Wooden floors. What do you wish someone had said?

[TomNook]

My qs:
How much to spend
What colour you wish you’d had
How do they do doorways
What happens with skirting boards

The endless dust bunnies on wooden floors is exactly why I hate carpet. Can’t stand it. It’s always dirty.

And yes to taking the floor boards off and then replace them so the flooring goes underneath. Much neater finish.

Also. Method almond wood floor cleaner smells divine. HTH!

I have engineered wood floorboards and I love them. I hoover the once a week and they look great.

My advice is that some wood is softer than others and will dent and mark more. Get some samples of different type and see how easily they scratch and mark. I did this and chose the most hardwearing. The good thing about proper wood is that if you do get a few marks or scratches on them over the years they just add to the character.

Roomba also loves the wood floor and it is so easy!

Spend as much as you can afford, it's worth getting good quality.
Solid wood is much more hard wearing than laminate, which can chip and warp if it gets wet.
The solid maple floor in my sitting room is much admired.
We have wooden kickboards in the doorways separating each room, which act as a divider between wood floored rooms and tiled rooms.
Skirting boards are best installed after the floors.
Maintain with a quick sweep or vacuum. I steam mop lightly if they get grubby. They do get dusty, but it's much easier to clean a hard floor than carpet.
I love wooden floors and don't find them cold.
They are much more hygienic than carpets, which I don't have in my house at all as I think they are disgusting and impossible to clean.

I have proper floorboards in my house and when we had then sanded and polished I chose the high gloss option. It does show scratches a little more easily than a more satin finish so go for the latter if you wear shoes in the house or have particularly destructive kids!

Why have people gone back to cold hard slippery bare floors ?

More hygienic than carpet (look at the colour of the water when you mop your floors) and not cold. Get a rug if you fancy one.

It's worth the extra to get solid rather than engineered if you plan to stay put for a long time..... Engineered you have 3 or if lucky 4 resands in it before you get through to the backing. Solid you can resand whenever you want.... Laminate is literally a picture of wood rather than wood.

You don't necessarily want to be removing skirting boards for fitting.... Big chunks of plaster from the wall above often decide to come off too.....

We recently had engineered oak put down and love it. No advice really apart from what others have said re skirtings.

You can get some beautiful fake wood tiles now. The quality is excellent. They require minimal maintenance and you can put under floor heating in, or not.

I love mine.
LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

I had my lounge dinner and hallway floor done at the same time. Quick to fit. Nowhere near as noisy as I expected it to be. It hides the dirt well. My children are past the ages of playing on the floor, so I can go weeks without washing it and you'd honestly never know.
If somethings spills, there is no stress about staining, just a case of mopping it up quick.
It is so robust, I was worried about it getting damaged from dropping hard things, but I ran a key really hard across an off cut, repeatedly, and it didn't make a mark on it.

It is cooler underfoot than carpet, but that's sorted by wearing slippers in the winter, while the coolness is lovely in the heat waves.

I have an oak colour to compliment the other woodwork such as the doors and fireplace. I do like the grey that is fashionable but I think it will go out of fashion much quicker than a more natural wood colour. I was worried it wouldnt feel cosy, but I think the warm tone of the wood helps.

Re doors, mine boards run through the doorway, ie in the same direction you'd walk from room to hallway, so I have no door saddle. Luckily where it meets the kitchen tiles, it was the exact same height, both have a neat edge and no need for a door saddle there.

Re skirting, you can choose to remove your skirting, lay the flooring and re site/replace the skirting, or lay the floor up to the skirting and run a beading on top of flooring attached to skirting.

My boards were mid range in price, 20 yr guarantee, but my carpenter is a friend and bloomin amazing at his job. He blew me away, the way he could briefly look at a funny angle, or issue, go out to his saw, come in with a cut piece and it would fit perfectly.
I think a good tradesman can make cheap boards look a lot better than a poor tradesman would make even expensive boards look rubbish. It's not even about the price they charge you, get recommendations from friends, word of mouth is worth so much with tradesmen.

Our floor was expensive but the previous owners laid it cheaply and it all like expanded from water or something and we ended up with a speed bump. Leave space for expansion?

I wish someone had told my upstairs neighbour that wooden flooring really isn't for people who live in a flat above others!

I love wood although not some of the clickity clack laminate but I like sitting on the floor so I also have rugs

I wish someone had told us to replace the damp, draughty suspended floor with a well-insulated solid, dry, radon-proof floor the first time we laid all those nice reclaimed boards. Still, when we finally did sort the floor out 20 years later, the boards went back fine snd still looked just as good. Hopefully they'll do another 100 years now 😀

Wood for the win, laminate for the tight wads and carpet for the dirty and unhygienic. Tile for bathrooms. Simple really.

I love my wooden floors (everywhere in the house except the upstairs bathrooms). They are original to the house (1911) and are easy to clean, good to drop things on (less breakages), look lovely. We have carpets on them in the living rooms/bedrooms/dining room but they are largely visible.

I would say consider a darker colour rather than light coloured floors. When we renovated a few years back, we had to re-finish all of the floors and I wanted them to be dark. Darkest stain was too dark so I did a half and half mix of the darkest and the next darkest and I LOVE the look.

I love that we are walking on floorboards put down more than 100 years ago - still functional, still beautiful.

If you're in a leasehold property, check your lease, you may not be allowed to not have carpet. If you're in a flat, especially one with downstairs neighbours, please please keep your carpet. The slightest noise sounds like tap dancing elephants.

Get a quality engineered real wood product and have it fitted by professionals. Laminate is plastic - horrid to feel under bare feet and terrible for the environment.

I love them downstairs. Warmer than tiles. Easy to clean

Whatever you opt for, mid coloured oak, like in the photo above is good. Anything darker shows every crumb. Every. Single. Crumb. You basically never have a clean looking floor for more than 5 mins.

Sneeuw or anyone can you recommend what to put on them. I'm.just about to sand and would like an oak finish.

I have had solid wood in my previous home- entire downstairs, and current home in two rooms (Victorian house). It is my favourite and I really want to lay it in the rest of my current homes downstairs but would cost about 12k. I have carpets now and whilst they are perhaps warmer they need vacuumed every day and are all different colours so don’t flow as well. Wouldn’t consider laminate.

I laid laminate in my first flat and loved it. It had insulation underneath and was not cold.
Further down the line and one house I had we took up the laminate and then had bare floorboards which were very higgledy piggledy so got engineered boards laid which were vey nice, not cold but a little unnatural looking.
Third time we had a house with the most gorgeous reclaimed oak floorboards but the house itself was very draughty so we did all have to wear slippers all the time.