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Original poster

bamboo flooring?

15 replies

drlove8alltheeastereggs · 15/04/2009 11:27

am needing new flooring for living room, hallway and bathroom. so we went looking yesterday and have seen some bamboo flooring. ive never heard of it before and its quite expensive £50 sq/m ,does anyoneone have it? i dont want to get it if its crapola,or would i be better getting some bog standard laminate instead?

OP posts:
bamboostalks · 15/04/2009 11:29

Nothing to do with my name btw. My mum had some and it stained when wet (over time though) but that might have been poor quality.

Original poster
drlove8alltheeastereggs · 15/04/2009 12:03

bamboostalks ,thanks for letting me know. i dont think it would last very long wih 8 kids then! will have to think about something else then .

OP posts:
othersideofthefence · 15/04/2009 14:02

We have it and it is lovely.
We had the whole of the upstairs done (including the bathroom) and are really pleased with it.
It was expensive, but I look upon it as a long term investment.
Is really easy to keep clean and looks fabulous.

othersideofthefence · 15/04/2009 14:08

Forgot to say - it looks and feels so much better than laminate.
It is warm underfoot in winter yet cool in the summer.
The bathroom floor hasn't stained at all despite me wallowing like a hippo in the bath

Original poster
drlove8alltheeastereggs · 15/04/2009 18:53

oooh ! now im confused!

OP posts:
PheasantPlucker · 15/04/2009 18:59

We have some, and it is great. Very good environmentally too, I am told! Not cheap though......

chimchar · 16/04/2009 08:56

there is some with 25% off in costco at the minute....i keep looking at it and wondering if it will be practical to live with.

not sure of its quality..there is nothing else there to compare it with.

pigleto · 16/04/2009 09:15

We have had it throughout the ground floor for three years. It seems to be softer than other non laminate wood flooring and gets dented easily.

It is also quite yellow when it is down which may affect your planned interiors.

I wish we had gone for oak really.

chimchar · 16/04/2009 10:13

thanks for that pigleto. decision made then!!

i thought bamboo was supposed to be very hardwearing by reputation?

abdnhiker · 17/04/2009 09:16

Ours was only £21/m2. We got the strand woven carbonized installed throughout our entire house (except kitchen and bathrooms) and it is great. Not all kinds are yellow-ish (the non-carbonized tends to be though) and hasn't dented yet after heavy wear and tear from a one year old and three year old. (Throwing things etc). It does scratch slightly, similar to any wooden flooring, but this is just the surface laquer.

I would recommend it to others. We used www.tlflooring.co.uk/ but other friends of ours have used www.bambooflooringcompany.com/.

GrendelsMum · 17/04/2009 11:36

We had it in our previous house - but we found some much cheaper than £50 sq/m from a company in Norfolk. I think it was called 'Woodline floors'?

I found ours was pretty much indestructable - I had a lot of plants in the conservatory and was always spilling pools of water and traipsing in with mud on my feet. It reached a point where I didn't even bother to pop up large puddles, as I knew the bamboo could take it. I'd definitely put bamboo in our current house if it wasn't 17th century with stone flooring

The only thing that scratched it was getting a nail stuck under a door, not realising it, and then shoving the door back heavily so that the nail scratched all across the surface varnish - and the same thing has scratched the brick floor in our new house, so I don't think it's unique to bamboo.

Bamboo comes in two colours - pale brown and dark brown. Whether it's yellow or not depends on the type you buy

If you happen to be in Cambridgeshire, I can let you have a large sample since for some reason I took the left over floorboards when I moved.

drlove8 · 17/04/2009 11:43

the price i quoted is b&q. was out looking and had never seen it before ,so shiney. will defo check aroun a bit more, am i scotland Grendalsmum...but thanks anyway for the kind offer!

drlove8 · 17/04/2009 11:45

ive got pale oak furniture, so what would go best with it then? the dark for contrast? or the pale ?

Elibean · 17/04/2009 20:53

Hmm, maybe get a couple of samples to help you decide?

OP, IME its wonderful - we've had it in our bathroom for 5 years, looks like new, no staining and thats with two small LOs.

Louise2004 · 18/04/2009 08:02

We rented a flat that had bamboo flooring - it was very hard-wearing and easy to clean etc. so definitely recommended. It never got damaged by all the children we had over and the parties we had, even when people wore high heels on it etc. I've heard it's expensive but it did seem worth it. It was quite light in colour, though, and we wanted dark flooring when we moved into our own place, so we ended up buying Merbau, which is a kind of teak wood and darker with lighter grain lines that looked very good in the sunshine (it was on special offer too ).

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