Taking up carpet to reveal wood floors - how hard can it be...?

[DancingLady]

Ground floor of our house is carpeted in pale cream (previous owners' choice). After two years of living here, it's looking horrible - stained, grey, really dirty, and I've always wanted wood floors anyway. We have a short hallway and two smallish reception rooms, and want to take up the carpet and have wood floors in these areas. Has anyone done this, and was it more nightmarish than you'd expected?

To my mind, what happens is: we take up the carpet, dispose of it. Clean and possibly sand (by hand) wood floors. Put down some rugs. TA DA!

Am I being impossibly naive?

I do have white walls, my style is sort of New England, off white painted cupboards/dresser, renovated real wood pieces here and there...that sort of thing, and not cluttered.

The floor hasn't scuffed at all, or chipped off [used primer, and 2 layers of quality gloss paint...sounds awful but really isn't]. However I live on my own, no children or dogs around. But I'm in and out to the garden lots in the summer, and always bringing logs in in the winter. Painted it 2 years ago now [lots of paint fumes though!]

It may not suit everyone, but here it's ideal. Easy to keep clean and I don't worry about wet shoes or spilling drinks staining carpets....

We have grey in our ground floor, and mostly Scandi/Ikea furniture. White upstairs with most of Ikea in the bedrooms. Looks fine. The grey looks really mid century I think. It's international floor paint, the hall hasn't scuffed because I did two coats like you're supposed to. The living room I only did one and it has scuffed a bit. I'll do another coat once the builders have gone, but no point right now! We put down big rugs in the living room and bedrooms, and that makes it cosier. DD has a massive red rug in the middle of her white painted floorboards and it looks adorable with her red and pink bedspread and pink wallpaper. That's sounds grim, but it really isn't, just bright and cute.

Good for us because we don't worry about the cats and potty training. The carpet we inherited smelled like wet dog and once our cats puked on it, the kids puked on it and then the toddler weed on it, it smelled like something had died under the house. Painted boards can be disinfected.

Sorry to hijack the thread but what colour and brand of floorpaint have people used?

International Floor paint in slate.

Thankyou :)

With the grey floor paint, did you just take up the carpets, clean the floor and paint? I like the idea of grey I think, with white walls and lots of bright 60s textiles and art. And rugs for insulation and soundproofing.

May be reaching a solution here, thanks everyone!

There's a bargain dealer in International on eBay. I only paid £15 for a tin.

Yep, just took up, pulled out nails and staples (bloody underlay was stapled down), secured a few loose boards with screws, swept, mopped and then painted. Living room I did one half, then moved all the furniture over and did the other. Should have done a second coat though, as it scuffs with just one. Grey looks lovely, gets lots of compliments. Don't buy flokati rugs though, like I did for our bedroom. They shed and you end up with balls of wool everywhere! It's awful. Thankfully builders have ruined them, so I can chuck them without feeling guilty.

Nepotism - wonderful, I am going to order some if I can find them, as we will need to redo our upstairs thanks to heavy footed builders!

Thanks Nepotism and MummytoMog. Might be the way to go.

Hi DancingLady!
What did you do?? How did it go??! 3 years later thoughts...?!