Anyone have or want wooden floors?

[callie]

We are seriously thinking of ripping up all our carpets on the ground floor and having solid wood . Iam totally confused by the different types. Will it scratch? Should we go for laminate instead?
I would love to hear what you think or if any of you have wood do you love it or long for carpets.

Love it, it's easy to clean, we still have some carpet downstairs but would change it if I could. R.

Hi rhiannon, How do you clean them?

I've got mostly wooden floors - wouldn't really consider anything else now, but they can be draughty in winter if you have gaps - like mine!

Cleaning? What's that? Clean with washing up liquid or special cleaners for wooden floors. Had nothing once and used a washing powder tablet - best results ever.

I like the look of wood floors but I live in Scotland and they're a b-a-a-a-d idea here, cos they're so cold unless they have underfloor heating. I was at a Christmas do last week in a house with wood floors and came home frozen solid from the knees down!! They're not very comfy for lying on, either.

I don't know about actual wood floors, but we have a laminate floor over floorboards (in dining/family room), with plywood for levelling and that foam stuff between it and the flooring, and it is just as quiet and warm as carpet and so much cleaner!
Floorboards are draughty, unless you have a newish house with tight-fitting boards. Ours (Victorian house) have been up and down for central heating, wiring etc and are gappy.
Laminate floor can be swept or hoovered, and swiffed (or swiftered or whatever it's called), and mopped with a kitchen mop. You can go over it with one of those floor finishes that makes it more dirt resistant. For a room that kids spend a lot of time in it's fantastic - our old carpet always had dirty spots where drinks had been sprinkled and then walked on, and the flooring has had chewing gum and worse walked in and cleans up like new.
We are going to have laminate in the hall, when our joiner has time to do it (we are too incompetent), and I would like it in the sitting room too but there is a bay window where the floor slopes away and I think it would open up. (And, as Suedonim says, you really can't lie on it!)

We've got laminate in the hall and it's very easy to keep clean. But really I think I am a carpet person as it's more cosy and less likely to cause damage when the kids fling themselves around! Am just about to invest in a carpet cleaner though, as it can get very grotty!

message withdrawn

I love our wooden floors, but one serious drawback is the noise!They really are so noisy!

Robinw, the thickness of a laminate floor + plywood or foam underlay board is actually, amazingly, about the same as carpet + underlay so you shouldn't have to trim doors again.
What you do have to do though is either take off and replace skirtings or put beading over the gap - you can get beading to match most finishes but if you can't you have to paint it to match the skirting and that IS a faff.

Callie, I have hed various types of wooden floors and for what it is worth my experience is a s follows.

1. Sanded floorboards. If you lift the carpets and have floorboards underneath, sand and varnish them. In my view the appearance is second to none, provided the boards are in reasonable condition and your house is not too perfect as this method gives quite a rough and ready look, which may or may not suit you.
2. lay your own floorboards. My house is very old. I lifted a carpe and was disappointed to discover concrete underneath. Thinkin gi t would be most in keeping with the house I got a joiner to lay wood and I had it stained and varnished. Yes, it looks very rustic but I wold not do this again. It is a little too rustic, and not hard wearing.
3. Most recently I have overcome my snobbery about laminate floors and have laid two myself! They are fantastic, very neat and easy to clean, not that hard to lay, surprisingly warm,and not as noisy as real wood. On the downside they do look slightly fake but still vey attractive. Don't get the very cheapest if you can afford it; I have seen some of that and it looks terrible. I think in B& Q there were three price ranges and we got the middle one.

If you go for sanded boards or laying real wood, take the advice of my brother who is a painter and decorator and use water soluble varnish which is more expensive but dries much much quicker and prevents you getting all kinds of unavoidable specs of dust and stuff sticking to your floor as it dries overnight.

Callie, I just reread your original message. I should explain that when I had real wood laid by a joiner it was not of the solid type you are probably considering.
My sister has had solid wood floors laid, and they were incredibly expensive. Unless money really is no option in my view laminate is the one to go for. My sister's floor cost a fortune, and no, it does not scratch, but does not really look any better than a decent laminate floor (which does not scratch either)costing much less. In fact despite being real it looks fake because all the pieces of wood are so regular in appearance.

We have timber floors through most of our house. While I am in Australia and our winter's are not what you have to deal with, where I live we do have, on average, about 5 snow falls a year and rarely get over 30 degrees Celsius during summer. The floor boards are cold, however, as we love the timber we put insulation under the floorboards (climbed under the house) and this seems to have done the trick. There were some serious drafts before insulating as our house is old (by Australian standards!), has gaps between some of the boards and is on the side of a hill (great views but shocking winds at various times of the year). The noise has never worried us, and we have got a few rugs scattered about for lying on. Ds loves the floorboards as he can get up some great speed doing laps on his little trike!!

