhere near as bad as the dining room was). We also need to replace the boiler with a combi boiler of which the quotes are all around £1500 and put up a stud wall and put in a window upstairs to make a new bedroom for DS....

Now, we watched Sarah Beeny;s 'help my house is falling down' on tuesday, and she recommended that they replaced the floorboards and joists themselves, and they did and saved a fortune!! I have DH and a willing friend who's volunteered to do it, if they have a proper guide... I've searched the website for ch4 about it and can't find it... anyone know a good site i can find step-by-step guides to such major DIY jobs?

Or does anyone here have first hand experience of doing this themselves?... Or does anyone wanna come help?

TIA

[DomesticDisaster]

Hello
I don't know if this will help but we have recently discovered loads of this sort of stuff on YouTube. You can find videos of people doing all sorts of DIY stuff. I haven't specifically looked for the jobs you are talking about but we have found stuff for our house - doing decking, tiling etc.
The Sarah Beeny link is www.channel4.com/4homes and there is a bit on the front page for levelling floors - is this what you were looking for?
HTH

[cantmummyhaveabreak]

DD- will take a look on youtube. I found the leveling floors, but what we need is a guide to removing our old floor and timbers and then replacing with new ones- much more extreme than leveling- though that'll be handy for the end part of our mammoth task!! :)

[diggingforvictory]

Hi
We did this in our sitting room a few years ago. We simply replaced like with like. It really wasn't difficult.

Take all the floorboards out then work your way along replacing the joists. Make sure the joists are level themselves and also level with each other as you go. You'll need to put damp proof tape where the joists rest on the stretcher walls. Then put new floorboards down. Make sure the ends of the floorboards match up with a joist. That's it really.

If you can borrow or buy a cheap compound mitre saw it'll save you loads of time.

Since it sounds like you've got quite a bit to do, I would recommend you get a book like the Readers Digest DIY Manual which goes through stuff like this. That's usually our starting point.

[cantmummyhaveabreak]

Thanks for that... We did see most of what the builders did when they did our dining room...

DH has a big manual but it doesn't tell you step by step and DH really is a novice!!

However he made a good stud wall frame yesterday for blocking up an unused doorway- maybe he should have more faith in himself!!

[lalalonglegs]

Yes, I've also done this (with help of my very handy dad). It's dirty and quite hard work but it's not skilled as such. Like Sarah Beeney said, you just have to keep measuring everything against your level.