Flooring options

Been looking around at what flooring options there are here, its pretty limited, but I'm sure I could order something from elsewhere.

I have a house with very damaged baltic floors. Some are worn so badly there are noticable dips in the floor (in doorways etc), others have no tongue and groove so they dip badly when you stand on them, and a few are termite damaged (house has been treated). Previous owner put masonite over the termite damaged ones, and a couple boards have been replaced with new pine boards. The baltic boards aren't polished or even sealed, and in one room they are painted black. Other than the odd broken board the floors seem pretty solid and level, no bouncing, squeaking or other weirdness (I jumped up and down in any corners that looked really bad and didn't go through, yay)

I'm planning to replace the kitchen floor (which has actual large holes in it) with the particleboard stuff that has a plastic tongue and groove down one side which looks like it will cost about $300 for that room, and lay vinyl as some of that room is cement, complete with ancient grey and red lino squares madly peeling off. Plan to replace the 3xbedroom and loungeroom floors with ordinary pine tongue-and-groove boards and coat them with polyurethane - I haven't priced this option yet, last time I did it was about 8 years ago and it was pretty cheap back then. We've been told to jack up any of the joists that aren't level with scraps of cement sheeting, and if any are too damaged to replace them with c-channel beams.

Are there any options besides just ripping the baltic out and replacing with pine that I don't know about, or any other considerations?
 
Seems a pity to destroy a nice old floor like that. Are there not other alternatives? Can you replace some of the boards with Baltic even if you have to get them run up at a joiners. The ones that dip may possibly be fixed by placing a noggin across your floor Joists underneath. All sanded and polished the Baltic looks quite nice. Radiata Pine to me looks cheap and relatively speaking is cheap.

If your looking to value add maybe a timber floating floor (if the Baltic is too far gone) depends what you plan to do with the place. If its a rental then carpet might be the cheapest option and it still looks good.

Just some ideas:)
 
Seems a pity to destroy a nice old floor like that. Are there not other alternatives? Can you replace some of the boards with Baltic even if you have to get them run up at a joiners. The ones that dip may possibly be fixed by placing a noggin across your floor Joists underneath. All sanded and polished the Baltic looks quite nice. Radiata Pine to me looks cheap and relatively speaking is cheap.

If your looking to value add maybe a timber floating floor (if the Baltic is too far gone) depends what you plan to do with the place. If its a rental then carpet might be the cheapest option and it still looks good.

Just some ideas:)

I agree...if the substate is solid enough, the easiest thing to do is to install a floating timber floor over the existing. If you want to do it even cheaper, you can go the floating laminate floor (perfect for rentals as its pretty tough)
Personally Im not a fan of pine as it is way too soft for a flooring material IMHO, and termites will go out of their way to eat it if not treated from the start (it's their equivalent to chocolate!!:D) but each to their own.

Hope this helps...

Boods
 
I had an old house years ago with floors virtually identical to the ones in this house, the baltic in one room came up nice but one room was like parts of this house - trashed, had to be replaced. It had masonite in the bad room too. One room turned out to be jarrah under the paint ... lovely.

Since pine isn't getting favourable comments here, I guess another option is to take up the floor in the most damaged room/s (one has masonite in and the other has quite a few replaced unmatched boards) and use any good boards to do a matched repair in the other rooms as at least the timber would polish up the same colour. Then I could do particleboard and carpet in the other two rooms. They are the master and third bedroom so carpet would be fine, I wouldn't do that in the lounge. Unfortunately there are no salvage yards out here or I'd consider going out and looking for old baltic to repair all the damage.

I guess this option is dependant on how many boards are damaged in the bedrooms, we can't get in there to pull up the masonite for another fortnight. I don't know the age of the house - it is newer than mine but would still be around the 100yo mark. It amazes me there is still floor left after 100 years.

ETA: that bamboo website says they can go right over joists, they don't need a subfloor.
 
