DIY Flooring

It's been over a year since we did the flooring throughout our downstairs and I can't believe that I haven't written a blog post about it yet!

So here we go...

There are many different types of flooring such as laminate, real wood, vinyl or engineered wood. We chose engineered wood so that we could have something that is strong and durable whilst looking as realistic as possible.

FAQ: "where is the flooring from?"

The flooring we used was from UK Flooring Direct and it was called home choice engineered European select oak flooring Brownie brushed Matt lacquered.

The tongue and groove mechanism allows for easy installation as you position and click the boards in place using a mallet.

What you will need

Crowbar

Mitre saw

Jigsaw

Floor laying kit including mallet and rubber tapping block

Contour gauge tool

Underlay

Engineered wood flooring

Beading for edges (optional)

Step 1 - Clear out

If you’re lucky enough to have a smooth surface to work on then you can go ahead with these steps. We managed to lay ours on top of the vinyl tiles that were under our carpet. We had it on good authority from a professional builder that this is fine and so far so good! In the end all we had to do was rip up the carpet and the carpet grips.

TIP: Make sure that everything is out of the entire room. In this picture, we moved everything into one room believing that we could do a room at a time before realising that we in fact needed to do all the rooms at once due to the flow of the boards.

Step 2 – lay the underlay

Underlay is used to prevent moisture build up that could damage your flooring. For this reason, lay your underlay silverside down to form your protective barrier. There should be some overlapping edges for your underlay. This is where you place your next sheet of underlay so that they overlap but don’t become bumpy.

Step 3A – the fun bit

Assembling the floor is actually really quick and easy once you get into it. The middle of the floor is far easier than the edges.

Start in a corner of the room. You will want to make sure that your floorboards go down lengthways making your room appear wider. Slide the boards into the grooves and push down to click together and gently tap the edges with your mallet - make sure that you’re using the longest side of your rubber tapping block.

Another tip is to make sure that your floorboards go down in an uneven matrix to make the floor stronger. You shouldn’t put your floorboards down side-by-side using their full length as the floorboards are more likely to ping apart.

Step 3B - the tricky bit

Use the mitre saw to cut the boards when you reach the edges of the room. You can hire a mitre saw if you don’t want to buy one. We decided to buy ours as we found a good deal and will most likely use it again for more flooring and other projects.

TIP: Use board cut-offs to start your next row giving you offset rows.

Step 4 - Beading

Sometimes when installing floorboards, this means that there is a bit of a gap between the floorboards and your wall or skirting boards. This is a good thing. It means that when your house changes temperature throughout the year there is space for your floor to expand and contract. Unfortunately it might not look so good. To get around this you can add some decorative beading around the edges of your room to cover the gap.

If you'd like to see more information and see us in action then I have an IGTV saved down in my DIY series on Instagram along with highlights, links to everything used and various follow up videos.