New floor vs refurbishing old timber floor in Victorian flat

6 months ago

We are in the process of redoing the floor in our open plan living room / kitchen and had initially planned to do engineered wood over the old underlay, but having now ripped up the underlay too we can see the old floor boards underneath (see photo). Just debating if we should consider trying to refurbish the old wooden floor instead but we are in a flat and there doesn’t appear to be anything underneath the boards, just the joists and the plasterboard of the downstairs ceiling. So we are worried about the noise transmission, currently it’s acceptable but you can hear if the downstairs neighbours are having a party for example. Wondering if anyone has a similar situation and could advise? We also have an issue with the floor being very uneven, classic old building, so laying the new floor will require some levelling and is currently going to cost us in the region of £10k. Does anyone know rough costs for restoring an old floor (roughly 38 square meters)?

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (4)

minnie101
6 months ago
last modified: 6 months ago
We had our bedroom floor done 3 years, it’s about 27sqm. It only cost c1k but we didn’t need sound insulation. The guy was an antique furniture restorer who started refurbishing floors as a sideline and i suspect he seriously undercharged us..We also didn’t need much in terms of repair work, all boards were sound and only 1 had been replaced at some point in its lifetime, you may also find holes where central heating has been installed or gaps under skirting etc

i think you need to consider whether you’d be happy with all the dents as pine is such a soft wood. We hung new curtains days after the floor being done and the ladder (sat on a towel) created dents. We put furniture pads under everything but have had no need to move the furniture since but i suspect it has big dents everywhere! It's fine for us jn a bedroom but not sure if i could cope in a living space
Jonathan
6 months ago
Restoring the old floor is the cheapest option but it’s undesirable because they will hear you and this is why many lease agreement prohibit remove floor coverings. Another option is to have the old floor up, add insulation as an acoustic barrier then relay the origins floor.

