What is a good alternative to wooden floorboards?

[ViciousSquirrelSpotter]

I have what used to be lovely original wooden floorboards all through the ground floor of my house.

But in the dining room, they are minging. I got them re-sanded five years ago and after 5 years of the kids dropping food on them, all the varnish is coming off, they are filthy and I can never clean them properly even when I polish them.

So what should I do? You can only sand them so often before they get too thin apparantly so I was thinking of putting some of that modern lino type flooring over them so that when the kids are older we can take it off and re-do them. But would that be terribly naff? Can anyone recommend anything that will actually look nice?

We ahve Karndean wood style in our living rm / dining rm & I think it looks really good. There's loads of different woods - can't remember which ours is

There's some good linos around though I think they call them vinyl these days. Dunno why. We've got it in the kitchen and bathroom. I think it's ok.

We have terracotta tiles, which run through the dining room and into the kitchen and look really nice. We have underfloor heating (the cheap electric variety) for the winter.
You just need to cover the floorboards with MDF then tile on top of that, so you can remove them later if you want to.

I've never heard of floorboards getting too thin? very odd. I'd get a second opinion on that

you can't beat original wooden floorboards

Chocolateshoes i really like the Karndean products.
Would you mind saying how much it is per sq meter - doesn't say on website?

My mum's got vinyl which looks very much like laminate.

But the other thing about them is that the food goes down the cracks

Mine like to 'post' DCs and DVDs down the cracks in our living room floorboards.

That should be CDs, not DCs.

I don't think there's anythjingg better than wooden floorboards (imo), but I'd give www.dalsouple.com/dalsouple2/index-fl.html a try.

Oooh, i love rubber flooring. I'm going to have that in my new bathroom, if we ever get round to building it.

Hmm like the idea of rubber flooring, but have an image of all of us bouncing about all over the dining room...

I presume it's not like that.

Can you create a floating floor - new boards over an underlay on the existing ones ?

LOL at the mental image of DCs falling through the gaps in the floorboards.

Yes, as in to a circle of hell or something

we have a rubber floor in the kitchen, i'ts great. v hardwearing with 3 kids - we have french doors into the garden off the kitchen, so it gets a lot of knocks .still v v nice

Hana, is it easy to keep clean?

Is it expensive?

yes, fairly expensive, but quite easy to keep clean - it does mark and sometimes if I haven't wiped spills up immediately it will leave a small stain, but doesn't detract from the whole kitchen floor. Was about £700 i think - we also had the floor screeded to level it out.

it's not dalsouple, but same thing - it's got the little raised circles ( can't remember the make)

altro

Which colour have you got? Not white

not white, no! ghastly!

it's a mid shade of slate gray (white kitchen, dark counters)

That karndean stuff looks good, but I've never seen it anywhere

Where is it stocked

Do John Lewis do flooring? (I can't remember ever seeing anything but rugs, and i really think you need to see something "in the flesh" as it were)

Karndean is fantastic-we have it in the kitchen and the playroom/conservatory.
We got ours from a local carpet shop-who also fitted it.