We have a house built in 1808 with the original ground floor of tiles on earth. Currently in the living room is old carpet added by the previous owners which we'd like to replace. The original floor is not in great shape and the house is very cold, so we'd like to cover the floor with something. Ideally I'd like to put laminate flooring down as we have a new baby and think this would be fairly inexpensive and hardwearing but not sure if we can over this type of floor (i.e over tiles on earth) or what other options we have? Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks!
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Gareth Hughes
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Bumping it up
JoceAndChris
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Hello and welcome! I don't think a laminate floor is a great choice, effectively it's a layer of plastic wood and it won't be great for the moisture escaping as it wants to. It won't be very warm, and it's a hard surface for your baby to fall onto. What do the tiles look like?
Depending on whether your taste is contemporary or antique I think I'd be inclined to bin the old carpets and replace with either a smart seagrass, sisal or jute carpet or second hand Persian rugs from EBay or suchlike. When your little one gets a bit older you can have them all steam cleaned.
If the quarry tiles are really knackered you could replace with new ones, laid on earth, but we need pics! Old floors have great charm. I wouldn't part with my old tiles, bricks and flagstones laid in earth and our house performs well with moisture and dampness. Yes it's cold but these are life savers
http://www.celticandco.co.uk/ladies/footwear-1843/ladies-sheepskin-boots/sheepskin-house-boots/
And during heat waves like this we throw ourselves panting on the stone floors and thank god for a cold house!
Depending on whether your taste is contemporary or antique I think I'd be inclined to bin the old carpets and replace with either a smart seagrass, sisal or jute carpet or second hand Persian rugs from EBay or suchlike. When your little one gets a bit older you can have them all steam cleaned.
If the quarry tiles are really knackered you could replace with new ones, laid on earth, but we need pics! Old floors have great charm. I wouldn't part with my old tiles, bricks and flagstones laid in earth and our house performs well with moisture and dampness. Yes it's cold but these are life savers
http://www.celticandco.co.uk/ladies/footwear-1843/ladies-sheepskin-boots/sheepskin-house-boots/
And during heat waves like this we throw ourselves panting on the stone floors and thank god for a cold house!
LadyArowana
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Welcome from me too, and another request for some pictures. If you went with Joce's suggestion of sisal or rugs then using one of the mesh type under layers should help keep it away from the surface of the floor and also make it less slippy and more padded.
angrybird
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I agree with joce laminate flooring is nasty stuff! try and save the quarry tiles and cover with a large rug for baby to crawl and play on.
My house had laminate laid over the quarry tiles, ripping it all up and putting it on "Freecycle"was my first job, then scraping years of Cardinal red floor paint was the next.Luckily the laminate and the paint seems to have protected the quarry tiles and they came up lovely.
My house had laminate laid over the quarry tiles, ripping it all up and putting it on "Freecycle"was my first job, then scraping years of Cardinal red floor paint was the next.Luckily the laminate and the paint seems to have protected the quarry tiles and they came up lovely.
88v8
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Another vote for eBay carpet, and some felt underlay. Felt, not rubber, so the floor can breathe.
Here
http://www.carpet-underlay-shop.co.uk/wool-felt-carpet-underlay-12-c.asp?gclid=CKKSkc6_0LACFVMetAodYTJrXQ
If the floor isn't great, it can always be improved. Meanwhile, don't have too much lighting in the room, then after a while you won't notice it.
Ivor
Here
http://www.carpet-underlay-shop.co.uk/wool-felt-carpet-underlay-12-c.asp?gclid=CKKSkc6_0LACFVMetAodYTJrXQ
If the floor isn't great, it can always be improved. Meanwhile, don't have too much lighting in the room, then after a while you won't notice it.
Ivor
LadyArowana
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Have been looking for something similar to what I use with our rugs/ carpets, and this is a reasonable approximation. Very lightweight to be picked up for cleaning.
http://sell.lulusoso.com/selling-leads/1891173/Pattern-V508A-PVC-Foam-Mesh-Area-Rug-Underlay.html
http://sell.lulusoso.com/selling-leads/1891173/Pattern-V508A-PVC-Foam-Mesh-Area-Rug-Underlay.html
Thanks everyone! I have added some photos here (see below) - the floor is actually in much better condition than I thought (at least the bit we've looked at this morning) but I just don't think having it without a full covering is an option right now. Me and my son will be spending lots of time in the house over the next few years and the house is so cold in the winter - it will get to say 13 degrees after hours of having the heating on and not sure we'll be able to afford having the heating on constantly whilst I'm off on maternity leave this winter. Restoring the floor in a few years though when my son is at school is certainly something we'll look at as it would be lovely to have the original floor with some rugs. With regards to natural carpeting how is this fixed to the floor? Is it just left floating? Thanks all for your advice - really appreciated!