We put laminate flooring all through downstairs in the summer and I love it. We've got some bright rugs down (they do tend to slip though!) and so can't say I've noticed the cold. Great for spills, wee accidents and vomit! Got to be careful with red wine and curry as they can stain. I hoover mine and give it a mop every once in a while. I would definitely get someone in to lay it. It took our guy two days and he made a good job. I think if hubby had laid it, we would have fallen out! I find toy cars run very well over it and so far, I've found it indestructable!

There is also an alternative to either solid wood or laminate flooring and that is solid wood overlay floors. This is basically plywood with about a 5mm layer of solid wood stuck on top. It's supposed to be very good and about half the price of solid wood. You can get it in Wickes for about £30/m2. You also don't have to adjust doors etc as the overall height is the same as if you had laid a carpet.

I haven't actually got any but this is something we've been considering for our living room and hallway as our ds is not the cleanest child in the world!

D'oh! I've just realised I have a wooden floor, too! We have parquet flooring in the dining room, with a missing bit in the middle where the previous owners had a carpet. We have a rug over that area. I never, ever think of it as a wooden floor, as I focus on the rug! (And you can't see the floor anyway, due to the mountain of toys covering it.)

We have wooden floors in our bedroom and living room, I would think very carefully before going for this effect though. It took dh two whole days to sand the floors, then you have to apply the varnish and you cannot put anything on the floor for up to 12 hours after you have applied each coat, so you would need to live upstairs for a while. I would also strongly recommend you get them sealed, I saw a tip once about mixing up the sawdust you have collected after sanding the floors with water(?) and smoothing it over the floorboards. They are also very cold as others have said, and very noisy if you have small children. Things break more easily when dropped (all our wine glasses are now broken) and the floor does scratch, you would need to buy some foam protectors to fit at the bottom of your chairs, tables, etc.

But it does look nice and everyone comments on it.

I worldn't even consider putting in wooden floors (though the house already had one in the study, which we have kept). I know they look lovely but I couldn't stand the noise or the (very visible) dust. Maybe I am just a housework-dodger, though!

Emmam, do you play with the cars while the children are there or wait until they have gone to bed?

We've got laminate all through our downstairs, except the living room. It's brill for the hall - my last hall had a carpet that showed all the bits 20 seconds after last vacuuming it. It's brill in the playroom - felt tip pen, paint, poo etc.. all cleaned off. It's brill in the dining room - although the crumbs and bits are more noticeable, it means you actually have to do something about them (I need this sort of "push" to do housework!). We didn't even contemplate fitting it ourselves, and the fitting cost as much as the floor, but I definately think it's been worth it.

We've got wooden floors downstairs and I think they're great - much easier to keep mud/ stain free than carpets, though we do have some rugs. My advice would be: get the gaps filled (we did with a mix of the sawdust from the sanded floors and a resin), also our boards are pine, so relatively soft, so you do get dents in them - protectors on the bottom of furniture are a good idea. Also our sanded/ varnished boards are only a couple of years old - so ask me again in 10 years' time how they've lasted.

I live in Edinburgh, where no self-respecting person under 40 has carpets. It's starting to get a bit fascist actually (!) We got the floors sanded in our old flat - lots of people hire a sander and do it themselves over a weekend, but apparently it's very hard work and you can damage the floors. What I would say is make sure you get plenty of coats of varnish on it, as ours seemed quite soft - after a few years there were marks all over it underneath where our two chairs were. It's best if you can to get it done while you're on holiday to give it plenty of time to dry. Also, seal up your doorways - the dust gets everywhere! Compared to lino in the kitchen (which is what it replaced) it's a bit of a pain to clean. I used a Dyson on it, and washed it every so often, but it seemed to take the varnish off in parts, so I think it may get damaged. In our new flat we've got some sanded floors, and some laminate flooring (in the hall), and I've got to say, the fake stuff is alot more practical, even though it doesn't look quite as nice as the real thing.

I can't take any more of this! This is torture. I LONG for wood floors, with the odd rug for warmth and comfort - but my husband is a carpet man through and through. I could easily compromise by having sisal flooring or even living with that carpet designed to look like sisal. But my husband thinks these options are even worse. We have inherited a pattened carpet from the previous owners of our house. It's good quality and will last for years. Words cannot convey how much I hate it.

Downstairs we have one hardwood floor, one carpeted floor and one marmoleum (lino type stuff). I would say it is worth considering how much time you spend playing on the floor with your kids as wood is uncomfortable to sit on. It is also very slippery and children need to be either barefoot or slipper footed. Wood is also very noisy.
Our hardwood floor seems pretty scratch resistant and is easy to clean, although hard work to get a really high shine on it.

Spot on, Rosy! My son also lives in Edinburgh and he has.......wood (laminate) floors. He does complain about them being cold, noisy and uncomfy to sit on when they have lots of people in the flat. I also heard recently that laminate flooring is regarded by style gurus as equivalent to the avocado bathroom suite, LOL!