Engineered wood flooring-laying?

hotcookie101

Having umm-ed and ahh-ed over flooring choices for the kitchen/dining room when we redo it, we have no decided on engineered wood-through the kitchen, dining room, and living room (lets just go the whole hog :rotfl:)

I am aware wood is not great if there is a flood, but I don't want tiles (too cold unless underfloor heating) and Karndean would be too expensive I think for the ones I like... SO am willing to take the risk for how lovely it will look :cool:

SO-my question is-what are the pros and cons of laying it as a floating floor versus nailed down? The living room has floor boards, the dining room is overboarded with ply, and the kitchen has a concrete floor.

I understand we will need to apply damp proof membrane in kitchen etc, but would a floating floor be easier to fit? We are planning to have the floor to the walls in the kitchen, even though we won't be able to see it, all our appliances are freestanding so would be easier to not have the height differences...

lisal0u

Hi,

I've fitted engineered wood in our kitchen/diner, livingroom and hallway. We fitted it as a floating floor and it was easy to do! The only problem we had was the unevenness of the floor, as like you the hall and livingroom was a suspended wooden floor and the kitchen/diner concrete!

The concrete was higher so we had to use ply board to raise the floor to be level. It was a bit of a pain!

We laid insulation boards, Underfloor heating and a vapour barrier then the wood flooring.

The biggest tip I have is to make sure it's completely level otherwise the boards may buckle or pull apart!

Lisa

hotcookie101

Thanks,

We are planning on getting a professional in to lay it (I figure if paying £1k for flooring-don't want us to bodge it-we are certainly NOT great DIYers! )
But good to hear floating is ok-thats what I was leaning towards
Not planning on underfloor heating, so just need to ensure DPM and poss insulation fitted.
We are redoing skirting in the kitchen-I presume we are better to leave fitting the boards until after the floor is down? Will get them primed and painted so only touch ups needed, but do we nead any beading around edges in living room? (skirting already there, there is a fireplace-stone hearth type)
Do you put anything down across doorways? We currently have 6 inch wood plank-thingy between dining and kitchen-presuming original 1930s or a 1970s addition-would you leave that or just have smooth floor running through the 3 rooms? I am also planning on laying it in the hall-which is only about 1m2, at right angles to living room-would you again have no door threshold and keep planks running same direction, or have a threshold and have boards at right angles?
Sorry for blabbering :rotfl:

Hintza

Our skirting has been raised by 20mm (Floor 18mm + 2mm underlay) that way the floor can expand and contract underneath the skirting.

Ours is being delivered next week and I will be asking the supplier to provide an idiots guide to laying it (the builder seems to cokc up everything he touches just now)

If you PM me later in the week I can maybe give you the gen.

n-norah

We laid engineered wood in our last house, and it was brilliant. We laid it in the living room and then through into the hall, and (if I do say so myself) it looked brilliant. We were laying onto a concrete floor, so used the DPM supplied by the company (it looks like polystyrene balls sandwiched between two layers of polythene, and worked as heat insulation and ironed out the irregularities in the floor too)

We very carefully took the skirting boards off before we started (we had rounded corners as it was a 1920s house, so didn't want to have to have new pieces made!), laid the floor (amazingly quick to do!) and then 'no more nails'ed the skirting back on above, so that the gap around the edge was invisible under the skirting.

As I say, very easy, and a professional finish with minimum effort!

n-norah