Wooden flooring

[GMM]

The T&G flooring in my bedroom is pretty rubbish. Over the years, it has dried out a lot, to the point where it's a contour map of knots that can be felt through the carpet. In thinking about doing the room up this summer, the options seem to be to either get a big floor sander thingy on hire and level it or replace the lot. SWMBO think it would be nice to have a hardwood floor, so it looks like replacement might be on the cards. Looking for boards, however, almost everything hardwood I can find seems to be a bit thin for actual floorboards and seems more to be designed to go over an existing floor, whereupon it would be pretty thick.

Am I missing the point somewhere here? I know that hardwood is probably pretty expensive but, if I'm going to rip the existing stuff up, I'd rather like to re-lay one floor, not two, and to wind up with roughly the same level I started with. It may be that the most sensible option is to settle for pine or (more simply) chipboard and carpet, but I wondered if anyone here can tell me a better way (no, not a 1 inch layer of car body filler laid using an angle grinder!).

Cheers

[Jules]

We're mostly on hardwood (Maple, I believe) at home - the (1-1/2" wide) T+G hardwood strips are about 3/4" in height, laid over some sort of cardboard-like material (maybe 1/16" thick), laid over the top of typical rough floorboards (3/4" thick again).

The floorboards run at 45 degrees to the hardwood strips above (i.e. diagonally across the rooms, with the hardwood strips parallel to the longest wall) - maybe that helps absorb any distortion.

There's no sign that they ever sanded the floorboards down or anything to make them level before putting the hardwood strips over the top; maybe the cardboard layer's there to help absorb minor distortion (although more likely there to stop critters getting in - I can't imagine it's any good as insulation, sound-deadening, or as a damp barrier)

astroturf! :-)

cheers

Jules

[NT]

Just so youre aware, a cheap easy option is to lay either 3mm hardboard or 6mm ply on top of the existing floor.

NT

[Owain]

What you want is "structural" wood flooring that does not need a sub- floor and goes straight over the joists.

It will probably be noisier downstairs though with people walking about upstairs.

Chipboard and carpet is of course the sensible option :-)

Owain

[Tim S]

Owain wibbled:

IIRC Kahrs 15mm engineered said it was structural, with joists at up to 2' spans.

I've also seen oak in 18mm somewhere.

[Jon Fairbairn]

Just put some mineral wool batts between the joists before laying the new boards. It works fairly well accoustically (short of doing the whole rubbber sheet + floating joist thing).