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ds23pallas/9324234919/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ds23pallas/9324234323/
Photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ds23pallas/9324234919/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ds23pallas/9324234323/
MatthewC
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I find that a bit worrying - the cold cannot all be due to the damp floor, surely. It sounds like my house when I bought it - at one stage it was colder inside than out, in February!raedself said:
Have you recently moved in? Was the house very damp then? Have you sorted any damp issues, or are there still things to do like gutters and flashings? These really are essential as first things to do, as otherwise it will always be damp and hence cold. It takes a good while (and some decent weather) for an old house to properly dry out - the recent very hot weather will have helped but it still takes ages with thick walls.
There's no damp in the house that I'm aware of. We moved in 2 years ago and it's just a cold house I think - there was certainly nothing on the survey (and we had an extensive one) about damp and we haven't noticed any. It has very poor solar gain as it's semi detached with most of the windows on the side which is NW facing, there is limited scope for insulation and I think the central heating system is not sufficient for the house - i.e. the radiators are not big enough for the size of the rooms. In addition, the room in question is quite big (7x4m) as it was 2 rooms knocked together. It was a very cold winter last year, so I hope it won't be that bad again! We do have some other work to do to try and improve the warmth / heat retention of the house but unfortunately we're not going to be able to do that all in one go this year.
Angrybird - do you have any photos of your restored floor?
We are warming to the idea of lots of rugs... It will certainly look more interesting and the rugs will be nicer for baby crawling.
Angrybird - do you have any photos of your restored floor?
We are warming to the idea of lots of rugs... It will certainly look more interesting and the rugs will be nicer for baby crawling.
jocelyn plummer
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Laminate can be slippery if something gets spilt on it-- not a good idea. Siesal , seagrass , rugs should be fine.
Zebra
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That floor looks in very good condition raedself, I can't see that a baby would come to any harm on that. (Neither babies nor quarried tile floors are my area of expertise though!)
Our grandson has survived learning to crawl, walk, hop and run on payments and flagstones.
The most dangerous things in our (and his parents') kitchens have been tables with hard corners at exactly head height.
(I'm not sure about seagrass and the like - a bit scratchy for tender skin, perhaps)
The most dangerous things in our (and his parents') kitchens have been tables with hard corners at exactly head height.
(I'm not sure about seagrass and the like - a bit scratchy for tender skin, perhaps)
Feltwell
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I agree with Moo. Seagrass and the like would be horribly scratchy on kid's knees. Laminate is just too slippery even when dry for little feet in socks, as well as looking & feeling false.
Here at Feltwell Towers we have no carpet at all downstairs - bare floorboards in the dining room, original slightly uneven tiles in the hallway, original quarry tiles in the kitchen, rather uneven quarry tiles in the kids playroom (what was the scullery), nasty modern tiles in the downstairs loo, even nastier modern laminate in the utility room (which is a modern extension), bare floorboards with a big central rug in the lounge.
3 little Feltwell's, now aged from 3 to 9 years old, have all crawled and toddled their way round this with no problem at all. In fact the only one they've all hurt themselves on is the small 2" step from the kitchen into the hallway, but even with that they rapidly learn to stop toddling at the doorway, hang onto the frame and step up/down, then toddle off again.
Those tiles look like they'll clean up nicely. A big rug is great for kids. We've a modern artificial fibre one in the lounge which we got with the idea that we'd replace it with a better one when it got too grotty, but despite numerous spillages, food crumbs, potty training accidents, muddy feet after forgetting to take wellies off and Lord knows what else, it keeps cleaning up just fine. It's nice and thick and soft and great for when they first started to be mobile. We put one of those gripper things (similar to that which Lady A posted - came from Ikea, sorry to swear!) underneath it, that definitely helps keep it in place.
Here at Feltwell Towers we have no carpet at all downstairs - bare floorboards in the dining room, original slightly uneven tiles in the hallway, original quarry tiles in the kitchen, rather uneven quarry tiles in the kids playroom (what was the scullery), nasty modern tiles in the downstairs loo, even nastier modern laminate in the utility room (which is a modern extension), bare floorboards with a big central rug in the lounge.
3 little Feltwell's, now aged from 3 to 9 years old, have all crawled and toddled their way round this with no problem at all. In fact the only one they've all hurt themselves on is the small 2" step from the kitchen into the hallway, but even with that they rapidly learn to stop toddling at the doorway, hang onto the frame and step up/down, then toddle off again.
