Help me very quickly with my decision - fill gaps when sanding floors yes or no?

[vez123]

We are getting our dining room floor sanded this week. The boards are very tight together, hardly any gaps. Now the question is whether we should be getting them filled or not. The room is cold in the winter but we think that the rubbish windows are to blame (which will be exchanged in due course). Costs are not that much higher, just the question of the look. We were going to go with a darker stain so the surface will look more continuous. I am concerned if we didn't go for the filling whether we would regret it and vice versa. DH doesn't think there is any draft coming from the floors...
Please help us with the decision!

Thanks

[gindrinker]

We didn't bother. Its fine.
The cat quite happily lays on floor, if it was drafty she'd sleep elsewhere...

[Karbea]

We only filled the really big gaps. I quite liked the look of the gaps. Ours wasn't drafty either.

[staverton]

No. It comes out and takes some of the old floorboard with it. Ours looked so crap we ended up putting a new floor over the top (bitter)
There are other ways to draftsproof the gaps.

[paneer]

I never filled mine and it's very drafty. I regret not replacing the floorboards to begin with as I don't want to put any over the top. However, dont want to fill them either.
I did get these last winter and it did help quite a bit.

[blondebubble]

It will all evently crack and fall out anyway. I would seriously look into under floor insulation though.

[Oreocrumbs]

I was just coming on to say I saw something on TV last night that looked like a good option instead of filling the gaps but paneer has already linked to them!

It was just on one of those Sarah Beeny adverts, but they do look like a good idea.

[vez123]

Thanks for all your thoughts. We did decide to go for filler in the end. Our floor sander bloke is using MDF strops. He seems very experienced so hopefully it will have been the right choice as he did the work yesterday, so no way back!