Engineered wood floor...beading?

[bionicnemonic]

Kitty is slowly demolishing the carpet and I’m toying with the idea of a wooden floor. It looks like it will be expensive and I’ve read about removing skirting boards to lay it right to the edge and then replacing the skirting and probably having to replaster too. Does anyone have beading instead? At the moment I think it looks okay but I wonder if it’s the sort of thing you’d slowly dislike? Have you regrets about beading? Or wood flooring in general? Thanks

I have beading as we didn't want to remove the skirting boards to lay the engineered wood floor. It did look okay, but the entire floor (12 years later) appears to have shifted slightly and there is now a small visible gap all along the beading on one side.

I'm not sure it would have been any different had we removed the skirting, though.

On another note, engineered wood is not ideal for pets as it's very slippery. My friend's dog is always slipping and sliding on mine, and they can get hip etc. injuries from this too. Solid wood is better as there are gaps between the boards for them to get a grip on.

@PeckhamPauline Thank you - and thats a good point about the slipperiness - we lived somewhere with laminate for a while and he couldn't get traction if he was startled, I hadn't thought of it being potentially injurious, especially as he gets older

We have engineered wood flooring and took the skirting boards off as we wanted a clean look. The skirting boards had had so many layers of paint on them over the years that it actually made sense to replace them rather than spend hours sanding and filling. Our change of floors was also prompted by our cat who had decided that the carpet was the litter box! Yes it’s a little bit slippy when he’s having his mad half hour before bed racing around the house but it’s not a major problem.

@TwoBlueFish nice image of the mad half hour! Our boy loves it when we stay up late, because, as we all know, 2am is play time!

If you can afford it take the skirting off, we had the beading put down for money reasons and I’ve hated it for the last 4 years. Plus it’s just another area for dust to settle on!

We've been thinking about this too. Having engineered wood throughout ground floor. We've just built a kitchen diner extension, which is 'broken plan' to the sitting room. As the kitchen diner won't have beading, we've decided to take the skirting boards off in the sitting room to keep it consistent (builders reckon plaster should be okay - we'll see,), but will use beading in the hallway and snug.

The finish of solid wood is no different to the finish of engineered wood and, as we have it and ceramic tiles all over the ground floor of our house I can confirm there are no gaps in solid wood and they are all pet safe. PeckhamPauline has a very weird take on flooring. Buy rugs.

The best news is that engineered flooring can be wiped clean but don’t get beading. It’s awful and totally spoils the look of your lovely floor. Treat your room to a whole new look and include the skirting boards.

I didn’t want beading and also didn’t want to removee skirting. We got karndean which meant it just gets laid right up against the skirting.

Do you have original skirting boards? We realised that when if we removed the Victorian molded skirtings they probably wouldnt be able to go back. Our builder suggested adding a piece of molded pine onto the skirting to cover the gap to the engineered oak. It actually looks just like an additional curve of the skirting all. painted. I had to match the skirting with a new piece in another room and saw that you can buy skirting that looks just like original with the additional pine strip. We previously has solid oak put down badly and it moved so much we had to rip it up. It had beading. I was never happy with it.

My friend had those ceramic tiles that look like planks of wood laid in order not to have to remove the skirting boards. They look great and are matt, not slippery, ideal for her dogs.

We put beading down for quickness. We were at the end of our renovation, I had a new baby and I just wanted a finished house. I don't really notice it but I'm not that fussy either.

Thank you all! chocolate that beading looks just fine...probably because it’s got a curved profile...in my mind it looked like a boxy rectangle!

We spent all our budget on lovely solid wood flooring so couldn't afford to get the skirting off. We got white beading and got it painted the same white as the skirting and woodwork and it blends in really well. You don't notice it's there unless you look for it.

Ours echos the shape of the top of the skirting too.