Engineered oak is made up of a plywood base with just a thin layer of natural oak glued on top and is therefore much more resistant to heat fluctuations. We had been gathering samples of engineered oak boards for some time (these were just the best ones - we had a lot more!)
Not too sure about that lumpy old tabby sample at the front though.
After examining samples from many different suppliers, it had become apparent to us that there are a LOT of cowboys out there...
There was a world of difference between the quality of the engineered oak boards and many flooring suppliers would be deliberately vague about what they were selling. Commonly, they would try to pass off inferior 3-ply as multi-ply ("well, it is made of multiple layers, you see").
As the picture below shows, proper multi-ply is made up of 7 or 8 thin layers of wood (cross-grained for strengthening), while the 3-ply stuff was essentially just a block of softwood with 1 layer of ply on the bottom (being neither strong nor moisture-resistant, this would not be suitable for underfloor heating).
Suppliers would also claim that the top oak layer was say, 3mm thick, but then include a small print disclaimer about a 'tolerance' of +/- 2mm, so that some samples ended up with a piddly 1mm thick layer of oak. There were similar disclaimers about the colour of the boards too, with several samples looking rather too orange. It was a complete minefield and a quick glance at reviews at consumer websites like Trustpilot showed there were an awful lot of unhappy customers who had fallen foul of these places.
After several months trawling local stockists and online suppliers, it looked like we weren't going to find what we needed for the budget that we had. As ever though, being tenacious ultimately paid off; we stumbled across a very high quality board that was being sold off cheaply because it was the last of the stock. They were exactly what'd we'd been searching for; wide boards (220mm) with a thicker than usual (4mm) layer of oak and proper multi-ply backing.
It was a relief to finally get them delivered and stacked up ready for fitting.
Before we could lay the boards, we needed to prepare the dry screed floors. Because of general wear and tear throughout the build process, some areas of the screed had become uneven and would need levelling. The main bedroom was the worst and needed extensive sanding to flatten certain parts, which generated a lot of dust... Gahhh!
Once the dust had cleared, we primed the now-level screed using a specialist flooring product that was designed to bond the particles together and prevent any further crumbling.
In the landing, a section of screed had been cut away by the heating engineer in order to install an important cable that he had forgotten to do during the original installation. Double gahhh!
The floor has to be completely dry before laying down the oak boards. Screed retains moisture for months after being laid, so we used quick-drying, self-levelling compound to repair all the gaps in the dry screed.
More self-levelling compound was used to fill the cracks in the main bedroom.
Once all the self-levelling compound had dried, we applied a second coat of primer across the whole of the first floor.
Before we started fitting the boards, Alan created a scale drawing to work out the floorboard layout (dotted lines represented the width of each board). It took a lot of planning because we had to work out exactly where the boards would start and finish in each room. It was important to avoid having to fit thin slivers of board alongside a wall as this can look unsightly.
Also the fitting method we had chosen, dictated that the boards had to be installed in a certain sequence and direction - there was a lot to think about.
We decided to start in the landing, which was the centre of the first floor and work outwards into the main bedroom.
After cutting the boards to size, we tested out the layout by dry-fitting a couple of rows. Although engineered oak expands and contracts much less than solid oak, it still requires expansion gaps to be left around the perimeter of the rooms (especially as we were planning to lay a large unbroken area across several rooms) so we used packers to position the boards off the walls. These expansion gaps will be covered later with skirting board.
Despite getting a bargain price, the engineered oak boards were still not cheap and since we'd never laid any before, it was really important to make sure we did not make any mistakes with the installation.
There are number of different ways to install wood flooring and after much research and speaking at length to various technical advisers, we decided to both glue and screw down our boards. This would mean more work (and cost) than laying a simple 'floating' floor, but would definitely make the boards feel much more solid and eliminate any of those annoying creaks and squeaks.
We applied specialist floorboard adhesive to the screed using a notched trowel, then pressed the first line of boards down into place.
Next we screwed the boards down at regular intervals into the battens below. We used the 'secret-nailing' method, where nails (or in this case, thin tongue-tite screws) were driven through the tongue of the board at a 45 degree angle. That way, when the next row of boards is slotted in place, all the nails/screws are completely hidden.
More flooring adhesive was laid down ready for the next line of boards...
... which was glued and screwed as before. This was a 'belt and braces' approach; while the screws fixed the boards firmly to the battens, the adhesive bonded all the areas in between and also acted as a kind of 'liquid underlay', helping to fill any unevenness in the screed without inhibiting the heat from the underfloor pipes. This should make the whole floor feel solid, with no creaks or hollow spots anywhere.
To get a really neat appearance, the floor boards should slot under the door liners. This meant we needed to cut gaps in all the doorways using a multitool.
There's a lot to consider when laying boards. They look better laid in a 'random' pattern so it's important to work out exactly where board lengths will meet in each row, to avoid any joints being too close together or looking too uniform.
The landing floor slowly taking shape.
The boards that we we had chosen were unfinished oak - i.e., bare wood with no oil, lacquer or any other protective treatment. The problem was, the supplier didn't have quite enough unfinished oak for us to cover the whole of our floor, so as part of our discount, they supplied us with a batch of pre-oiled boards to make up the shortfall. Although made by the same manufacturer and identical in size, these would need to be sanded down to remove the oil coating in order to get them to match the appearance of our boards. More work... but worth it considering how much money we were saving.
Because the pre-oiled boards needed to be sanded, we used them mainly for areas such as wall edges, that would be cut down in width. It made sense as a narrower board was quicker to sand down than a full width one. This L-shaped section was used at the entry to the main bedroom...
... and here it is fitted in place next to the wall.
With the main part of the landing complete, we turned our attention to the area at the top of the stairs. Here's the first board cut ready to fit...
... and here it is screwed in place.
We wanted the transition from the oak stairs to the oak flooring to be as smooth and seamless as possible. The stairs had been designed so that the top step should butt right up against the floor boards with no difference in height.
As ever, before gluing any boards down, we first laid them in position to make sure everything was going to fit.
The adhesive was messy stuff so we had to be careful not to get any on the boards or the freshly-painted walls.
The cardboard packing provided a temporary walkway to protect the new boards. The unfinished oak would not be fully protected until we had applied treatment (and we wouldn't be doing that until we'd finished laying all the boards).
The reason we had chosen to use unfinished oak boards was primarily to try and match the unfinished oak of the staircase.
We also wanted to avoid ending up with oak that looked too orange; we'd seen a lot of pre-oiled oak boards that looked more like pine (presumably because the manufacturers used cheapo oils and lacquers).
The transition from the top step to the landing floor worked out really well. It was perfectly level and we worked hard to make sure there was a neat edge where the boards met the step. The unfinished oak was a good match in colour and once they are both oiled, it should make the stairs and floor look completely unified.
No comments :
Post a Comment