Pine flooring - price?

[lawlie]

Hi all,

I should pre-face this all by confessing that I am a complete flooring beginner (if there were ever such a thing). I am based in North London.

We are buying a new place and I would love to have a pine floor with lyed soap so that it has that nice white-ish finish like in a lot of scandi homes, or the floor in the loaf catalogue like this:

loaf.com/products/bathroom-storage

Having done some research, it looks like it would be cheapest to buy pine flooring from a sawmill or timber merchant, and then [get them sanded? - or are they already sanded?] and then treat with lyed soap and then varnish.

My questions are:

1. How much would you expect to pay for pine flooring from a sawmill? It seems to be around the 25 per sqm such as

russwood.co.uk/flooring/flooring-prices

However, what is the catch with this at 1.25 per sqm?! What's the difference?

www.parktimber.co.uk/shop/view/23_TG_Flooring/73_TG_flooring

1. Can anyone tell me what the floorboards in the attached picture are? They are the ones in the house we are buying but I can't tell what they are. I'm wondering if we could just sand them and use them but I don't like the look of them at the moment.

1. How much would you expect for someone to rip up the existing ones (or can they go on top?), put down the new boards and carry out the whole process? The place we are buying is about 600 sq foot.

1. Do people generally supply themselves and pay for builder to fit, or is it cheaper to supply and fit?

Thanks all!

Pine is a soft wood and will mark easily, not hard to sand though. The wood you queried would require aprox 8 x the price qouted to get one square meter.They are quoting a part plank length, Still cheap though. B&Q charge £19 per square M2 to lay.That plank is 125mm which is aprox5 inches wide.
If you wanted to tackle the job yourself you would need a sliding mitre saw . I have laid a couple and you need to allow gap for expansion of the wood . Also unless you want creaking boards you need the under cushion sheet. When you start must cut every other board in the first row shorter or you end up with the boards joint shouting at you. Always best to remove skirting boards first .The other thing is try to start with the boards running away from the doorway , so that you can slide out the boards when whole floor is laid .You can upv the tongue and grove or use pins hidden at same. You could save at least £200 on a small room 10 metre square by doing yourself that's the boards not including skirting. The mitre saw is a must for the skirting as most joints are 45 degrees and you get a neat accurate cut. This is a job a beginner could easily do. Mitre saw cost from £80 to 200 . The more expensive ones cut wider and deeper and you dont need to be a carpenter to use one. It's a tool use will use time and time again over the years. Hope this helps

That should read " a room 10 square metres" aprox 10 ft by 10 foot

Some houses have floating floors and there are no joists . They have a bag aprox 8ft square 4 inches deep of insulation and you have to lay a chipboard planks of about 3ft wide down as the whole thing is when completed one large floating self leveling board. Full length boards would be a doddle. All the info I gave in last post related to pre pack type floors.

Thanks roneik, that's really helpful. I really just wanted to sense check the prices - and have obviously exposed myself to be a complete newbie as I couldn't even tell they were part plank lengths! Does that mean they are quite short (so you would have lots of them in a row)?

Given my complete lack of experience in flooring (I am handy at some other things but definitely not this) I would definitely be looking for a builder to do it, provided they aren't extortionately expensive. I don't really want to spend anymore than 3k on the flooring...

oh I get it, it's just the plank rather than a m2 of the stuff.

Can anyone tell what the flooring in the pic is?

if you are buying actual floorboards (18mm to 25mm thick, in long lengths) rather than just laminate or engineered, them you can pull up your old floor and lay the new direct on the joists, which is a much better job and saves you having to cut or lift all the doors, skirtings and architraves.

In this case, take the extra time to clean up your subfloor void, clear airbricks, insulate all pipes, and run any electrical or comms cables you might want. Best of all, you can insulate between the joists, which will make the floor warmer and reduce draughts which are otherwise very common round the edges, even with T&G boards. A competent carpenter is the best person to lay a new floor. You will want to take the skirting up but it can go back in the same place. Strip it while it is off.

Those boards on the link were 2.8 m long . Gosh that money 3k should be more than you would need spend

Recently I did a medium sized room with skirting boards in engineered oak and my friend spent about 700 quid on materials . The packs came from B&Q. Maybe I got carried away with suggesting you had a go yourself.

I have done up a few houses in my time , so have built up a bit of a skill set.I would not describe laying a floor or skirting boards and door hanging as skilled. I would say tiling is a skill and plumbing. Although plumbing in a kitchen can be done now with compression fittings,

I would measure your room and go to a wood yard and get the costing for the wood , then go on trusted traders and get handyman to do it for you.

Just to add the solid oak engineered boards were not treated with varnish and cost nearly 50 quid a M 2. They were light oak and got a lot of compliments afterward. The skirting was pine and I used a brushing wax.
I got away mostly with using no nails to fix them to the walls with a few engineering nails where the walls run out of true.There is a trick where the corners run out at the 45degree angle , to saw off a shade on the inside with a keyhole saw.

The hardest part was removing the furniture and taking the doors off to saw about 30 mil off.

You can use a nail puller crowbar to lift the door till you get hinges screwed in

Rambled on a bit but who knows someone might find them handy tips

Sorry forgot your question about the planks in the link , they are about 8foot long. or 2.8 m. They don't look thick enough to lay straight onto joists. would imagine heavy furniture on them could be problematic

If I were laying old style floor boards I would want them chunky thick best part of an inch