The IP with the dodgy floors is in a town where one of the major industries is forestry - pinus radiata. I think that tells us what any floorboards I buy locally will be made from :)
 
No termites in Tassie mate.

I found this on Mr Google. Always new things to learn. Forgive my ignorance Battle On.

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"You have just taught me something. I had seen termites in the wild, but did not realise that the species of termite found in Tasmania is a very primitive one of the genus Stolotermes. These termites are only found in wet wood, so they are far more likely to be found in rainforests, rather than timber used in building.

I cannot find any evidence to suggest the lack of economically damaging termites is strictly due to quarantine controls though, and my guess would be the climate is not suited to our northern termites. I have just been looking at a range of scientific papers, and they all agree that Tasmanian termites do not live in houses."
 
No worries replicarockstar we are all here to learn and gather as much info as we can. Tassie is blessed with the fact there are no Termites (in buildings) and pest inspections is usually a cost we dont need to bear.

The Radiata Pine is as you say a soft wood but so is Baltic,Western Red Cedar and many others used in construction. A good quality polyurethane would give this a hard finish that would last a long time. I have used all three timbers in my PPOR construction in diferent ways and they are all very good.

My favorite would have to be the Jarrah Kitchen though looks a treat and tough. :)
 
A good quality polyurethane would give this a hard finish that would last a long time.

Hubby's first house had pine floors, lovely six inch wide pine (not sure what species but don't think it was radiata). It had a tough polyurethane finish, but after his house warming party, we were wondering what all the little dents were, especially in the kitchen. Took us a while to realise it was stiletto heel dents, all over the house, but the kitchen floor looked like the surface of the moon.

My mum has an IP with cypress pine floors, which I personally don't like, as they look very "busy" with all the dark knots, but they are good from the termite point of view. Termites don't like them, apparently.
 
Yes Wylie this can tend to happen when you have the equivalent of 3 bags of cement strapped to a couple of 4" nails bouncing around on your floors, even seen this on hardwood floors, little dings in them everywhere.

Personally I dont go much on timber floors they look good but are noisy and higher maintanence than most other products but as RumpledElf already had them its seems a pity to lose the effect.

Let us know what you decide Elf

Cheers
 
Well I can safely say they aren't going to turn into cement floors overnight. Someone has done this to my PPoR in the past and they did an awful job.

I'll get the tradie we usually use and a 'proper' floor polishing company out to have a looksee (which could take a while out here), and if they run screaming I'll know the floors are *really* buggered. If I strike it lucky and get a roaming floor company they may be able to pick up some old baltic in an Adelaide salvage yard, a lot of companies travel out here whenever they have a batch of jobs, but won't come out for just one so they make you wait.

This house is in such a neglected state it is going to clean up really, really nicely no matter what we do to it, it is structurally solid but the kitchen is a few notches below repugnant and the rest of the house obviously hasn't been touched since the early 80s (bathroom is quite good but all the trim is blue and the laundry is a kind of dark electric green). One room actually has no ceiling light in it :confused:

I will remember to paint the chipped aqua walls beige BEFORE doing the floors :cool:
 
I'd love to see some pics of this house Rumpled. We've spent the last 9 months rebuilding an almost too far gone timber house. Nearly $200k later we are almost finished. I've been meaning to post a thread about it for the past year but I never know where to begin. :eek::eek:

Replacing boards works fine. PM me if you want more details about how we went about it. Also, you can put down an overlay floor of 13mm t & g boards right over the top of the old boards if you prefer. You can secret nail this. If you look around you can get some good prices for mixed aussie hardwoods, from memory, a sawmill out past Ipswich mills it.

We always use wattyl 7008 estapol (2 pack) on floors as it lasts for ever. It is very high gloss and though they say you can't add a satin agent, we have done so successfully using an acrylic satin agent at about 8%.

