Flooring help, suggestions!

Pipkin

Hi

We will be moving into new accomodation soon, and for the first time ever we will have to put in our own floorcoverings.

We've always lived with carpets (not of our choice) in our rented accomodation, but having the choice soon I'm not sure I want a carpet now.

Our budget won't be huge, it has to be realistic with the whole flat/house needing done.

It has to be hardwearing too, my family are not very careful with things

I don't know if I'm that keen on the cheaper laminate floorings,but I wouldn't rule out laminate all together, wood I would love.

Anyone have any suggestions or experience of anything other than carpet?

Any suggestions/tips about the cost of flooring for a three bedroomed flat/house (carpet,wood or laminate) would be really appreciated too!

Doozergirl

My small family are mucky pups so ideal choice for us would be wood downstairs, then the stairs and upstairs carpetted in a colour that won't show every bit of fluff. Mid-beige colour with flecks in seems to be work quite well. Shoes off before you go upstairs of course.

If you can't afford wood, then laminate downstairs.

pusscat

We currently have "industrial grade" (read not the cheap stuff!) laminate in all rooms (including bathrooms) and a hessian/sisal carpet on all of the stairs.
House is 3 storey, 4 beds, 3 bath/shower rooms, 2 staircases and total of about 110m2

reasons for our choices
I am allergic to dust and struggle with carpets and curtains
2 step children who seem to trail mud after them
2 cats who seem to do the same
lots of little furry things (dead and alive) as gifts from the cats
The 4th bedroom is on the ground floor with direct access to the garden - amazing what comes in off peoples feet!
Laminate/wood on the stairs is a deathtrap and noisy.

we do have house shoes indoors to keep the dust down, but the kids are not 100% at remembering - nor are their friends.

I looked at putting wood down, but decided to go with laminate for the time being as my family are not the most careful.

Costs

Real wood - £40m2 for reasonable wood - fitting about £2.5k - total of nearly £7k. Costs have come down a bit for real wood - Doozer posted a nice link to Howdens who had some nice oak at about £30 per m2 (I think that's right?)

Decent quality laminate - £10 per m2 type costs - cost was about £1500 including all the insulated underlay, door joiners, waterproof membrance etc. Fitting was about £2k so a total of £3500 so half the price.

Fitting of both involved proper cutting around doors and architraving, skirting boards being put on afterwards (new house so it was easy to do) and proper sealing of the floors in the bathrooms - was fitted by a timeserved joiner rather than a DIY person. It would have been nice (and cheaper) to get the flooring in before the door frames went on but ho hum!

The cheapest option I looked at was cheap laminate (£5 per m2 plus extras) and my "man who does" fitting it - his estimate was about £1500 for fitting so a total of £2200. I did not know him at the time so could not take this option up - am glad I did not.

The laminate has been down for 2 years now and has stood up to the treatment it gets pretty well - I think carpet of a similar price would have fared far less well. Many of our neighbours took the builders carpet (mid range carpet - not really cheap) and our laminate looks 100% better after 2 years of wear than many of them. Friends who put down cheap laminate in their kitchen have been very disapointed with it - as soon as it got any water on it marked. Ours has been fine.

I think that cheap laminate looks really cheap IYKWIM - especially if it is a DIY fitting with the plastic stick on radiator circles around the pipes and the "wood coloured" beading around the edge - ours looks very different to that (I hope!!!)

Once the kids are a bit more respectful then I will have real wood installed everywhere except the kitchens and bathrooms. Kitchens and Bathrooms will get tiles and I may put tiles on the whole of the ground floor with underfloor heating as a secondary source - we shall see. I may also consider carpet in the bedrooms as I have not struggled so much with the natural carpet as I expected.

The thing I have seen that surprised me recently was a really nice lino - plain, works really well in modern, clutter free houses, also great for yougsters (and not so young!) who drop things a lot.

Hope this gives you some ideas/thoughts

Puss

Pipkin

Thank you both for your replies!

I'm a bit shocked to be honest, I had no idea it would cost so much!

Oh well, welcome to the real world for me I guess!

I really have no idea what we will do now, wood would be my dream flooring, but I'm not sure we could afford so much.

Perhaps I'll have to hope we inherit some nice floorboards that I can sand and paint myself.

Again, thank you both very much!