Wanted Please - Harrogate / York / Leeds area

[Margalot]

We are having our house renovated and have chosen to have most of the downstairs floors as Solid Oak. We will have Dulux Diamond glaze applied to the finished product, and I am looking forward to the natural wear of the wood, I just wondered if any of you have experience of living with oak floors and have you regretted it?

 

We were speaking with somebody yesterday who told us that after a year they looked terrible

 

We are quite strict in the house with a no shoe policy etc so dont want to regret this decision??

 

thanks

Michelle

[Cinnamon]

We have solid oak planks downstairs & I think that they look better now that ever,but then again I like things to look a little more careworn

 

Ours are just waxed or oiled I think. OK, to there are a couple of places where the wear is showing,& the ones by the frount door are a bit grubby,but that doesn't really bother me.

They are lovely & warm underfoot & look great

I would have them all through the house if I could.

 

One thing - we had to season ours & get them used to the interior temperature of the house,for about 8 weeks, so we had a BIG stack of planks running throught the hallway for all that time. The upside is that they have not warped or shrunk at all, so its sorth doing

[Tina C]

We have oak parquet in our hall and lounge - it was probably put in when the house was built over 50 years ago. Parts of it could do with repair/restoration but its really easy to live with. It is varnished but no idea how long ago that was done. It gets vacuumed or swept regularly and polished (we have a small floor polishing machine) very occasionally

 

I love it. Like Cinnamon, I don't mind that its not perfect.

 

I have always preferred wood floor to carpet, even though the fluff shows easily.

[Old Speckled Hen]

Ours are oiled. The best way, I think. They are very easy to maintain with no varnish to chip off and they don't have to be sanded/varnished regularly. Hubby re oils the floor now and again and the rooms smell heavenly

[Cinnamon]

Yes, oil, thats what we use...Danish Oil in fact.

That said I don't think we have reoiled more than once since they have been down...all that moving of furniture is too much of a performance

[majorbloodnock]

Oiling is lovely and feeds the wood, but is not particularly protective. However, half the charm of wooden floors is the distressing that inevitably comes with walking on it. Waxing would, of course, make the room smell wonderful, but it's not a protective finish as such; any dirt that lands on it will, over time, be absorbed into the wax and then on into the wood, meaning the need to periodically strip and refinish the wood.

 

Nonetheless, if you want to have a go at protecting it, I'd suggest you forget about the Dulux product (if you haven't bought it already) and go for Sadolin's PV67 varnish. It's a two-pack system, so you have to mix the varnish and the hardener together before applying, but it's far tougher as a result. I used this on my kitchen work surfaces about 7 or 8 years ago, and it's still pretty much the same condition as when I put it on.

 

I absolutely agree about the issue of acclimatising the wood before fitting, though. If you don't do it, the wood will move and you will end up with cracks, crevices and possibly bowing in the boards, and there are absolutely no shortcuts that work.

 

Just one other thing to note; if you find you need to watch pennies, remember that chestnut is often slightly cheaper than oak, and apart from lacking the medullary rays is almost indistinguishable.

[Seagazer]

We've got oak flooring throughout the downstairs and its been down about 6 years now. We have underfloor heating as well so its lovely and toasty. It was varnished and has worn in several places but to my mind it doesn't need redoing yet.

 

We had a party once where one of the guests obviously had a dodgy pair of stilettos on as there are little round dents everywhere, also a dent where OH dropped his workbench within 3 days of the floor being fitted but as others say its part of the floor, its beautiful.

[chickenanne]

I have oak flooring in the "living" bits of the house - hall. kitchen, living room, dining room. Love it: its really easy to look after (I hoover, and go over it with a damp (not wet) mop if I'm feeling domesticated), if it does get badly marked (dented, scratched, burn marks, etc) you can sand it back so it is pretty indesturctible. No amount of red-wine spilling makes a difference to it, unlike carpet!

We got ours from a reclamation yard, which was pretty much the same price as a DIY store would charge. They take out floors from (eg) old factories, school gyms, etc, then jsut sand them to get rid of old wax/varnish/dents.

[Snowy]

I agree with what others have said. Not mine, but my Dad's old house had oak floors. They were lovely, I think theirs were oiled or waxed or something. They'd been put down when the house was built in the 50s. Dad never did anything to them and he lived in the house for over 10 years until late last year. They still looked beautiful and not a bit cold underfoot.

[The Dogmother]

I have wooden floors too, but sadly not oak. They are the original pine floorboards and wear very well considering the traffic they get.

[majorbloodnock]

Oh, forgot to mention. Don't use nails or screws containing iron - the tannin in the wood will react with it and give you a localised black stain.

[Chickendoodle]

We have oiled oak - I don't think it is possible to keep it looking pristine but after the first few dents and scratches it doesn't matter as it starts to look lived in rather than a show home. It's a bit like a new sink - the first scratch or mark shows up so much but after a few more you don't see them so much.

 

If you have dogs you will find that their claws can scratch the floor (we unfortunately had a chocolate lab with very bad hips who found it hard to get up from a lying down position so tended to "scrabble" to get up. He is now in doggie heaven but we still have the floor marks to remind us of him!)

 

My DD also walked around one day in stillettos where the heel had worn down so the metal was digging into the floor - this made a nice series of dents.

 

The floor, however, still looks beautiful after 5 years. It is a lovely colour and extremely easy to clean.

 

To echo other posters the planks were left in the house for some weeks before they were laid.

 

We don't regret it at all - it was a huge expense but very much a one off as it won't need replacing every few years like carpeting would.

[Seagazer]

I agree with you Chickendoodle, we are on our 2nd stair carpet in the same time as we've had the wooden floor