Would we be mad to remove real wood floors...?

[landwhale]

Selling our house at the mo, we have lovely wooden floors in the lounge however they are in pretty poor condition. Squeaky, gaps between floorboards, slight bounce in the middle of the room. We don't have the time or money to renovate them and if we carpet straight on top there would be quite a height difference into the adjoining room. I want to pull them up and carpet straight onto whatever is underneath. (If possible?) however the real wood floors is one thing that sets us apart from similar houses in the area... Any thoughts welcome!

If the floorboards are "bouncy", what on earth do you think is underneath?? It certainly won't be a nice flat surface, or there'd be no give in the boards now. But I could be wrong...

That is true. Hadn't even thought of that. What might be under there other than a nice flat concrete base? That's all I've encountered before!

Wooden joists and air. Neither of which you can carpet on.

There is nothing but joists and rubble under our wooden floors, I wouldn't recommend it

You'd be mad. Leave it.

You've said they are lovely. Also that you don't have time/money to renovate them. Carpets cost. Surely half a day from a joiner would be a better investment?

How old is your house? I suppose it could be flooring laid on chipboard?

Are you talking about pulling up your actual floorboards, rather than a wood floor you have had fitted on top? If you have wood floorboards with gaps between, you don't have a concrete floor. Your floorboards are the floor and if you pull them up you won't have one. You should probably check out what's causing the springiness too.

if you selling just leave it - buy a large rug from ikea if you need to hide it/distract from bad bits .

You should use the money you'd spend on carpet to sort out the existing floors. It'll probably be cheaper than carpet anyway.

If they're the original floor boards (which it sounds like), there won't be anything underneath for you to carpet on! Just joists, and big gaps!

Just carpet. It'll be fine, and then they're still there if someone in the future wants to restore them and take the carpet up again.

Don't worry about the height difference - carpeting cos can put a wedge thing under the carpet for that creates an imperceptible slope up/down to the height of the adjoining area. We had this done in last house.

Shows how much I know! Good thing I asked before I ripped up the floor boards ha! My ask my jack of all trades type friend to have a look, he'll know more than me! (Not hard clearly..!) thanks everyone