Friday 26 February 2016

Renovation project - Choosing the perfect flooring

Renovation project - Choosing the perfect flooring

The house is coming along quite quickly, but we have a dilemma on our hands. Namely the kitchen, at the moment we have the old sink unit and the temporary cupboards that John made, but it is time to start thinking about what we want it to look like.

We had thought about having the same kitchen as before with handmade wooden cupboards, but this house can lend itself to a more contemporary kitchen.

Our biggest stumbling block is the floor, at present we have a tiled floor that flows from the kitchen into the living room, this is not attractive and reminds me of a public toilet!

We need to find something that looks good, but is also durable.

We consider real wood, but will need to stain it to get the colour that we want, I really like tiles, but we would like to have something that is warm underfoot.

This gives us three options, vinyl, laminate or engineered hardwood. We begin our search for the perfect flooring, as there is so much available it is hard to know where to begin, the internet is always a good start, but how will we know what it is like from a photo on the laptop?

A big tip, is to find an online store that will send free samples, we found one that has a great selection of flooring with up to 6 free samples called GoHaus.com

By looking at a site like this you can gain good ideas for what you want to do, we want a covering that will look good in both the kitchen and living room. This site not only sends samples but has photos that will show what it will look like when fitted, these photos come from satisfied customers (which is always a good sign)

Here is an example of what the flooring can look like, and it flows from kitchen to living room, this means we can see exactly what the end result will be like,

Photo courtesy of http://www.gohaus.com/customer-gallery
We still have some time to make up our minds about what we want, but hopefully soon we will go from this


to something like this!

Photo courtesy of http://www.gohaus.com/customer-gallery/complete-with-trim/
We now have a much better idea of what is available and the pluses and minuses of each. Engineered hard wood sounds the ideal covering as it is more durable than real wood but due to its layered, cross-ply construction, there is added stability giving the opportunity to install in locations not typically suitable for solid hardwood, such as a basement or other humidity-prone areas of the home.

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14 comments:

  1. We've got a brown tiles blinking everything in our huelgoat house, it'll have to stay as I haven't got the energy to change it

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    1. Brown tiles are popular here, many houses have them, but you will have a long time to choose what you want without having to rush into decisions :)

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  2. Read that again, yep..,, my house really rocks the public loo look!

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    1. ha ha ha hopefully we won't be rocking the public loo look for too long

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  3. Have the current tiles professionally polished you may change your mind!

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    1. Thanks for the advice, but the tiles are not going to look any better no matter what we do, and wood will be much warmer under foot

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  4. Have your current tiles professionally polished you may change your mind!

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  5. we have had engineered wood in a open plan space for 10 years but we didnt have it in the kitchen area because of the water issue and im pleased about that.....its a bit precious around water you cant take a mop to it....we had slate in the kitchen which i love and added some cheapy underfloor heating(its a kind of mat thing that can be cut and arranged where you want it)

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    1. thanks Elsy, we are still making our mind up, but do like the sound of underfloor heating, but to be honest it has always scared me a little (overactive imagination ha ha)

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  6. We regret using laminate as ours scratches more easily than the salesman admitted. I would be stress testing any product for durability. I have friends with engineered flooring that is perfect. One of which doesn't have a lacquered top coat at all....i think you just rub oil into it. - Garth (Australia)

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    1. John says if you are using laminate, always do a scratch test on a sample, easily done by scratching it with a door key or nail, to see the result (but do this on a sample before buying!) you will be amazed by the differences

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  7. In my experience laminate isn't really much warmer than tile. The cheap stuff is usually already scratched as you take it out of the box and won't get any better during installation. The premium stuff looks and feels better but is already the price of medium-grade engineered hardwood and current engineered floors are supposed to be even good enough for bathrooms! One reputable manufacturer sai you shouldn't put it into the shower itself but it'd be fine everywhere else.

    Most of the laminate I've seen here looks like crap anyway - how about vintage shipping crate plywood?

    You could also consider electric or hot water underfloor heat. Electric has the advantage that you don't have to tear up the screed to install it, only make a hole for the temperature sensor (roughly 10 cm long and 1 cm thick). OTOH electric heat is expensive and nasty for the environment (especially in France with all its nuclear power stations no matter how green that is according to some people).

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  8. Another option is to use tiles that look like laminated wood.

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    1. we have seen those and they look great, but we really want something that is a little warmer under foot, which is why we are looking at laminate :)

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