What materials will I need that I might not have thought of and what tools do I need? Does it need glued together?

deadlydarcy to the managers office please.

Uh oh.. flashback…

Yes you do need glue. You’ll need

Knee pads
Wedges to keep the stuff away from the wall
Those things, what’re they called.. two grippers connected by tape and a ratchet.. wait a minute.. Tension straps, that’s it.
And some kind of saw to cut the bits with.

The saw thing was tricky for us. We had four rooms to do so we bought at table saw which was expensive but made it VASTLY easier to do the long cuts when you get to the end. You could probably get by with a jigsaw with a fence tho.

Here I am. Whaddya need to know?

Teeth bared and ready to suck 🙂

Going to put down a solid oak floor. Was planning on floating it, but a quick search is suggesting nailing or gluing it to the floor. What is best?

It’ll be going on top of a chipboard floor.

If it’s solid-solid, I’d say don’t float it.

If it’s engineered (2/3 ply, 1/3 solid) then it can be floated but fixing to the sub-floor is best practice.

Next question: what’s the sub-floor?

What sort of solid flooring is it, make sure it’s acclimatised to normal room temp before installation.

Glue and secret nail it, clamp it up with flooring joist clamps, similar to the pic below, use a couple if you can.

You may need to plane the floor afterwards depending on the quality of the product.

A crow bar and block of wood(off cut of flooring)to lever up the last rows.

A chop saw would be great at maintaining perfect 90 degs cuts.

HTH.

If not ask DD..

To **** with that idea then. Carpet it is.

Cheers anyway.

If you want to email me, I can answer tomorrow mate. I’m having to do this on a phone and it’ll take ages to type out. Hopefully, you can wait till then. Happy to answer any questions though.

Ours was solid, it’s floating. Just glued it to itself. All the advice we read said that.

And yes we did have to leave it in the house for a week or whatever it is.

lol

It all depends on what type of floor will be below it, if it’s concrete you will only be able to glue it, if its timber you can nail it but you will have to watch out for your services below the floor IE heating pipes and electrical cables. If you nail it they tend to squeak less and will feel more robust below your feet. You will also have to hire a specialised tool for nail with some species of timber. Hope this helps.

If all that sharki described is too much, then, yeah, go with carpet 😐

I have a slightly lumpy but sealed concrete floor.

I was planning on using that 6mm fibre underlay to level it out before laying, but have had others mention laying something like MDF over floor instead to get it completely flat.

Does that sound like mentalness or not?

Take the skirters off first, put down the floor and then skirters back on top – looks far neater.

I have a slightly lumpy but sealed concrete floor.

Prawper job is to latex it tbh.

DD, why was I wrong to float my floor?

b r – taking skirting board off was hassle indeed but it does look nicer. I wish I’d done it.

I also wish I’d known that you could get wooden floor coverings for stairs too, then I’d have done the whole house.

Tell me more about gluing it to a solid (concrete or old 50s floor tiles) floor please!

I’ve got the hall to do once our kitchen is finished. We were given a load of spare stuff my mother in law had left over and hers squeaks like a bitch! I’d like to avoid that if possible!

DD, why was I wrong to float my floor?

molgrips, you weren’t really wrong to float it. I just don’t like the method. The glue used is PVA which when it cures, gives a bond stronger than the wood itself. If there’s any movement in the floor afterwards, this can cause splitting of the timber as it can’t expand and contract in the t/g joints. Also, if a section ever has to be lifted, it can be a bit of a nightmare if the joints have been glued. I don’t really like the “bounce” you sometimes get from floating floors. I’m not saying that it’s wrong, and if you did it properly, then I’m sure it’s grand. But as someone who makes a living from it, I’m just expected to to install using best available (and most expensive of course 😉 ) methods.

ANd is there a good or bad place to get oak flooring? B&Q have what looks like OK stuff at £45/m, Wickes is a bit cheaper for what looks like the same stuff. I am about to buy 15sq.metres of oak floor, but next year will want around 35 sq. metres and want it all to match, so paying more than about £40 per sq. metre brings me out in a cold sweat.

IME Wikes wood is way better than B&Q wood. That was doors though.

Oh right.. I wasn’t criticising your comment, my post was a little strong sorry 🙂 I was just curious for the reason you’d say that, which sound reasonable.

I think it was probably easier and cheaper for us to do the floating thing too. Although, I’ve noticed a few issues now it’s been down for three years or so. Two or three of the pieces have ever so slightly warped so that there are a few gaps between some of them. Just half a mm or so, and only one of them is noticeable from a certain angle in a certain light.. but still. Probably wouldn’t have happened with nails.

I’m reasonably happy with the job we did but I really made a total balls up of the thresholds 🙁 Gonna have to re-do them.

Re price, we paid £18/m2 from Floors 2 Go. It’s thick golden solid oak finished in some kind of tough PU varnish which is matt and holding up spectacularly well. The slight warping notwithstanding.. not sure if that’d have been better with more expensive wood or not.

Aaaargh! Too many questions.

Have a look around on the interweb. There are plenty of deals to be had. Depends on how you feel about the provenance too. Prices vary pretty wildly.

If it warped, it was probably due to either moisture (doesn’t take much) or it drying out too quickly. Is it over a radiator pipe or anything? And if it has, then don’t beat yourself up, it would have happened anyway.

As for thresholds…yeah, a whole world of fun. I gave up using premade ones years ago and just machine them myself on site now. Every door is a little bit different.

No, it’s in the middle of the floor.. but yeah I’m not overly worried. Seems stable now and only I see it. Only noticed it when I was standing in front of the tv looking towards the couch 🙂

I bought thresholds and then cut the ends to fit the situation but it’s all to cock, and then I trimmed the carpet too much so there’s just not quite enough threshold to cover the gap twixt carpet and floroing.. mess 🙁