Hardwood floors in bathrooms

[Huge]

Cold? Slippery? Water damaged?

Do you lay it after the fittings or before?

[Andy Hall]

I've used oak for two ground floor rooms, the stairs and the upstairs landing.

For the downstairs rooms, it's treated with boiled linseed oil, turpentine and beeswax, the stairs are oiled only, not that we have found that a tiny amount of wax results in noticable slipperiness.

THe landing was done sometime later.

We had noticed that the downstairs oiled areas would show drops of water with a feint white mark, for example if somebody had dripped some water on the floor. THis is no big deal because it doesn't happen often and is easily corrected with a quick wipe with an oily rag. There was another instance where a permanent felt tip marker was dropped point down on one of the floors. It had dried unnoticed. To fix it, I just gave the immediate area a very light sanding until the mark disappesared followed by a quick wipe with the oily rag. Invisible.

In that sense, oil/wax is a great finish because it is easy to maintain without having to strip the entire area as would be the case with a varnish.

However, for the area of the landing, we figured that it would be a pain, so instead we used a light water based stain (wiped off) followed by two coats of a matt acrylic floor varnish. I hate high gloss on floors - it makes it look like plastic laminate IMHO.

If somebody paddles out of the main bathroom in wet feet, a few drops will be left but do not seem to make the floor slippery. It easily wipes up.

Acrylic is not recommended for bathrooms, so were you to use wood, then a polyurethane would be needed. However, if you don't have small kids and you use a reasonably absorbent bath mat, I see no reason not to use a hardwood floor in a bathroom. There will be a certain amount of movement across the width of the boards with humidity change, so don't expect a tightly butted appearance all the time.

Certainly a hardwood floor is not cold to the feet - I walk around indoors barefoot or in socks at the most for most of the time.

.andy

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[Peter Taylor]

Andy Hall wrote

snipped a lot of interesting stuff

I am looking at flooring for my bathroom too and in John Lewis at High Wycombe there's a nice selection of hardwoods, laminates, cheapy click stuff, Amtico and even old fashioned lino. The man there said he would not recommend any type of timber flooring in a bathroom and would not even quote for laying it. So I 'm looking at Amtico at present - I agree with you about the plasticky look :o(

Peter