Floating floor boards

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tripple1zero

Team Captain
Sep 16, 2007
474
119
Perth
AFL Club
Fremantle
Thinking of putting them down, but I know nothing about them and have had no experience with wooden floors. Has anyone got any advice / comments? Would you recommend a particular type? Is solid hardwood a better way to go?

We would be putting throughout most living areas (ie excluding bedrooms, laundry and theatre room). We do have a puppy, so scratching would be an issue. I have heard noise is a complaint with floating floors.

Thanks.
 
I put floating floorboards down in my sunroom a couple of months ago. I had a mate who is a carpenter help me. I don't use the sunroom a whole lot so I just got the cheapest one going. I think it was about $17 a square metre. I have to say it looks really good. I haven't noticed that they're particularly noisy. I also have two dogs who I leave in the sunroom while at work and there are no scratches on the floor.
 
About 5 or 6 years ago myself and a couple of mates helped my dad put floating floor boards in my parents living area/kitchen. We all had limited experience at it but once you get past the first row, where you may have to cut around door jams and cupboards and whatever, it gets pretty easy.

If I remember correctly it took us about 2 hours to do the first row, about 2 hours to do the next 18 rows and another 3 hours to finish the last row but only because we had a few mishaps with cutting it wrong around obstacles.

If you have a few fiddly bits that you need to cut around, my advice is whatever you work out your square area to be, add on another pack of boards just to be safe.

As I said though, complete novices and it came up really well and they have had no problems ever.

As for wear and tear, my dog and their dog have been tearing around on them for 5 years and they hold up very well to that so you should have no problems.
 

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tripple1zero said:
Thinking of putting them down, but I know nothing about them and have had no experience with wooden floors. Has anyone got any advice / comments? Would you recommend a particular type? Is solid hardwood a better way to go?
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They are usually laminated onto ply for stability,avoid the laminex fake wood ones.
I haven't found any with long lengths in a nice orangey red tone that I like,they always look fake to me,but if you don't have the clearance or sub floor to lay real ones I suppose its better than nothing.
The amount of noise would depend on the underlay and sub floor.
I would imagine dogs would scratch it up.
 
We got "slate look" floating floorboards throughout our new house (excluding bathroom/bedrooms) when we moved in about 4 years ago. One of the best investments we've ever made house-wise. They look great, aren't very expensive, very easy to clean (just use a damp cloth if you spill something or make a mess, or a mop if you track mud through the house or something), don't appear to noticeably scratch, don't crack, don't seem to break other things either (dropped a few plates in the kitchen over the years for no damage to the floor or plate), and aren't as cold as real tiles (we live in a cold area, so this was important). They'd be a much better idea that carpet if you had kids I reckon, because they're so easy to clean, and you don't have to take your shoes off every time you come into the house. Better than real tiles too, as they're cheaper and look just as good (depending on the style of house of course) and for kids as well, as they're softer (if they fall over, want to sit on the floor etc.) and are so easy to clean.

We just had a "Ma and Pa" pair install them for us, and they did a seamless job. There's the occasional creak in certain spots, but beyond that, they're perfect IMO if you want "set and forget" flooring throughout your house.
 
Not sure if this thread is still monitored, but my uncle's family used bamboo floorboards from SE Timber. They wanted an environmentally friendly option for their recent renovations. They've got kids crawling around on them and I've heard nothing but good things about the new floors.
 
Worked in the timber industry (until Gunns went bust I and I got a nice redundancy) and my recommendations are quite simple;
  1. Avoid laminated ones like the plague, they are cheaper, but will not last anywhere near as long.
  2. Make sure you get a decent underlay, being cheap only leads to problems in a few years and will cost you twice as much in the long term.
  3. If, as you indicate, you will have heavy traffic from day one, use bamboo. Extremely sturdy and hard. Always remember an industry exhibition where the bamboo flooring people where drawing a massive crowd, they had girls in bikinis walking on the floor in stilletos handing out free food, they would then leave and they'd ask people to find marks in the floorboards. No-one with modern hardwood ones would've tried it.
  4. If you have the chance to get older timber floorboards (ie. more than 10 years old) go with them, they'll last until after your children (and even grandchildren) are dead. Only problem is getting them or waiting for hardwoods to really firm up. This takes 5-10 years and when you consider hardwood is left to air dry for 12 months after the first cut it does take time.
 
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