engineered timber floors & carpets

[stilllovingmysleep]

Hi, wanted to ask for some advice in terms of good, mid-range price companies who make:

1. engineered timber floors (for our living room & hallway) &
2. other companies which make wall to wall carpets (for stairs & upstairs).

I've been told (for low prices) Builders Depot & Carpetright... but I'd like to get a few quotes. Any suggestions would be appreciated. We are in London by the way.

For carpets, avoid the cheap chains that overcharge for extras. Look for a local independent. They probably have a warehouse on an industrial estate rather than a high street or retail park showroom full of shiny salesmen.

London is a big place.

For engineered flooring look at online suppliers. there are loads. They send samples free next day delivery which really helps with choosing!

PigletJohn many thanks. We are in N / NW London if you have more specific suggestions

Lambourne Carpets in Chingford is good, but there must be one nearer you.

We got engineered wood from ukflooringdirect.co.uk and the customer service and floor quality were both excellent. Really pleased. Our carpets are from carpetright and I wasn't delighted with either quality or service. The fitting of the stairs wasn't great either.

PJ I'm by chingford so that's good to know for next time.

I also wanted to ask if anyone knows what sort of colour this is (in both these living rooms) as I'm now going to be visiting local flooring shops & need to be a bit oriented in terms of the colours. What colour (more or less) would you call these 2 floors?

The second one (grey sofa picture) looks like it is American Black walnut. It is lovely but IME it can fade quite badly in the sun. It can be sanded and restained but obviously that's expense and disruption. Just a thought.

If it's not a complete pain for you to get to I have found these people good

naturalwoodfloor.co.uk

Thanks ConnieSpry. We are thinking of engineered oak for floors and I tend to like medium-darker colours such as the above, but not too red if you see what I mean. What other options would you recommend in this sort of colour that wouldn't fade so badly?

The other thing I really like is that these floors above are quite shiny. How do I ask for that when I go to the shop? are they oiled? or is it just the type of wood?

My engineered German oak hasn't faded at all. It's warm but I have a lot of colour variation And knots which I love, but which you don't have in your pictures. So it is worth considering whether or not that is important to you either way.

Mine have that shine and are a lacquered finish. We saw two types of finish in the boards I wanted. Lacquered or brushed and oiled. The lacquered gives the bigger shine but brushed and oiled is cheaper if you need to refinish it at some point as you can just do a section rather than relacquering the whole floor.

I have engineered oak from the people in my last post in Antique Blue, which isn't blue at all but a mid slightly greyish brown. No fading yet !

I've recently had a load of stuff from builders depot and they were great.

If you want to save a little cash, DH has a crazy idea for our flooring. He's going to buy the engineered wood but buy it untreated. He will then stain it himself. Seems like it will save loads of money.

I'm not a big fan of CarpetRight and we have a good local independent shop we've bought from before BUT - CarpetRight do interest free credit and we are looking at around 100 sq m so that is a huge factor.

Friends recently just "paint washed" their old floorboards and they look great - a pale grey very diluted paint stuff - must ask what exactly. Very cheap! You can tell I'm on a tight budget...

We fitted engineered oak flooring at our last house that was a very old, damp house in the countryside. Advice was to use engineered as opposed to solid timber because of the damp conditions it would be exposed to.

I found that whilst there are masses of places online that will supply (mostly tiny) samples, this just confused me more as there were so many that were all slightly different - plus it's hard to tell from such small pieces.

In the end I was so bogged down and had enough different samples to cover the floor in a box room, lol that we went to a local independent flooring shop where we were able to take home large lengths to try out for colour etc. Their prices weren't the lowest, but customer service was excellent and we did get a good discount due to ordering such a huge quantity

We looked into the staining it yourself option, but I wasn't convinced - despite being veteran DIYers and house restorers - that we could achieve a consistency of colour. Otoh, DS has recently saved some cash by buying the untreated stuff, but they wanted a lighter colour which he achieved with oil/wax.