Really nice colour Ian. From the photo, my initial thought was rubber.
Rubber flooring had become quite trendy some years back, maybe still is, but mostly for bathrooms and kitchens and hallways, anywhere where there was potential water spillage.
Personally, I would not concern myself with laying engineered wood in a kitchen as they are generally sealed with a watertight finish and people don’t really spill buckets of water in a kitchen. Solid wood is a different matter though.
Well it doesn’t have the immediately obvious repeating pattern, but in real life I could tell whether the surface is wood or vinyl instantly and without bending down. Also, as JOF says, it’s in the mind too. Minimum 4mm veneered engineered like JOF’s pic is the thing to get. The surface is treated, very tough and scratch resistant.
Full marks
You can tell but you have to get pretty close. Very durable and about 1/3 price of top end wood panels. Let’s put it this way, I don’t look down and regret our decision. I cannot say that about many domestic decisions I’ve made in the past.
Something else to consider is if there is a risk of significant water spillage, what would happen if you didn’t know it had happened for a few hours.
Followers of the Pets thread will know that we fairly recently acquired two kittens. A couple of days ago when we were out, one of them knocked over a Britta jug full of water (only about 2 litres) and this got under the real oak flooring which is laid over much of our ground floor. We found it on our return home which can’t have been more that two hours later and mopped it up. But the water got under the oak and, somewhat unbelievably, has caused massive swelling and trampolining 4 metres from where the spill was.
I will have to see what happens as it dries out, but on the face of it we will have to replace the flooring in the kitchen and the day/dining room. I laid this flooring myself years ago, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to lift the old flooring and install the new boards myself anymore. It’s about 45 sq m, so is going to be pricy however it’s done….
We considered Karndean when I refitted our previous house kitchen-diner having seen nice looking floors in show houses and reasoned that the cost would be justified as the rest of the kitchen was stunning looking, but when we looked into it in depth we realised it wouldn’t satisfy our flooring need. Cosmetically it is good (when new) but that and the name are what you’re paying for in my view.
This was one of the reasons i got rid of my wood laminate floor too, two lovely cats that had seriously ruined the wood in a few places over the course of a couple of years…
Small little accidents like pushing over a bowl of water can have big consequences with wood if you’re not there quickly enough to wipe it up.
Beautiful marble floors can get scratched/cracked, tiles can get cracked if a jar falls on them in the kitchen, whole carpets get ruined when liquids spill, not to mentioned a pet’s ‘accident’ that make them smell forever. Let’s just vinyl the whole house so we can jet wash the floor every week.
Better not buy a fragile LP12 in case a vase falls on it.
Been down 7 yrs in heavy use area and no issues …
I had something similar with a Junkers floor, recognising that the underside has a sealing layer/film to it, which means that drying out is very difficult and encourages the wetness to spread.
The Junkers could be heard to be twisting and heaving.
I wouldn’t consider putting wood anywhere near a kitchen or bathroom, unless it could be 100% sealed.
I remember my old primary school assembly room had a parquet floor. Was also used as the dinner room and as a space for many indoor sport and martial arts clubs. So had to put up with all sorts of spills and knocks.
I had a similar dilemma ten years or so ago when renovating first a stone cottage and then a Swedish kit house. In the end I went for flagstones in the cottage’s ground floor and tongue and groove wood in the bedrooms. The wood for these floors came from local trees (sweet chestnut, horse chestnut and sycamore), the boards were quite thin as they were laid over underfloor heating, but they are attractive because the grain is more varied than engineered oak.
However, for the kit house, my source of timber flooring went out of business so I decided to use bamboo tongue and groove. It has worn well and still looks good.
Hi David, that is accidental damage on your insurance policy
We had Amtico layed I our bathroom and our conservatory many years ago. The temperature in our conservatory can go up to 65c but it’s still as good as new. Would highly recommend it.
We have engineered wood downstairs. 12 years on it looks bad. The Karndene upstairs looks like new. And water spillage has also caused some delamination near the freezer and by the washing machine. Not sure what yo go for next downstairs. Solid wood in the previous place certainly seemed to hold up better….
The people who originally owned our place hired an interior design firm for a complete remodel. We looked at about 30 homes within a 800% price range. In the end this was not only the least expensive we saw but also by far the nicest. It was on the market for nearly two years without a single offer. How was that possible?
Our primary requirements related to architecture, design, and aesthetics. The market is generally concerned with location, sq footage, bathroom count etc. The moment I stepped foot into this place I recognized that this wasn’t just a home but a work of art created by a design genius. The attention to detail was so extreme I never found a single imperfection. The finishings are of the quality appropriate for home 20x the price we paid. Only took us about 10 minutes to decide to buy.
This relates to cork floors in that they were selectEd by the designer tasked with adding comfort/value to the space through aesthetics. The remodel budget was a ridiculous 150% of the market value of the property. My theory is that most people place little value on aesthetics and minor details. My experience is that cork is a superior material by most metrics it lags hardwood primarily in “universal perception of value”. So… running the numbers… people are risk averse. It’s a significant investment and a pita to replace flooring so until some critical mass is reached cork is unlikely to become a common choice among consumers.
Leaving aside the fact that aesthetics are a matter of taste, it is far easier to remodel a house aesthetically, than to move one to surroundings that suit, or change fundamental structure to suit needs, of change garden size to suit requirements. When I am house searching I look past the surface and see only if it suits needs/desires or can be made to. Finish to a high standard is something I can achieve myself - but oddly I have the opposite impression to yours, because it seems to me more people are swayed in house purchase by superficials than substance!
As for cork flooring, recent (as in past decade or two) that I have seen would likely suit some of our needs - I don’t recall the exact decisions that led to us not choosing cork in our present home in uncarpeted areas when we did it up 10 years ago, but what other people think or influence on saleability of the house had no bearing whatsoever.
I have faced a similar situation on a couple of occasions, and it’s not easy to fix. Once bowed boards have dried out it’s virtually impossible to flatten them. Ideally you need to put VERY heavy weight on top as soon as possible, then you might just succeed.
My best success involved putting a large pile of heavy slate flagstones I happened to have on top, then loading them further with a couple of acro props.
Those little V-grooves look wrong to me. The reason for them is that machining the boards tends to leave tiny differences in the height of the boards which shows as a hard edge. The groove just hides this unevenness.
I’ve managed to find square edged boards in the past, which look raf more natural.
I would also use unfinished boards, partly because you can sand out any such unevenness. More importantly if you apply the right finish you seal the gaps, which tends to avoid problems with spillages running down between the boards as David has found to his cost.
I have a prejudice about things pretending to be something that they are not. This is particularly strong when it comes to flooring because I usually walk around the house barefoot, and find it somewhat disconcerting when something that looks like wood doesn’t feel like wood.
Mrs Nicos and I had very lengthy discussions on the matter when we were planning our kitchen and has accepted that this is a “red line” for me to the extent that she didn’t even suggest wood effect ceramic flooring when we did the bathroom a couple of years later.
For the living room, the only options that we have considered were solid or engineered wood, and we will be getting engineered wood (6mm oak veneer over birch ply) from a local supplier who can produce pretty much any colour you want.
With regard to finish, the main choice is between lacquered and oiled, and our floor will be oiled, as we both prefer its more natural look, and although it requires a bit more in the way of routine maintenance, minor scuffs and scratches can be dealt with more easily than with a lacquered finish.
Oiling the floor a couple or 3 times a year will not be much of a chore, I am used to maintaining the solid walnut worktops in the kitchen in this way, and actually find it a rather relaxing job to do.