Renovating an open plan living/ dining/ kitchen - Flooring help please!

[Chipbutty67]

Hi,

DH and I recently bought a 3 bed 1930s semi. The front room is separate, but the family room, dining room (extension) and kitchen are all open to each other at the back of the house, and is approx 35m2 in total.

We have a budget of 25K to renovate the kitchen, flooring throughout and some cosmetic work, so hoping to keep flooring costs under 5K if possible.

I would really like some advice on flooring please. We would like the same flooring throughout the open space to keep it unified.

The current flooring is laminate which looks like stickers. In the family room it has held up well, but in the dining room and especially the kitchen, the edges of the stickers have completely worn away, exposing the mdf (?) below, up to 1.5 cm in places.

I am completely confused about what flooring to replace it with. We've had 6 contractors take a look and each one has a different opinion!
Ideally, the floor needs to be water resistant (due to the kitchen), durable (I have 2 little boys and lots of playdates), easy to clean (dining room opens into the garden) and relatively cheap. Sound absorption would be great as well, as we have elderly neighbours and I don't want the childrens' play to disrupt them.

We are brand new at renovating, so any advice and recommendations would be brilliant!

Anyone?

Can't help much OP because I have the same query. Planning extension with kitchen. Architect said engineered wood everywhere but with my kitchen splashing about I was wondering if different floor there would be better with the wood for dining areas. I have Karndean in old kitchen and that's cold at times.

Someone once mentioned bamboo is good for flooring, esp kitchens.

We have click vinyl in our office (it's a garage conversion) and it is great.

We are in the process of doing something similar. We have zeroed in on engineered bamboo so far and I will be visiting the showroom on the 20th to make the final leap of faith.

@WhistlingBrooks good luck!

@MsForestier thats my concern with engineered wood - water damage. Also,we had it in our last flat, and it does scuff/ mark quite a lot with kids banging toy cars etc around in the kitchen and family room. We have a lot of playdates as well and its hard to police kids coming in and out of the garden constantly, but dirt and 'grit' on shoes also scuffs the wood layer.

Personally I'd go with tiles throughout - water resistant and definitely durable. You can get wood effect tiles which look amazing imo but more costly than a standard tile. Get underfloor heating put in too so it's not cold under foot or put rugs down in the areas where the children will play.
(I'm getting my open plan kitchen/dining room redone and after much debate DP has let me have my way to get tiles!)

@OrganisingChaos that was the dream. We looked at some gorgeous wood effect tiles, but the extension is laid differently to the main house (not sure of the technicalities) but the upshot is, to lay underfloor heating would require some alterations to the sub-floor which would take total costs to almost 16K.

I think we'll have to choose between laminate, engineered wood or vinyl.

We've got big limestone flags, would that work? Easy to clean, doesn't show marks, suits kitchen and living areas.
We do have UFH so it's not freezing in winter.
https://www.mandarinstone.com/collections/stone-tiles/limestone/

Thanks @SlumberQueenie - if our budget was just for flooring we would definitely go for tiling. But trying to fit a kitchen reno as well, i'm not sure our budget will stretch to under floor heating.

Either a fairly rustic wood floor (so marks don’t matter so much) or vinyl.

We're open plan and have solid bamboo throughout. It's been down 9 years now and has stood up to daily life perfectly. We love it and I'd lay it again in a heartbeat. We do have pads on the bottom of chair/table legs to guard against scratching, but it's very hardwearing. We have the same floor in the downstairs loo, utility and porch too and it's done equally well there too. I'd recommend it to anyone!

@CanYouHearThe...

So good to hear that you are pleased with your bamboo. I have my heart set on it so we are going to use it on our project.

I would go for LVT. You can get some lovely wood effect ones. We were going to have it in our kitchen diner but the sub floor was so uneven after taking up the old tiles that it would have needed double screeding which we didn’t have time for in the end. So we ended up with laminate which is more forgiving.

I would get LVT. It's not cold like tiles and you don't have to think about water damage and it's scratch resistant and not too £££

@WhistlingBrooks
It is fab! We've got solid rather than engineered (I vaguely recall there was no price difference so we thought we may as well), so can't vouch for how engineered stacks up. From an aesthetic point of view it should be the same though.

@CanYouHearThePeopleSing

We might actually end up going for the solid ones as I believe they are suitable for under floor heating too. Were yours from banboo flooring company by any chance? If you don't find me too cheeky, could you share a couple of photos of your room/s?

Ours was from Simply Bamboo. I'll take a photo when I'm home later. We did look into UFH, but would have had to dig out the whole concrete sub floor, which was far too expensive. I can't remember how far along the flooring decision making we were at that point though!

I think this is ours - it's darker than a lot of bamboo. simplybamboo.co.uk/products/dark-coffee-strand-uniclic-bamboo-flooring

We’ve gone for oak effect vinyl in our 1930s semi. Soft for kids to fall on, much cheaper than LVT (£26/m inc laying), easy to clean and 10 year guarantee - once the kids are done playing on it we’ll replace it.