Does new wood flooring HAVE to go on top of the old one?

[NoIdeasForWittyNickname]

We’re gradually renovating our 1930s doer-upper house, which was a 1980s time capsule when we bought it three years ago. All the downstairs (apart from kitchen) has plain pine wooden floorboards (revealed after removing a psychedelic carpet). It’s solid and level, but a bit meh, plus there are lots of patch repairs where the boards were cut / smashed when the central was installed and who know what else was done. So, the current idea is to get it replaced with a new engineered wood flooring.

We’ve spoken to a couple of local suppliers and fitters, and everyone is advising to fit the new floor on top of the old planks. But I’m not overly enthusiastic about the floor level going up. When I mention the idea of ripping the old floorboards and fitting the new floor directly over the joists (of course, the new boards will have to be thick enough - e.g., 20-21mm), everyone rolls their eyes and says this is not the way it’s done these days.

I appreciate there are benefits of going over the old floor (e.g., easier and faster to install, draught-proofing), but please tell me I’m not going mad thinking that laying directly over joists is still a perfectly sound method? Are the tradesmen just being too lazy and gaslighting me or am I overlooking some important technical aspects?

Oh, following this, as I'm in the same position!

I suppose you need to get some one in to pull the floor boards up then fit the boards before asking a fitter to come In an lay new flooring then they can't say no.

I wouldn't ignore the issue about draft proofing because laying directly onto the old floor will keep your room warmer. In addition when our boards went down there was insulation put between the floor and the new boards.

Floorboards that go directly over the joist are likely to be thicker than the engineered boards so you are less likely to get sag where the board dips as you walk over it. You would also want the joins on the short end between two boards to be on a joist so they are properly supported so the layout of your flooring might end up looking a bit odd. A lot of engineered wood flooring is mixed sizes so you get a more random layout.

The boards will have to cross the joists so you will have to have your boards in that direction.

What's under the floor? If I had done what you suggest my joiner would have been working on joists about 10 feet up from concrete. I don't think he'd have been too impressed.

We put ours over the floorboards, as has everyone else we know. Even when we’ve ripped up floorboards due to rot and replaced them we’ve still put new flooring on top

Engineered wood is a floating floor it’s designed to go over a substrate not be a floorboard.

Just consider carefully if you really want wooden floor. We have it throughout our house and absolutely hate it. So hard to keep clean! Cannot wait until we can get enough money to change if

Can I just ask how it is hard to keep clean? Do you wear shoes in the house?

What would you have instead?

The engineered wood your flooring contractor will supply is a floor covering, not a floor in itself. Floorboards should be treated against moisture and insect attack and strong enough to take the loads that will be imposed on it- furniture, people etc...
if you want to have bare floorboards, you can obtain oak if you want it but it will be far more expensive due to the way they need to be fitted to each joist. You will then need to sand them, fill joints between boards and finish them with a protective coating. This will also require replacing skirting boards, adjusting door architraves, doors etc.
If this is what you choose to do it's up to you but this is a builder's job, not a flooring contractor. Seek quotes from a builder and then compare to the engineered flooring and see how you get on.

The original boards on the joist will be thicker than most finished flooring avaialble today.

Most engineered flooring will be manafactured to go over a subfloor.

You can replace like for like but that would not be a floor guys normal job So supply and fit places are not going to be pricing for working on a flat stable surface, its demo the existing floor first.
Most will not be trained building carpenters so if they pull up the only floor and the joists are gone they end up in a legal fight and look like assholes for leaving a big pit in your living room. And it is an old house.

You are looking more for a builder doing a floor reno pricing a weekend nixer

Yes it would go on top of the floorboards, same as carpet etc.

A spot of googling suggests it's technically possible but with a lot of caveats (joists need to be close together, may need to add insulation, have to do secret nailing or screwing to the joists, need long planks of the flooring, not suitable over a ventilated ground floor cavity) that all look like the highroad to having to add a plywood or chipboard floor first to make it work anyway, in which case you're not really gaining any advantage by pulling up the old floor and are probably spending a lot more to do it.

Engineered wood isn’t thick enough to replace the base floor. As pp said its a floating floor. By having the two think of it as extra insulation.

Wooden floor through the house here too.

I agree it needs cleaning regularly, I go over it with a spray mop a couple of times a day. But what's the alternative? Carpet would get just as dirty but not as easy to clean 🤷🏼‍♀️

You'll be losing a few mm, it's really not worth the cost or hassle to do it your way. Once the floor is down you won't notice the room being any shorter.

