Our fitted carpet now needs replacing and we are looking at ceramic tiles (started out considering wood but could not find anything that met the criteria of being both sufficiently light in colour and looking right with our predominantly light oak furniture).
The area, just under 40 square metres, is floored with quite thick (21mm?) T&G timber on 100x50 joists at 400mm centres. The maximum spans are less than 2 metres due to the use of supporting stub walls. There appears to be no discernible deflection in the floor - I tested this by placing a full glass of water on some kitchen paper at the centre of each of the largest spans and then striding around the area a few times, which resulted in no spillage.
A bit of Googling suggests that any floorboards should be boarded over prior to tiling. Has anyone any experience of this - is it essential with sound T&G given the availablility of good quality flexible tile adhesives and grouts?
Yes you should overboard with ply - 18mm recommended, screwed around the edges. The floorboards will move all over the place - the ply is more stable. This is despite using a flexible adhesive and grout.
You could lose the floorboards and replace with ply - though I
*personally* would go up from 18mm (others may have a different view, also depends on joist spacing) And put noggins at the cross-joints.
Back top the wood - have you looked at Kahrs - quite a range of engineered wood flooring which would be a lot easier to lay.
Tim, many thanks for the response. I had not looked at Kahrs engineered wood and it looks as though they do a pale, almost white, oak that could look good in the area.
I imagine that some of the regulars here will have experience of laying wood floors and hopefully one or two may have experience of the Kahrs system so I will now post a new message asking for any tips and advice.
1) Run a long (6 ft) straightedge over the whole floor in all directions. Kahrs have tolerances (some mm variation in some metres length) on their website. If you have hollows, you may need to fiddle with some 2mm and 1mm cardboard (I always seem to need a few sheets, from an art shop - even a good floor has something a bit off).
2) If that's all good, check your floorboards are tight - if necessary add some screws.
3) I got mine from 1926 Flooring (online, but you can speak to them - very helpful bunch). If you don't use them, you can see the various sundry products.
You will want to lay a good underlay made for the job - I used Tredaire Boardwalk.
Other than that, you will need a jigsaw for the long and wobbly cuts. A chopsaw makes light work of the end cuts - but a jigsaw is good enough and not much slower.
Kahrs is very precise click-fit - hoover the joints as you go just before mating the next board. A bit of sawdust jammed in the joint makes it hard to get together.
No glue and they will come apart again if needed.
Check you leave a 10mm or so gap around the edges for movement (humidity expansion) - Kahrs have exact minimum figures depending on lenght of floor.
Plan the layout so you don't end up laying a 30mm strip at one end.
Don't assume your walls are straight or parallel!
I also found it easier to build a long plank out of 2 and lever-click it in in one go rather than having to tap the 2nd one in on the flat. Totally optional.
The only other bit you need is the little fitting kit with blocks and wedges - is very much worth it, though you could make a poor mans set out of scrap wood - but you will probably need the hooked flat bar if you have to tap the last plank in towards yourself and that's not so easy to make your own.
That's all I can think off - watch some vids on Youtube - it is actually a pretty nice and unstressed job and not at all complicated. A lot easier than floor tiling anyway (I did that once).
I imagine that there would be no problem laying on the existing T&G timber floor as it is level, sound and not subject to deflection with normal use. I understand that it is usual to lay some form of moisture barrier underlay where the floor is to be over a void.
Kahrs engineered flooring has been suggested and from a bit of googling they do appear to have a reasonably good reputation. Some comments suggest that the surface can readily scratch and mark - grateful for observations from any users. The Kahrs site indicates that the floor we are currently interested in is capable of being sanded 2 or 3 times but this seems a bit optimistic to me.
There are a number of straight runs of around 8 metres long, will intermediate expansion joints be necessary?
From the instructions I have downloaded fitting looks relatively straightforward, the only problem being what to do with the skirting. The total length of the skirting is 27 metres and it is fixed using large nails and removal results in a fair bit of damage to the plaster above the skirting. I am not keen on adding the small scotia profiles to the skirting so I was considering hiring a door trimming saw and removing sufficient of the bottom edge of the skirting to allow the flooring to slide underneath.
Not totally necessary as there's plenty of room for it to breath. However, several of the underlays actually have a vapour barrier on one side (this goes "up") so if you use one of them and tape the join you've not much to worry about there.
Got loads of superficial scratches. This is normal. The thing is that the surface is wood - well 4mm is. If it gets beaten up, it becomes "character". But they do reckon it will take 2 full floor sandings in its life.
One of my rooms has 2 brown stains about 2" diameter. Cannot account for this - someone may have spilt something. I might try some local hand sanding - or leave it.
It is a 4mm thick veneer so it's probably true. You would have had to have beaten the crap out of it to actually need to use a drum sander.
What it means in practise is that dints and scratches are not really noticeable - they do not reveal the substrate like a scratch in cheap vinyl or laminate can.
That's quite long, but probably not if you allow enough gape at both ends. Download the installation instructions from the kahrs website - quite comprehensive about this type of detail.
That would be a reasonable approach. Trim to leave a 1-2mm gap after fitting - ie don;t let the skirting bear down on the floor.
You will have to remove the last wall's worth though otherwise it will be impossible to lay the final plank.
It occurs to me that as there are central heating pipes in the void under the floor it would be sensible to ensure access to the two spaces (the void is divided into two by support walls). How easy is it to dismantle Kahrs flooring once laid? I could arrange for the access points to be near to the edge in both cases. The only alternative would be to create access panels from the flooring.
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