Salvage Victorian wooden floor or throw down laminate - what did you do?

[Mrsdp123]

I have had a peek under the carpets and from what I can see so far the floorboards don't look too bad although some have clearly been replaced with pine boards. Assume where they have rotted. We are pretty sure we can't be arsed to sand/varnish etc (or get someone to do it) as I think it will end up draughty and also that the floors will mark/chip with heels/kids etc.
We had decided to go for a decent looking laminate affair but I can't find any colours I liked and having bought samples home now fear they look really fake. We had laminate in our previous basement kitchen/diner. It looked great, am wondering if it is because it was dark down there and I was just deluded all those years.
Did anyone else reclaim the floor boards and then regret it, or vice versa did you chuck down laminate and then rip it up and salvage because you hated it??

We have just had the floorboards in our 1930s house taken up, butted together to exclude draughts and I painted them, they look lovely! Was originally going to have them varnished but there was too much inconsistency with the colours of the boards so it would have looked TERRIBLE! Was a big job, very messy, and quite a lot of the boards were broken in the process so we had to fit the bill for the reclaimed ones too...
Pleased to have it all done now though!

Laminate is awful IMO. It's worth spending a bit of time on the original ones if you can- worth the effort. In any case, I wouldn't say laminate is an easy thrown down option!!

Not keen on laminate in a period property personally. We have always stripped and stained very dark or painted and love it. Possibly cheaper than laminate to hire a sander and buy a pot of stain or paint?

We have original floorboards and I can't wait to put laminate down. It is draughty, requires revarnishing every second year and chips and dents especially with kids throwing toys around. Oh and slugs always come through the gaps! It looks lovely but I had enough!

Hmm,,,the problem is that I don't like painted floorboards. Possibly put off by the fact we had them in our old house in the bedrooms and they just looked chipped and scruffy, so we covered them with carpet! I can't do shabby chic which is what I think they suit as I always end up more "shabby" than "chic". We've now pulled up the carpet and the floor looks like a jigsaw plus the boards are all uneven. We're going to laminate and then probably have this conversation again in two years time!

What colour did you have in your old house? Our white boards are a bit shabby chic, but the dark coloured ones look really smart. I think a dark grey or black painted board, with a bit of filling, would look nice. We have a couple of big rugs too, which we find help keep the draughts down.

Sand and wax them, that will look better than laminate. At least put engineered oak or something real down if you have to. I know taste is a personal thing but I think laminate looks cheap and nasty.

We have put down engineered oak - the original boards were too uneven and as someone else said, the slugs get in! So proper oak flooring means no gaps = no draughts or slugs, and it looks so much better (IMO) than the laminate the previous owners had down.

In our current (Victorian) property, we took up the carpets, sanded and polished downstairs, and painted the upstairs white.

It looks lovely, but we plan to put in engineered oak floors in the property we are currently buying, which is a similar age.

I don't like the slugs, and I'd like to reduce draughts/the heating bill, but the crucial concern is that living in this house has had a terrible impact on DH's eczema. We think its the 100+yo dust :(.

Are you planning on putting laminate on top of existing floorboards, or removing existing floorboards first? In any case, don't use laminate, use the best quality engineered oak you can afford.

Slugs? Seriously? We are a 1930s house, massive gap under the floorboards, which I keep meaning to insulate a bit and forgetting, but we've never had slugs in through the gaps. One half of our living room has that plastic stuff that you shove between the floorboards to fill the gap, but I never got round to doing the dining room half. Does noticeably help the draughtiness. Would probably also stop slugs. SLUGS?

www.stopg-p.co.uk/

We're looking into cheap yet attractive flooring for our extension, and engineered wood does look gorgeous for not masses more than laminate. I've been eyeing up reclaimed stuff on eBay, as you can sand it down and repolish, but I think it's really important to make sure that your current floorboards are very stable and even them out before you lay it, or you'll get humps and bouncy bits. Probably just screwing them into joists will do it.