Layering the floor will provide much better insulation as well.

This is not the hill to kill your budget on.

It doesn’t have the structural integrity to go directly on the joist
bit extreme example but it’s the equivalent of ripping up your floorboards and rolling carpet over them

You would have to have something down to lay the flooring onto. Normal wooden flooring isn't thick enough or strong enough on its own.

Just to make another suggestion completely - have you considered painting the existing floor? We took carpets up when we moved and the pine floors really weren’t in great shape. And we didn’t have the budget to restore them - so I tried painting as a last ditch before going for engineered wood or new carpet and I’ve been really pleased with the result. Used a good (Zinser) undercoat and a water based floor paint and I think they look great.

What you are suggesting sounds more like you want to take up original floorboards, rather than sand them down, and then replace them with new floorboards? Almost as if you were building the house again in a 1930s way?

I'd speak to a builder rather than a floor fitter in that case - someone who does removations. What you are looking at - engineered wood in a carpet/floor shop - probably isn't the right product

I painted the floorboards in my old flat - Farrow and Ball, some shade or other of slightly greenish grey - and it was fabulously easy to keep clean and also didn't show the dirt even if I was being lazy about the keeping it clean part. (I promise I am not one of those people who has everything grey - indeed, I paired it with very, very bright vinyl on the stair risers - but I thought it would be a practical choice and it was.)

You can have an engineered floor secret nailed to the original boards underneath. This is much better than the floating floor method and results in a solid draught proof finish without movement.
Try to buy the thickest boards you can afford. Remove skirting boards and either reattach them afterwards or replace with new for a professional finish.

Wow, so many bits of advice - thank you all! Very good points about draught-proofing, plank lengths and thickness, fixing methods, etc. Inspired by some of these, this afternoon, I’ve inspected our floor closer and popped a few loose floorboards to double-check the void underneath.

The void has a concrete base and is relatively shallow – just 25cm from the base to the top of joists. The joists are 35-40cm apart. The existing floorboards are 20mm thick. I think this means using new planks that are also 20mm thick makes it viable, even if they come in packs with shorter lengths? Or is engineered floor not as strong as solid wood, so it has to be thicker than 20mm to perform like for like? Plus, if the floor is going up, we’d definitely look into adding insulation between the joists.

But this also made me realise how much disruption there will be, so I’m now doubting my plan. My biggest bugbear is the skirting. It is definitely coming off, whatever option we go for. But the existing skirting is low-ish (9.5cm) and all electrical sockets sit just about 2cm above it. If the floor level goes up, the skirting will be butting into the sockets – I think that will look daft. Trimming the skirting will make it even shorter and will look daft as well. ☹

I’m curious about painting ideas – I guess this will help mask the past patch repairs and. But I'm worring about wear and tear? @Pattygonia , @Persipan how did it work for you?

I had a new engineered wood floor in a wreck I was doing up. The remnants of the old floor had to come off. My genius CARPENTER - not a flooring fitter - then laid a substrate of something like hardboard, though it couldn't have been. (It was a long time ago!) Point is, it's got to be strong enough to support all your furniture, all the people doing whatever they do, stuff being brought in & out and so on, and resilient enough not to cave as the house shifts over time.

You've already got a working substrate, so use it!

I never found the engineered boards hard to maintain. They were varnished, dead easy to clean. The veneer was thick enough to be sanded up to 10 times, according to the blurb, though I didn't have to despite treating it brutally. I loved that floor.

I'm renovating a 1930's bungalow and am having engineered wood parquet flooring throughout (except bathroom). The old floorboards were taken up, which was fortunate as some joists were rotten, which I wouldn't have known otherwise. A subfloor has been created with thick insulation boards and the wood flooring, which is about 3/4 inch thick in total will go on top. Below the insulation there is a waterproof membrane, which Building Control insisted on. There may be a thin underlay between the insulation and flooring (need to check with installers). Despite all that, the height of the floor won't change that much, if at all, and being a 1930's property the ceilings are high anyway, so I'm not too worried. (NB sockets not an issue as the property has been rewired and walls replastered, and skirting will all be new.)

Re: the skirting height and electrical sockets.

Get an electrician to come round and price up raising the sockets. They’ll cut a channel into the wall (which is for the cable run) and then cut out a rectangle for the socket back box. Check if the sparkie will ‘make good’ the wall afterwards, if not that’s a small cost to factor on as you’ll have a rectangular hole in the wall which you’ll need to fill.