Good Luck
Louise
 
Ok, we've taken proper stock of the house, got measurements etc, when I've drawn up a floor plan I'll be taking photos and putting down a wiring plan - all easier for getting quotes. Quite striking how much smaller this house is than ours, I'm used to all rooms being well over 4m wide, suddenly measuring rooms at a mere 1.7 (laundry) or 3.2 wide is a shock to the system lol

Options at the moment look like:

Master bedroom floors (mix of pine, baltic, masonite and thin air) come up, replaced entirely with chipboard and carpeted.

Second bedroom floors either polished or carpeted, there is one board with a big 'spinter' of wood pulled off in the centre but floor is otherwise good. Not sure if we could stick the 'splinter' back on, it is about 4 foot long, 3cm wide and 1cm thick but still in the room.

Third bedroom I thought had masonite over the boards, on closer inspection it has been fully replaced with structural thickness masonite and is actually fine as is, just needs carpet.

Lounge floor has a big patch replaced with masonite and a few dodgy boards, hopefully enough comes out of the master bedroom to be able to replace those and polish it.

Kitchen floor is lower than the concrete hallway by about the thickness of the particle board flooring sheets so we'll probably just clean up the floor and go over the boards so the whole room is level, the only 'damage' in there is a truly repugnant layer of lino and a large hole where the oven was, I really don't want to know how they put that hole in there. Took down the (hideous orange) curtain and the layer of soot coating the (very high gloss beige) walls and (also very high gloss beige) ceiling is a sight to behold.

Going through the house with a fine tooth comb there is actually a lot less work than first appeared, but things like removing the back verandah could get costly because the verandah joists are absolutely riddled with wiring and plumbing, and there's one tap on the vacant half of the block (like, in the middle of nowhere, wtf?). And most of the powerpoints are installed upside down, and one room has a light switch but no light, I think we're going to have some 'fun' when we get the power connected next week.

We're there on Monday to get a quote on polishing/carpet/vinyl - assuming the floors are repaired as the local floor guy doesn't do repairs - and to get some advice so I'll take a bunch of slightly better photos than my previous batch and post them then :) The colour scheme in the house is fantastically bad. Aqua, sky blue, bright green, orange and gloss beige. There are only 3 internal swing doors in the entire house and two need replacing. But it looks like the house will be really nice when it is done.

I still think the receptionist who just gave me the keys to the house without asking what I wanted or who I was was hilarious. She's gotta be a lurker on here or just psychic, she asked "so, are you going to put another house on the empty half?"
 
Floor quote came back as "rip the lot up and put in carpet" so no baltic floors for us. Apparently the house is "much cleaner" since the druggies moved out :)

The kitchen was recommended to just repair the hole, put sheeting over the top so its flat and smooth and then put down vinyl. We're still trying to work out what caused the hole, it looks burnt. Thinking maybe someone spilt boiling oil or something else on fire on the floor.

Turns out the two joists on the damaged side of the house are completely eaten away so those need replacing too, but that's no biggie, we were expecting that. The joists sit on little limestone sub-floor walls. Now we've been poking around in there there's holes in the floor everywhere instead of just one in the kitchen lol

Not every day you get to buy a house sans floors ...
 
Much googling later, what do you guys think of something like Boral's Evolution Floorwood, just coated with polyurethane as a flooring option? Would look 'interesting' and be easier to work with than bamboo. Could do the entire house with it too, and not need to carpet the rooms that have baltic and hardboard.
 
Ok, finally can finish this thread off (since noone had any really useful comments on flooring)

Local builder's hardware store recommended termite treated "structure floor" which is plywood, can be used bare (he'd used it bare before in a shop) and looks like cork when its coated. Grand total cost of about $14 a square metre plus polyurethane plus any joists we need to replace. Suits me just fine, that's about $1500 for the ENTIRE HOUSE :D

Basically I'm going for the processed timber equivalent of a polished and sealed concrete slab.
 
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