Floorboards

Wood is like wine – it matures and improves with age. If you live in an old house and have the original floorboards in good shape – you are lucky. There is nothing more beautiful than old, good–quality floor boards or an old parquet floor. Old floorboards fit or complement any design style, or can be the main feature in an interior. Maintenance is easy – it only needs regular vacuum cleaning and the occasional mop-up. If you spill something you just wipe it off with damp cloth. Long term maintenance isn’t that hard either – every five years or so they should be sanded and sealed with a good quality varnish..

If some of your original floorboards are damaged – you don’t need to give up on the floor and cover it with carpet. Look for similar floorboards in a few salvage yards – you’ll find the common ones very easily. Then use the recycled pieces in place of your damaged board. If the colours are different, sand down all the boards and varnish them.

Old floorboards tend to have been nailed into the joist underneath. Before you sand and varnish your floor make sure these nails are properly knocked in!

If you don’t like the colour of your old floorboards you can stain or paint them to the desired colour – remember that old floorboards are not tongue and groove, so if you paint them or limewash them – you’ll see a dark gap between the boards. If you don’t want this effect, you’ll have to take up every board and paint the sides too!! It’s very trendy now to stain old floorboards with walnut/ebony stain – this look might be fashionable now but it could be unfashionable in two years time. So if you’re into style – only use fashionable stains and paints if you’re prepared to sand down the floorboards in a couple of years. (Remember: sanding is dusty!) Also, if you paint the floorboards white – they’ll need to be repainted soon. If you use solvent-based paint, it will get yellow. If you use acrylic paint – it will get worn in a couple of years (couple of weeks… more likely).

If you’re lucky enough to have the original floorboards in a good state – I think you should leave it natural and let it mature further. Only stain/paint them if they need to be repaired or changed. But if you decide to re-stain or varnish your floor, don’t just buy a stain and/or varnish you like in the shops. First get a couple of sample pots and try them out – on your floorboards. They will look different on your floorboards to other pieces of wood. Don’t forget to put varnish on top of the stain – as it will slightly change the colour of it. In fact the varnish will make the wood (whether it’s stained or not) look slightly yellow, but this will settle in a couple of months time.

In the next article you can read about  wooden flooring. Or read about – wood floors or read about laminated wood floors