Flawed floor

In hindsight laying the flooring before doing demolition and building work was never going to be the best laid plan!  The catalyst was the rancid green carpet in the dining room, which proved just too much to live with.  And so it was that the first real DIY job undertaken on the ground floor was ripping up carpet and preparing the floor boards.  We opted for an engineered wood as opposed to laminate mainly due to its finish.  Engineered wood uses a thin veneer of actual timber rather than what is in effect a photograph with a protective layer applied to it as in laminate.  It has a very thin layer of oak glued to an MDF type plank, with a tongue and groove click connect system, very similar to laminate flooring, meaning its simple to lay.  The end result has a more authentic look where as in my eyes laminate can look a little cheap.

We used these people for the flooring.  Good quality engineered wood.  They also sell the underlay which acts as a vapour barrier apparently good for suspended timber floors like ours.  The underlay is a thin layer of silver foil with a spongy backing.  Its laid silver side down.  Apologises for the boring stock imageries, I couldn't be bothered to take any pics.

The flooring system went down fairly trouble free.  With old properties the floorboards can be a surprise when you remove the carpet.  Our old flat's boards had more undulations than the South Downs, nightmare to try and connect laminate when the lengths have to curve in both directions.  The floorboards in the dining room at least appeared to be reasonably flat, although the old underlay was stapled to these, which proved a right pain in the proverbial trying to pull all these out.  I actually ripped the old skirting boards off the wall (not original) and begun replacing these with new.  The skirtings go over the edge of the floor holding it down.  I decided against running the floor up to the skirtings and putting a bead around the edge as this never looks as finished, attracts dirt and I think looks a tad unsatisfactory, I'm getting a stickler for detail.

With the lovely new polished flooring laid I then made the clever decision to get builders in and start on some demolition work!