Floor boards

Merry Christmas everyone. The wife and I are thinking about getting a wood floor in the dining room. We would like real wood flooring, so does anybody have any suggestions about what wood we should buy, where the best place to get it from and what sort of treatment would it need?

Thanks for your time.

Hi, cant answer all your questions, but:

We had an oak floor in the study of our previous house, it was 22mm thick by about 125mm wide. Some people are very fussy about knots but that sort of thing dosnt really bother us, fewer knots = more expensive.

We had to leave it for a week to acclimatise & once it was down we just rubbed beeswax (I think) into it which seemed to last for ages.

Cant remember where we got it from.

N

oak is good but leave it in the house at least a week before laying or you may end up having to re-lay it, due to the moisture content changing.

It has to be oak!!!!

As above- acclimatise it first. TBH i would have said that a week was a bit short, although for bought in kiln dried stuff maybe not. I assume that you guys have planks with stress grooves cut in the back. If you have underfloor heating get the wood kilned to 6% MC BTw....

be carefull, i laid some wood flooring for my parents a few years back. All was well for about 18mths, then all of a sudden it just swelled beyond reason (it lifted a good 4 inch in places) it had to be taken up after that. It had been stored in the hall for at least a month before it was laid and had at least 10mm expansion gap all the way round.

I have an oak floor from Abbey timber (01362 840251) It has been great, you can have floors in most hardwoods, we treated ours with a soft sheen polymer oil which is incredibly hard wearing, after 5 years even the hall (high traffic) still looks great. We got local oak which is knotty and pippy as I prefer that, if you want clean timber it will probably come from eastern europe.

Sycamore or white ash could look stunning in the right room.

The pic was just taken over ny shoulder with the laptop, If you want a close up let me know. Abbey timber are very good on price BTW.

be carefull, i laid some wood flooring for my parents a few years back. All was well for about 18mths, then all of a sudden it just swelled beyond reason (it lifted a good 4 inch in places) it had to be taken up after that. It had been stored in the hall for at least a month before it was laid and had at least 10mm expansion gap all the way round.

IN that case your floor must have got very damp. Wood expands when wet, not when dry. To have expanded like that- ie that fast and after that amount of time, (and i have seen that before) it must have got wet from a burst pipe or somethig similar.

Another vote for oak. There aren't many timbers that are hard enough to stand up without marking - many look good when first laid but show every dent (even if you don't put your stilettos on...) I particularly dislike ash, as the grain is very open and goes grey and horrible within a few weeks. Other timbers which stay looking good are elm, but it's very hard to get, and walnut if you want something dark.

Can't comment on suppliers as I've only ever laid oak after milling it and seasoning it myself. I've only ever air dried, but left it in the room for about 6months and laid it in spring, after the central heating had dried it out.

Alec

Beech is also superb flooring. VERY hard, and herd wearing too, however it is a tad plain compared to oak.

Did you use a router to make the tongue and groove ?