Wooden or engineered wood floor

parcival

We are thinking of replacing a laminate floor in our hall / kitchen with a solid wood or engineered floor. The base is concrete.

We had no problem installing laminate.

Is there a solid / engineered board system that clicks together like laminate and is easy to install. Some of them seem to need glue or nails.

Thanks

Paul_the_Painter

Apart from the very cheapest almost all engineered wood is click together now, and fits much like laminate. Solid is a wholly different ball-game, onto a concrete floor you would need to screed (possibly damp seal it) and then glue it down - and the glue is not cheap.

There are a couple of solid wood click products about that may be worth a look, fit like an engineered floor but are solid wood.

If using engineered wood, use a good quality underlay, not the cheapest foam stuff.

SOSAGES

engineered is the only way to go.
all the best bits of a real wood floor (eg the look) and none of the worries of a real wood floor........
Kahrs are very nice i suggest Oak cornwall

mvteng

I vote for Kahrs as well. Joiner said it was a lot stiffer than standard laminate to click together, but its still beautiful after 3-4 hard years in a kitchen/dining room

shiftyk

I've got Kahrs in my lounge/sitting room which has the most traffic in the flat and the Walnut 3 panel still looks great after 5 years. I laid it myself and have no flooring experience and found it fairly straight forward. While it requires a bit of a shove to click into place rather than laminate which pretty much slides into place, it's still very easy to lay. No nails or glue required and the seams are almost invisible. I was really impressed. I laid mine onto a concrete floor with Kajrs underlay (which they say must be used to validate the warranty) and haven't had any problems with warping or damp.
It's not as cheap as laminate though, by a fair margin. Also check how level your concrete floor is as an major variance might require levelling. Mine didn't even though there was a variance of about 8mm vertically.
Good luck.