Those tiles look like they'll clean up nicely. A big rug is great for kids. We've a modern artificial fibre one in the lounge which we got with the idea that we'd replace it with a better one when it got too grotty, but despite numerous spillages, food crumbs, potty training accidents, muddy feet after forgetting to take wellies off and Lord knows what else, it keeps cleaning up just fine. It's nice and thick and soft and great for when they first started to be mobile. We put one of those gripper things (similar to that which Lady A posted - came from Ikea, sorry to swear!) underneath it, that definitely helps keep it in place.
JoceAndChris
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That's a lovely looking quarry tiled floor, lucky lucky you! You must keep it and have it to look forward to even if you drown it in rugs right now.
Sympathies, our cottage is the same period and it's incredibly hard to get it above 8-12 degrees in winter. ( 12 in the room we have an open fire in all the time) I'm talking about when it's 3 or 4 outside and dipping down to -5 at night, all of which seems pretty hard to imagine right now. Even though we chuck £3000 of heating at the cottage every year the drafty windows, minimal number of rads you can link to a Rayburn, floors suspended over earth, double doored glass porch, multiple chimneys and lack of insulation make it very hard to heat. Over time you can work on these things though, but until you can afford to put in things like an extra wood burning stove or get the windows all done with brushes it's a question of very good multi layered clothing using thermal underthings, electric blankets, and keeping moving. I don't have children but all my friends have toddlers and when they come ( which they rarely do in winter) they worry a lot about the temperature of the bedrooms. I can see it's a shock for people coming from a hot house but I can't see it as a major threat to life for people who live with it all the time, would it have been more than 12 inside for our grandparents? I doubt it. We've all got very spoiled and pathetic, myself included, and I complain bitterly during the cold snaps but rejoice in the fact it is really only 10 weeks of the year that it's uncomfortable.
Anyway, enjoy your floors, they're lovely, and rugs should warm it up a bit. I haven't been able to afford rugs as we need 13 large ones for all the stone, brick, wood floors etc and I've wallpapered a lot with pretty FnB papers which means the rugs I choose have got to be very specific in order not to clash - I can't bear clashing patterns. But if I had plain walls I'd go for heaps upon heaps of vintage Persian rugs.
Sympathies, our cottage is the same period and it's incredibly hard to get it above 8-12 degrees in winter. ( 12 in the room we have an open fire in all the time) I'm talking about when it's 3 or 4 outside and dipping down to -5 at night, all of which seems pretty hard to imagine right now. Even though we chuck £3000 of heating at the cottage every year the drafty windows, minimal number of rads you can link to a Rayburn, floors suspended over earth, double doored glass porch, multiple chimneys and lack of insulation make it very hard to heat. Over time you can work on these things though, but until you can afford to put in things like an extra wood burning stove or get the windows all done with brushes it's a question of very good multi layered clothing using thermal underthings, electric blankets, and keeping moving. I don't have children but all my friends have toddlers and when they come ( which they rarely do in winter) they worry a lot about the temperature of the bedrooms. I can see it's a shock for people coming from a hot house but I can't see it as a major threat to life for people who live with it all the time, would it have been more than 12 inside for our grandparents? I doubt it. We've all got very spoiled and pathetic, myself included, and I complain bitterly during the cold snaps but rejoice in the fact it is really only 10 weeks of the year that it's uncomfortable.
Anyway, enjoy your floors, they're lovely, and rugs should warm it up a bit. I haven't been able to afford rugs as we need 13 large ones for all the stone, brick, wood floors etc and I've wallpapered a lot with pretty FnB papers which means the rugs I choose have got to be very specific in order not to clash - I can't bear clashing patterns. But if I had plain walls I'd go for heaps upon heaps of vintage Persian rugs.
Feltwell
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Nesh = soft, not tough, susceptible to cold weather etc.
Quick translation for all the soft southerners on this forum! :wink:
Quick translation for all the soft southerners on this forum! :wink:
Flyfisher
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I'd not heard the term before, but I guessed what it meant.
I also agree with the sentiment and reckon that children are a lot tougher than we generally give them credit for.
I also agree with the sentiment and reckon that children are a lot tougher than we generally give them credit for.
Feltwell
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You don't tend to hear it much outside of the North-West and possibly Yorkshire, but I await being corrected on that!
It's a nice word. Goes along with "mardy" as one of my favourite northern words. Mardy - grumpy, whiny, uncooperative, sulky.
It's a nice word. Goes along with "mardy" as one of my favourite northern words. Mardy - grumpy, whiny, uncooperative, sulky.