Which is cheaper- laying new wood floor or doing up existing the floorboards?

[HairyPorter]

Ftb here and really clueless about this stuff. The house we want to buy has carpet everywhere and we prefer wood flooring. Would it be cheaper to get some mid range wood flooring installed? Or to pull up the existing carpets and then polish and fill in the gaps? *i am assuming that's all we need to do? Is there a risk the boards will be unusable?? But I guess either way the carpet needs to come up so we don't lose anything by doing that? Am I right?

Do you know whether the house has floorboards first of all? Could be chipboard over concrete for example. If it has then yes they may not be suitable. Makes sense to investigate what you have first.

Some floor boards are truly awful and probably not worth doing up. If you have them, you have to make a judgement on quality. If they are good enough, repairing, sanding and sealing is definitely worthwhile. Mid priced wood flooring is only part of the cost. Getting the new boards under the skirting is often an issue (or you will have ghastly beading) and the laying costs are a considerable expense.

bare floorboards upstairs are ideal for people who tiptoe around in their socks and never sing, or turn on radios or TVs, or hold conversations at night.

noise travels both ways.

You need to assess the quality and condition of the boards before you know what to do :)

Enjoy your home :)

Thanks all, I have a few more questions if you don't mind!

We were hoping to leave 10 days between completion and moving out of our rented place to do the floors and paint the walls. That should be enough right?

To assess the condition of the floors, if we go back with a builder after exchange (but before completion), and if the owners allow us to pull back on a corner of the carpet (they may not even agree, but assuming they do), will that be enough to assess the floors? Or will the whole carpet need to come up to decide if it's usable

Noise is an issue I hadn't considered. Presumably that will not be the case if we use underlay and either go for carpet or hardwood floor?

Skirting boards again is an issue I hadn't considered. If we don't do up the existing floorboards, is our only option to lay underlay and wood floor over it and then use beading to around the skirting?

I'm fairly certain there are pine floorboards under- we've viewed several houses in the area (all from same period and on parallel streets) and a number had exposed floorboard. That's a fairly safe assumption right?

Your other option re skirting boards is to remove them, lay the floor and then put them back. You will almost certainly need new ones through, not reuse old ones. To cover any marks to the wall caused by removing the old skirting just buy a deeper skirting board to cover.

You don't say how big the house is but yes you should be able to paint it in that time. I think you'd be better living with it and then deciding colours etc after a little while. Same with floors. It gets a bit more personality that way.

How old is the house?

In terms of assessing the state of the floorboards you will only really know when you pull back all of the carpets. Some rooms may be ok, others may have had their boards taken up/patched/ completely replaced with boards of different thicknesses or laid in the wrongddirection. Some will probably be splattered in paint/ plaster. I should imagine that if it's an old house the bathroom floorboards probably would have been tampered with at some point to install pipework etc.

I would think again about floorboards upstairs for the reasons mentioned above and also I would think it would be chilly/drafty.