Restoring original wood flooring

[Littlemisspiggy21]

Does anyone have original wood flooring on the ground floor of their home? And do you find it cold?

We have the original floorboards under our laminate in fairly good condition and thinking about restoring them but worried about it being drafty and cold especially with the rising energy costs!

Also if we were to do this, what would happen with the gap between the skirting and the floorboards? Would we need to lower them?

Hope someone can help!

We do (Edwardian house) - we have a large thick rug down in the lounge which helps in the winter.
You can put slivers in to fill any large gaps to stop draughts but it's good if everything is allowed to "breathe" as much as possible to avoid damp so it is a balancing act! Worth checking all your air bricks are all clear.
With the skirting board, would some beading bridge the void left?

@Goatsdorhone thanks for that! Do you generally find it colder than other rooms with flooring such as carpets or wood/laminate?

I’m super anti beading 😂

It's draughty but beautiful! You can use draughtex or stopgap in the gaps/under the skirts. High ceilings = heat rises, draughty floor or not!!

You can have long strips/slivers scribed to the floor beneath the skirtings.

I can really recommend Bona traffic here with 2 coats natural primer. Dries very fast, looks incredible.

We’re considering getting underneath insulated. Properly, using a net thingy.

You can attach netting between the joists under the floor and fill them with a layer of insulation. I wouldn't do it any other way, otherwise you'll have cold air blowing under there in winter and cold floors are horrible.

Oh god, really appreciate everyone’s input but still no idea what to do! Ideally we would have for some nice engineered or solid wood flooring installed but I think we need to do the same in the living room as we are doing in the hallway (but maybe not?). The issue is that we expect our hallway layout to one day change as we would like to extend. So don’t want to spend sh!t tonne of money on something that may end up being ripped out.

So options are:

1. replace nasty laminate in living room with mid range laminate (think some can be pretty realistic looking) and put same laminate in hallway.
2. restore original floorboards in living room and repair the ones in the hallway (they don’t have laminate or anything on them already)
3. get nice wood flooring in living room and do something else in hallway although not sure what…

Should add that I don’t think lifting the floorboards and insulating underneath is an option as it’s going to be expensive and we basically need a nice but cheap fix until we decide if and when we are extending. If we do extend then I’d like to get wood flooring put throughout the ground floor….she says until she sees the price of doing that!

I had original floorboards exposed downstairs in my 1930s house.

The difference in overall feel of temperature was incredible when I got engineered wooden floors put on top.

Unless I had really really beautiful aged wooden flooring (or lived somewhere hotter!) I just wouldn't ever think about having exposed floorboards again - although I do have that in my bedroom upstairs as the draughts aren't a problem there

Urgh I think you could be right @twoqueens !

I also have a 1930s build so suspect it could be the same.

Now wondering if there’s any solution to put engineered wood in the living room and something else in the hall but no idea what.

the issue is the kitchen already has laminate in it. It’s nothing I’d chose myself but it’s perfectly fine and I think if I don’t get the same floor in the living room and hall then it’ll be all one big massive mismatch!

I have engineered flooring in hallway, cloak room & sitting room - then completely different wooden floor in kitchen/diner.

My house is fairly pokey, but I think it works and I'm not wedded to the idea you have to have the whole flooring the same on the entire area.

We’re 1930s and have a good crawl space, so insulating won’t required floorboards being lifted. You may be the same.

Ours is Victorian and I can't feel any difference in temp between the sanded boards at the front and th parquet at the back.

I’ve had several original wooden floors and I really never noticed them as being cold in the winter, stepping onto kitchen or bathroom tiles was more noticeable. But I did seal the gaps between boards. I used a substance called Lecol 7500 mixed with board dust and it coped well with not cracking.

If I was going to insulate the underside I would probably use celotex rather than traditional fibre and a net, just because I think it would perform better. Might be wrong in that regard but I’ve seen it done like that before.

I have restored the floorboards in my lounge….they look lovely….we put the drought excluder strips between each board ( can’t see them but keep the draught out) …..in all other downstairs room we have LVT in a very similar style/shade to lounge) ….I think it works fine

We insulated under our floors
We used sheep wool batt insulation and straps, fixed from beneath in the crawl space. This meant we only had to go down the hatch and not take up all the floors.
The sheep wool isn't as nasty to work with as mineral fibre, is breathable (so no problems with condensation) and is great both thermally and for sound insulation.
We did the work (well DH did most of the crawling under the floor) and it made a real difference to our house.