Flooring is down!

We have now reached the monumental moment where we can get out of bed, go downstairs, through the living room and into the kitchen without having to put shoes or slippers on!

Break out the bunting this has been a long time coming! 

If you follow me on Instagram (@itsagreenhouse) you may have seen my excitable video tour of our different flooring options, but there is a bit more detail on our choices, the cost and the installation.

The kitchen was the first room to get flooring down - tiles and underfloor heating installation and why we chose these tiles for the kitchen are all covered here. However I realise I didn't actually go into the cost of the tiles (only the underfloor heating).

The tiles in here were actually on clearance so we stocked up and got enough for the hall and downstairs loo too - they were £10 per pack which covers 1 square metre. We over purchased as they are on clearance so we didn't want them to be discontinued, so we spent about £100 on the tiles for the kitchen, then went back and got a few more packs for the toilet and small hallway area outside it. I actually can't see them online anymore (except in beige which is out of stock) so I am glad we stocked up.

Second to go in (months later) was carpets in the bedroom, landing and stairs. We got both from a local carpet shop, The Carpet Hut for anyone local, and they fitted them too.

Wool was out of the question (I'm vegan) so we were looking at synthetic materials. We didn't want a flat weave or a looped thread as have had them in previous rentals and found that they pulled and snagged really easily, especially in high traffic areas like stairs and especially on pet claws.

We went for a light grey on the stairs, and its a reasonably low pile, bleach cleanable, practical carpet. We were tempted to go darker to hide any marks but as the stairs are quite dark and enclosed we kept it light. As it can be cleaned with bleach though it should be ok to get it back clean if it does start to look grubby, I can just give it a good vax if it needs be.

For the bedroom we went with a slightly darker and slightly more plush carpet, you can feel the difference as you walk from one to the other, as we wanted a more luxe feeling for the bedroom. We also thought this room could have a slightly darker colour to go with the darker walls. Its actually more silvery in a large space than it looked on the tester in the shop, which makes it a little more bright and interesting than a flat grey. This can also be cleaned with bleach although shouldn't need it so much as the stairs as its not a high foot traffic area.

The fitting was reasonably painless, they just came and fitted them in one day. We haven't got flooring in the spare room yet but will get that joined up to the hall carpet when we do. They also fitted an off cut into the built in wardrobe for us which was really nice, as we hadn't included that in the measurements but they just offered to do it on the day. It really finishes off the wardrobe nicely.

Both carpets cost us around £700 with fitting and underlay. This seemed reasonable as we had shopped around before and got similar quotes.

Last to go down was the laminate in the living room, hallway and porch. We did this ourselves and although it came out ok it was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. 

Firstly we started it the wrong way round, we just placed the first board the wrong way so we were clipping the joins under rather than just laying the next piece on top. We got a few lines in and realised our mistake and had to take it all up and start again. We put down a damp proof membrane and then insulating panels underneath first to keep the rooms as warm and energy efficient as possible. 

Luckily the living room is a pretty regular shape except for the fireplace and is exactly 3 boards across so we had hardly any wastage to begin with! We had a little more as we got into the hallway and porch and all the doorways but it wasn't too bad. We picked a regular pattern to keep things simple measuring wise, we just staggered the joins halfway across each time.

Instead of trying to cut around the door frames (well, we tried, it looked absolutely terrible and we didn't have the skill or equipment to make it look any better) we took the bottoms off the door surrounds off and tucked the laminate underneath. We plan on replacing all the doors and surrounds soon-ish so will get these joins all sorted out then (by a professional who knows what they are doing) so this is just so they look semi decent for now. They will probably tell us we have done it all wrong! We also will need to put all the skirting boards back down, as in the rest of the house, it had 3 different types of skirting in just the living room originally - two different wood styles and some original tiles!

We will put strips of quarter round or edging around the fireplace and in the hallway where it joins the stairs. 

This was a reasonably do-able DIY job but was nowhere near as easy as we thought it would be (I suggested it as I thought it would be super easy just click it into place and voila...no its not). The boards took more wrangling, aligning, some were chipped or scratched, some just didn't f*&%king fit, some kept coming un clipped....basically it was a faff. It would have helped to have more days when two of us were working on it as the one day we did have it went a lot quicker with one of us cutting and one of us fitting, and having two people to push in the awkward ones. 

It got done though and looks fine, I just wasn't really prepared for it to take as long as it did and if I had known I would have been prepared to maybe pay the couple of hundred quid to have them fitted...maybe, I don't know.

All in all for our living room, hall and porch we paid about £400 for the entire flooring, including the damp proof membrane and the insulation for underneath and the spacers for around the edge. We went for the chestnut B&Q colours own brand ones, which were around £13 a box (£10 or £11 per square metre). We looked at oak as we have that on the kitchen worktops but it looked a little too orange for us and slightly dark, the living room and hallway don't get the most light so we went for this slightly lighter colour to keep it looking brighter. I really like the colour, its neutral without being too bland and warm without being too dark.

This range has now been discontinued and Tom had to drive to Kidderminster for the last box to finish off the porch. Its not been a good time all in all doing this floor! We do have a couple of boxes in the loft now thought in case of any replacements.

We also got the downstairs loo and hallway done while the bathroom was being tiled (more on that in this post). We went with the same tiles as in the kitchen so that it ties those small areas in and they it doesn't feel so choppy having 3 different floors in a 1 metre square area!

The lighter floors also help brighten up these smaller areas too, we will eventually remove the wall tiles and repaint in here so it will be a bit lighter. I think keeping only two flooring styles in the downstairs helps the rooms flow quite nicely, as we have two larger rooms which both have smaller rooms and corridors off them. Having thresholds and different flooring in each room would make them visually seem more divided and small.

The bathroom has now also been tiled where I go into in detail in last weeks post, this is also a darker grey or charcoal colour to tie in with the carpets upstairs.

All that is left now for flooring is the spare room and the utility, but both need some work doing to them first so that may be a little way away. Tom has next week off and his mission is to do the skirting boards so hopefully we will have the flooring looking a little tidier then! Its just so nice to have flooring rather than bare floorboards, concrete or old laminate!