Has anyone restored a parquet floor?

[thenewaveragebear1983]

We have a tiled floor in our hallway but from a bit of rightmove previous sold prices snooping we saw that previously there was a (possibly original?) parquet floor once.

Due to the levels of the floors I have always wondered if the parquet was still there. Then, the other day while investigating a bay window seat, I lifted A piece of manky vinyl floor and found the edges of the parquet. We had seen on RM that it was in the hall/lounge; this was in the lounge but the levels of the tiles would suggest that if it's laid on the parquet in there then it must be tile on top of parquet in the hall.

Now....temptation is getting the better of me.

1. I hate the tiles. We are having the hall/stairs/landing carpeted anyway. If it's awful, we could carpet over it.
2. I could lift a tiny tile, behind the door, and just have a little look what's underneath and no one would ever know
3. I'm not afraid of some hard work lifting the remaining tiles if it's under there

But is the floor going to even be salvageable? Will tile adhesive have destroyed the wood? Am I insane to even consider it?!

We had a parquet floor restored - it was indeed hard work, we only helped scraped some of the bitumen stuff off some blocks. We paid a professional to do the job, need to use the big floor sanders/polishers really. How good at diy are you?
The only way to know if it's salvageable I'd guess is to lift all the tiles and have it assessed.

Ours is parquet underneath the wood flooring with good insulation.

We did consider keeping and restoring but it's concrete underneath that so really cold.

@sbplanet do you mind me asking, was it an expensive job?

I don't mind you asking, I don't think it was expensive per se. But we were lucky, we found a chap who worked for cash and let us help with a bit of the menial work. He did a good job but it's a labour intensive process. I can't remember how much, but it was about 20 years ago. We bought an ex-council house (up North) and the parquet was under the old carpet. It wasn't a perfect job, but more of a refurb. I think nowadays it would be expected to lift the whole lot and relay, but our bloke just lifted and cleaned the really bad ones, and then sanded and varnished.

I didn't take any pics of the floor but this one has some floor and our very old cat. :)

ps I loved our parquet! :)

We've just done ours, original 1969 oak parquet. It's been horrendous, done it all ourselves. Some had bowed and lifted so we replaced a metre square. Had to cut them all as they weren't quite right. Have then sanded the lot and restained. Would I do it again? Yes, it was worth it.

My mum and I restored a parquet floor in my rented bedsit when I was a student. The (cheap nasty) wall to wall carpeting was grubby and worn so we pulled it up, rented an industrial hoover and an electric upright floor sander. Once all the crumbs of glue, dust and disintegrated carpet were gone, we mopped the parquet with a little water, let it dry and then we waxed it. It was a wonderful project.

We moved 7 months ago and when we pulled up the hallway carpet we found the original parquet floor! It’s beautiful. We had a professional floor restoration company do the work. The blocks were missing in a few places and at least 2 square foot had to be replaced. The company we used spent ages ‘kitting’ the old and new blocks together.

I love it, not least because it’s so practical with young DC and dogs running around. It cost about £900 but that also included repair to the flooring in other rooms, although the majority was for the hallway.

@StormBaby that's interesting. So you didn't have to lift every one? I read online which seemed to suggest you need to lift every single one to clean it, which is way more of a job than I anticipated it being. I hoped that we could lift the tiles and just sand and finish the surface.

It's only a small area, 3m x 3m. Part of me wants to just go for it and if it doesn't work out just pretend it never happened...part of me is too scared in case I ruin the house!

I suppose one issue will be if when lifting the tiles, it lifts the parquet underneath.

Hmmmm food for thought....

@thenewaveragebear1983 Hopefully you won't damage them pulling it up. I'd go for it and accept you might need to spend a bit to get it right.
I first pulled our flooring up 6 years ago to reveal the parquet, I knew then it needed renovating but we've just lived with it until now. Over time the original cherry stain, which I hated, had worn back to blonde wood, which showed every ding and scratch, and loads had bowed from a leak, so it was now or never.
We only lifted and replaced what was damaged. The entire large lounge floor has cost £200, that's replacement blocks, buying a saw to cut, hard as nails to stick, filler to fill the gaps, and the stain/hard wax oil.

Oooh now I'm getting very tempted. I suppose there's no harm in lifting the one tiny piece of tile behind the door? At least then I'll know whether it's even under there. The worst that could happen is that we have to live with it in a poor state for a bit or spend a bit of money to get a professional in. Or carpet over it

Our parquet is ancient and unrestored. Bits wobble. It’s different colours in patches but it has a beauty of its own. We’d not suit shiny varnished flatness in our rather old house, so the wobbly bits remain. It’s incredibly easy to look after and very forgiving of muddy dog and spilt wine.

I had mine in my hallway re-done professionally, it wasn't terrible but needed sanding, oiling, some bits re-setting & a fair bit of sorting around the edges. It cost just under £350 for the work in 2017. (Though I also had two other rooms laid with engineered wood at the same time by the same company, so may have been a bit cheaper as part of a larger job.)

Come to that if you happen to be in a Wales SA postcode I can recommend a very good floor restorer! He did a great job on my upstairs floorboards too & that wasn't expensive either

We had the parquet in our living room restored. It was missing bits, there was some water damage and it was different colours due. It took two and half days and cost £1100. It's a big room. With yours OP it depends whether the tiles can be taken up with minimal damage and what getting the tile adhesive off is like. Try to take a tile up where it doesn't get walked on.

Oh I missed a bit: different colours due to being stained and some sun damage to areas around a rug.

We did too and cost on the region of @wowfudge. If it's an original parquet, a professional will need to use a hand sander as there is very little millimetres to take off and the usual upright one will destroy it. It is backbreaking, hence the price.

Also be careful to wax it with the best stuff you can afford, rather than glossing it with a cheap varnish.

The guys who did ours used upright sanders. They did a fantastic job.

It depends on the parquet. Ours has a design on it and we got 3 quotes. Two of the three said that there wasn't enough millimetres on the design, the other hadn't done a parquet floor before like this one.
If it's only blocks, then a standing one might be fine.

I've done mine myself with a mouse hand sander. It was hard work but rewarding seeing it come back to life. Room is 5m x 4m. Has taken a week to do as I had to do in sections as is a walk through to the upstairs.

That explains it. Ours has a border, but nothing else. The floor guys said the size of the blocks was unusual and it would have been expensive to have laid. We didn't know it was there when we bought the house but the carpet looked awful when we got in on moving day: large faded areas, stains, etc. so we pulled it back to see what was underneath. It was really exciting to see it being restored and coming back to life again.

I have a mouse sander, although would consider buying a better one in order to do this job, or a second one so dh could help.

Just tried to find the rightmove sold listings to look at it in the pictures but can't find them. It's a herringbone pattern though.

My biggest concern is that every single thing the previous owner did in this house, they bodged in some way. So I'm worried that they'll have bodged laying the tiles over the wood and I'll be left with an almighty mess. I think a few more weeks of lockdown and I might talk myself into it.....!!

Love all your pictures, and thanks for your advice.

We had a new extension built around 8 years ago and the room we knocked through into had orange parquet flooring. So we had new parquet professionally laid ( we bought it from ebay for £250) and had to remove all of the bitumen but the two were matched. DH then sanded & stained them all to match & we’ve a huge room of parquet. Looks amazing, easy to keep clean.

Ok...so talk to me about bitumen. Is that presumably on the underside of the wood? Do I need to remove it or is it just if I lift the entire floor?