SPOILT FOR CHOICE WITH FLOORING
YOUR floor presents a huge area to the eye, and refreshing your floors can be a fast and economical way to improve the look and performance of a room. There are plenty of fast flooring choices for DIY enthusiasts, but the first thing to know is your limits. Weight, volume and installation challenges can make this a tough job. Generally, the more the flooring costs per square metre the more you should consider getting professional help. Bunging up a piece of inexpensive vinyl is one thing, but playing fast and loose with solid stone is a financial tragedy.
1. Well within the reach of a patient first timer.
2. Requires some laying out and more demanding tools.
3. Best left to DIY warriors and professional installers.
DIY Difficulty Level: 1 for small areas of sheet and 2 for tiling.
Advantages: Pliable, light and highly economic.
Pricing: From ā¬18 for standard vinyl and ā¬30 per sq m for a top branded product such as Amtico.
If you think vinyl is an old fashioned cheap or cheesy choice, think again. Flexible and reasonably easy to fit, vinyl is warmer than tile flooring while being tough, smooth and hygienic. It generally doesnāt suit under-floor heating or hot areas like conservatories where tiling may lift.
More expensive brands feature a layered construction, which give a cushioned comfortable durable bounce and aids noise reduction. Good quality vinyl is perfect for bathrooms and kitchens and high traffic areas that require tough waterproof flooring.
Vinyl sheet comes in widths of 2m, 3m or 4m and are 1.4mm to 3mm (0.05ā to 0.12ā) thick. The floor must be smooth and level for a good job. Tiles are best centred in the room and laying out takes rehearsal before sticking down. For a sheet leave a 100mm (4ā) edge of waster all around and when finished push out any bubbles with a soft broom. Vinyl planking is a breeze to fit and similar to laminates and some stay-flat sheeting does not require adhesive. Acclimatise any vinyl product for 48 hours before laying by putting the boxes in the intended room and warming the room slightly. Look for products with a non-repeating pattern and some depth of texture for grip. Choose linoleum products if you want an environmentally sound material in this family.
DIY Difficulty Level: 1-3.
Choose click together floating floors for your first time.
Advantages: A real wood top in veneer or solid flooring speaks āqualityā.
Pricing: ā¬27-ā¬45 per sq m for engineered wood; ā¬30-ā¬50 plus for solid flooring; and ā¬15-ā¬30 for synthetic laminates.
Wood flooring comes in a number of quick-fit solutions and with a little bravery and lots of preparation, is a suitable DIY adventure for limited areas. Where things do go wrong in laying the planks out, larger areas will show the blunder in cinemascope. Engineered wood floors have the chunky veneer of more expensive real wood set over a stable cross-ply core. They are easy to lay in single planks or grouped boards and now rival the handling simplicity of laminates with lock and lay systems widely available. Engineered wood can contract and expand to accommodate UFH but for high moisture areas stick to laminates to shrug off pooling water. Ensure you specify a floor with good waterproof (not just resistance) qualities.
With bevelled edges, aping a deep real wood floor, laminates donāt have to look like a second prize to real wood. āClickā laminate flooring that clips together or slips into engineered joins without even glue is easily within the range of any DIY enthusiast. Depending on the system, you can lay your wood floor or laminate on a concrete base layer with a self-levelling compound, foam, felt or plywood underlay. Buy 10% more flooring than you need to allow for cock-ups and replacements.
Cut your first boards to follow the contours of the wall for a straight job and mix and match planks from different boxes to vary tone and grain. Choose bamboo, parawood or cork (harder to find in this contracted market) for high environmental credentials and budget for trims, skirting and thresholds.
DIY Difficulty Level: 1-2 depending on project.
Advantages: Hardwearing, easy to lift, clean and replace in tiles.
Pricing: From ā¬25 per sq m for 20% wool-blend and polypropylene, to ā¬40 plus for top quality wool and synthetics with high stain resistance.
Roll carpet is heavy but if you have some help to lift and shift it into place and no joins to cope with, a small area is a reasonable prospect for DIY. For woven back (rather than felt), buy or hire a knee-kicker to get the carpet stretched over the grippers. Fit a good quality thick underlay whatever type of carpet you choose as it will extend the life of carpet. Larger areas, stairs (especially curving stairs), open weave sisal, jute and coir, and high-quality carpeting going over new-underlay are best left to a fitting deal with your supplier. Carpet tiles are tough contenders for high traffic areas, paws, boots, muck and other household vandalism. They are generally available in 100% polypropylene with a bitumen backing.
If you can handle some floor adhesive, a Stanley knife and a straight edge you are well set up to install carpet tiling and the same rules apply as for vinyl tiling. Look for arrows on the reverse of the tiles for the pile direction and experiment with a chequerboard or other cheeky patterns for children and family play spots. Butt tightly. Order 10%-15% more tiles to deal with stains.
DIY Difficulty Level: 2-3.
Advantages: Easy to clean, classy and can be repaired tile by tile.
Pricing: From ā¬10 per sq m, depending on product. Sales bargains always up for grabs.
Tile flooring requires a perfectly flat floor for application, so be prepared to use a levelling product or to install marine grade ply. Cutting is the death-knell for many homeowners tying to do it themselves with a cheap tile cutting kit. Budget for the hire of a professional grade tile-cutter and experiment on cheap left-overs before touching your porcelain investments. Heavy natural products that require sealing demand professional attention and the cost per metre will often outstrip the price of the tiles themselves.
For renovations and extensions, consider under-floor heating to turn acres of tile into toe-warming economical storage heaters. When calculating how many tiles you need, always add at least 10% for breaks. For simplicity and a grout-free job, try a laminated tile board, such as B&Qās TileLOC, ideal for the bathroom at ā¬20-ā¬26 per sq m.
