Can I have floorboards without freezing to death?

[Stokey38]

I live in a victorian house, sash windows and already a bit drafty in the winter. At the moment our front room and dining room has carpet in it but it's disgusting and stained and needs replacing. DP really wants to replace with a more durable / darker carpet but I really want the original floorboards but he reckons it will be really cold without carpets. Is there any way of making the room draft (ish) free without carpets? We can't really afford hardwood flooring either. Have rugs but don't know that would be altogether effective. Thank you.

the best way to stop it being drafty and give it a new lease of life is to sand the floors and use the collected dust from the sander mix it with wood glue and fill in the cracks. it will match perfectly then and you can stain to the colour you want.

add a lovely rug and it will look lovely and not be draft.

Would it be too much trouble to put underlay underneath? My flooring guy told me about depron. Or that fluffy stuff between floorboards and joists.

If it's drafts between the boards you are worried about, I saw this recommended on another thread - looks very easy to use and clever. haven't tried it myself.

I think that stopping up the gaps plus using rugs will be warm enough.

Or if the floorboards need sanding anyway then you could get the gaps filled at the same time with dust etc as Scarlett describes.

you will have to clamber underneath the floorboards and fix loft insulation between the joists. This will block draughts and also insulate the floor. You will get very dirty. It is useful to have a few trapdoors to get down when wiring or plumbing needs to be done.

Alternatively you can lift all the floorboards and do it from above, but this is even more work, and some of the boards will get damaged.

While you are down there you can clean out all the airbricks, sweep up all the rubble especially bits of wood and dead rats, and check for cracks or damp. You might find a sack of sovereigns. If you do, they're mine, please send them on.

Victorians usually had lots of rugs on their floorboards to make them nicer.
and the victorian house i lived in had stripped dark wood flooring round the margin of the 'main rug' in each downstairs room - so floorboard gaps weren't a problem. (all this went in favour of wall-to-wall thickpile carpets. even warmer..)

Pigletjohn's suggestion is a good one too!

A friend lifted all her floorboards, put down insulation, and plumbed under floor heating (fixed to the joists) and then relaid and sanded the floorboards - they are gorgeous and really warm (only source of heating)

When I say she did it - I mean it - she did it all herself, on a shoestring budget. Amazing. Nuts. but it is really great now (and she now has a small DD who can run around barefoot all year ).

Thank you for all this, am feeding all back to DP and he is sounding quite enthusiastic. Stealth that sounds great and have been looking at underfloor heating pads. I hate this carpet so much, I can't wait til it's no more.

Stokey I was wondering how your floor went?

We had ours stripped and gaps filled but it is freezing - too cold to sit on the floor. Looks lovely - although would recommend not staining too dark, the dust shows up more!

Mrs so freezing that's it's horrible? Freezing to walk on or does it make the house overall more freezing?