Personally I would insulate then overboard the existing floor then add a floating floor or a luxury vinyl tile
Related Discussions
Victorian House inspiration please!
Q
Comments (229)
Also, top tip, folks! If installing an island with plumbing/electrics in it, make sure you have an access panel somewhere to get to them - especially for the plumbing. I speak from bitter experience in the last house. This is a particular problem with Belfast sinks mounted, you guessed it, under a stone worktop, meaning you can't easily take the sink out. I had this in my old house - learned my lesson the hard way, A bad situation when your dishwasher or waste disposal unit are leaking or need replacing, and you find out that there are a load of connections you need to get to that are hidden behind the sink. Even worse if that Belfast sink has an Insinkerator waste disposal plumbed into it and the dishwasher is plumbed into that - the bits you need to get to are directly behind the unit, and not easily reachable from the space in the cabinet under that sink, even if you cut out the back panel. Very awkward. So that stone worktop has to come off (not realistic) or you have to cut through a cabinet back or two with a jigsaw (better option by far - but you do it very carefully). Which is what I did - replacing the hacked up back panel with an access panel held in place by magnets, for the next time. Trust me, it's easier to do this at installation stage! This island is 90cm wide, and one side is the seating area, which is behind the row of front cabinets, which include sink, fridge, dishwasher etc. The whole kickpanel in the seating area will be mounted on a stud frame which has six metal threads installed, so that the panel (plywood, as we determined above) bolts to these six screws. Need access to the plumbing and drain? Drop the panel in minutes, and everything is in front of you and easily accessed...
...See More
Victorian Renovation in London - Part 2
Q
Comments (201)
Thanks guys - we did a lot of experimenting and testing on some old floorboards before deciding on this stuff. The Osmo oil gives a deep and rich finish on old pitch pine that looks very different to varnish - deeper and with more of the grain being brought out. It's more like a beeswax finish from olden times, without the backbreaking labour and maintenance. Interestingly on the new boards (in the top bedroom), it makes far less difference: the new pine just looks yellow and shiny, much as it would if varnished. But the oil should be tougher and lower maintenance. We decided to restore these floors rather than replace as they were actually in remarkably good condition: this house has never had fitted carpets fitted, nor central heating fitted until 2014, and when it was installed it was installed with regard to keeping the floors intact (many systems installed in past decades saw the boards sawn up and hacked about). I wanted look that is obviously original, and can't be mistaken for engineered wood. I did think about a limewashed finish, but bottled it at the last minute and went totally traditional, as I thought less risk of a finish done to a trend that would be hard to reverse.
...See More
How to make a Victorian house warm?
Q
Comments (24)
Hello! We have done two things which relate to some of the issues you describe. However, I should point out that we don't have a cellar; we have ground around 30cm below our ground floor joists. We have wooden floorboards rather than concrete - but I would imagine concrete would be easier to insulate, perhaps from below, in the ceiling of the cellar? Anyway, this is what we did: We insulated under our floor borads on the ground floor. (Note that not every single one has to be lifted, you lift a few every foot or so). Celotex was inserted between the joists. There is a risk the insulation will fall out onto the ground below, so they cut it slightly too big and then hammer it in. It's wedged in very tight and we have had none fall out two years later. As I wrote in my post above as well, we added angled vent covers outside to reduce the draft coming in under the floorboards. We were very concerned about air cirulation when doing all of this, but we have come to the conclusion that the air circulation is already so large under our ground floor, that the celotex and vent covers aren't really an issue. It's not like we have sealed everything shut, there are still plenty of tiny gaps everywhere. We haven't had any issues with mould or anything like that. The other thing we have done more recently is to balance our radiators. We had the problem that our front room was extremely cold relative to the rest of the house (although we had high spec/high BTU radiators in all rooms). We thought this may have been due to low power on the radiators, but in fact after doing a big rebalancing exercise, it's now the warmest room in the house. We're quite surprised how much of a difference rebalancing makes. There are plenty of guides online which we followed; essentially, what you do is you first check how open each radiator is (check the lockshield valve, not the TSV!). We wrote this down on a piece of paper for each radiator in the house (e.g. "fully open", "3/4 open", etc). We then put the heating on from cold and ran around the house checking which radiator fires up first/last. Made a note of this on paper. We then realised that in our case, although the front room radiator was fully open (which would suggest it should get the hot water first), in fact so were many of the radiators that are closer to the boiler. As a result, the hot water was going to those closer ones first (it takes the easiest route). The solution was to close the lockshield valves on the radiators closer to the boiler (not completely, you do it 1/4 of a turn at a time and check the effect). After a few runs we were able to get to a point where the hot water was filling up the front room radiators first. Now it's great. I hope this can help you! Good luck!
...See More
Victorian Renovation in London Part 4 - snagging and garden
Q
Comments (213)
Belated thanks, Nisha. So I have compiled some albums of photos so you don't have to trawl through all the threads. Hopefully this works: someone let me know by posting, please? Completed house: https://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?start_tab=one_set72157700454483311 The whole, messy, process: https://www.flickr.com/photos/reshington/albums/72157684375457971
...See More
Sonia
6 months ago
Problem with original floorboards is they are usually pine and get dented and scratched very easily. I had the downstairs floorboards sanded and varnished, but with 2 dogs the floor got very scratched and it looked a mess very quickly. They were also very draughty. In the end we temporarily covered them with laminate but it has fared very well and still looks smart. I had read that wooden flooring between flats can be very noisy for the people below so not a good option.
C Harrison
5 months ago
Your lease may prohibit you from having hard floors when you live above someone else. If you can hear your downstairs neighbours below then they will certainly hear you, and with bare floorboards will probably hear every footstep and all your conversations. You can buy soundproofing material, and putting that between the floorboards and final floor covering will make life easier for everyone!

New floor vs refurbishing old timber floor in Victorian flat

Comments (4)

minnie101

Jonathan

Related Discussions

Sonia

C Harrison

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US