We have recently purchased a house that was built in around 1780. It has pine floorboards upstairs but at some point a solid concrete floor has been laid downstairs. As I plan on having carpet upstairs I was wondering how feasible it would be to lift the floorboards from upstairs and re-use them downstairs. I have laid a wooden floor on to concrete before but that was with new wood that was tongue and grooved all round so I just glued it and laid as a floating floor. My floorboards from upstairs are square edged so I am not sure how I wouuld go about fixing them downstairs. Any thoughts appreciated.
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Relocating floorboards
- Thread starter Molly
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Flyfisher
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- Norfolk, UK
Nothing wrong with laying carpet over the original upstairs floorboards but it does seem like a lot of extra work and disruption to relocate the floorboards downstairs and replace them with something else. I'd also be concerned about the risk of damaging the original boards when taking them up, so I'd leave them be and start afresh on the downstairs concrete floor and leave the upstairs floors original and intact.
There have been some previous discussions here about laying a wooden floor over concrete. You don't mention when the concrete floor was laid or its construction details, which might be important regarding ventilation requirements under the new floor. Generally, a suspended floor with good ventilation is the general principle. This can, of course, involve quite a bit of disruption in terms of possible new airbricks, door thresholds, reduced headroom etc., depending on the property in question.
There have been some previous discussions here about laying a wooden floor over concrete. You don't mention when the concrete floor was laid or its construction details, which might be important regarding ventilation requirements under the new floor. Generally, a suspended floor with good ventilation is the general principle. This can, of course, involve quite a bit of disruption in terms of possible new airbricks, door thresholds, reduced headroom etc., depending on the property in question.
In your position I would not try and lift a sound, original floor to relay in another room. It will damage the historic integrity of the house and you will probably end up needing more boards which will be very hard to match. It will also be very disruptive and your will increase your labour/labour cost substantially - lifting old dry floorboards without damage is tricky and my carpenter really didn't want to do it.
We recently lifted a lot of boards downstairs to insulate and add underfloor heating then relaid them - where were careful they went back into the same places with only a little damage and we covered the same rooms with the original boards in the same places.
We also reworked some floors that the previous owners had lifted, sliced, diced and rearranged to accommodate new stud walls, plumbing and central heating work. Reusing those boards was much, much more difficult and while the resulting floors have some character I was only able to cover about a 2/3rd of the original area with good boards. I ended up with a lot of short offcuts that are not useful for anything at all. I also have a stretch of brand new floorboards that I wasn't expecting which I have to stain and wax or carpet over.
If you really want a 'period' floor then looking reclaimed boards in keeping with the age and character of your house making sure you buy about 1/4 to 1/3 more area than you need to cover (depending on the condition). Try http://www.salvo.co.uk/ as well as local reclamation yards but make sure what you buy has some provenance so you're not encouraging the illicit trade in reclaimed materials.
Alternatively look for a new flooring which has some character. In the rooms where we replaced concrete floors we fitted engineered boards with a real oak veneer which look really good and were very simple for the carpenters to lay. As an example they took two days to lay a new engineered floor with prefinished surface. They took the twice amount of time to lift the original boards and relay them in a similar sized room. I then spent a week sanding, staining and waxing that floor to make it look good.
We used Olivia dark oak from Vanilla which are a good match for our stained pine from our 1750s house.
http://www.vanillawoodfloors.co.uk/index.php?cPath=23_141
We recently lifted a lot of boards downstairs to insulate and add underfloor heating then relaid them - where were careful they went back into the same places with only a little damage and we covered the same rooms with the original boards in the same places.
We also reworked some floors that the previous owners had lifted, sliced, diced and rearranged to accommodate new stud walls, plumbing and central heating work. Reusing those boards was much, much more difficult and while the resulting floors have some character I was only able to cover about a 2/3rd of the original area with good boards. I ended up with a lot of short offcuts that are not useful for anything at all. I also have a stretch of brand new floorboards that I wasn't expecting which I have to stain and wax or carpet over.
If you really want a 'period' floor then looking reclaimed boards in keeping with the age and character of your house making sure you buy about 1/4 to 1/3 more area than you need to cover (depending on the condition). Try http://www.salvo.co.uk/ as well as local reclamation yards but make sure what you buy has some provenance so you're not encouraging the illicit trade in reclaimed materials.
Alternatively look for a new flooring which has some character. In the rooms where we replaced concrete floors we fitted engineered boards with a real oak veneer which look really good and were very simple for the carpenters to lay. As an example they took two days to lay a new engineered floor with prefinished surface. They took the twice amount of time to lift the original boards and relay them in a similar sized room. I then spent a week sanding, staining and waxing that floor to make it look good.
We used Olivia dark oak from Vanilla which are a good match for our stained pine from our 1750s house.
http://www.vanillawoodfloors.co.uk/index.php?cPath=23_141
Flyfisher
Member
- Messages
- 10,202
- Location
- Norfolk, UK
This thread might be interesting reading: http://www.periodproperty.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10734
It also contains references to other related threads.
It also contains references to other related threads.