Love Your Little Home: Clever Flooring

This is part of our Love your little home series. 

Part 3 - Clever Flooring 

When we were deciding on the floor to have in our extension, we really wanted a floor that would flow through the whole house. And we really wanted wood! I needed about 47 square metres, but the price reduced it you bought 50m, so I did. The extra 3m have come in for shelves, skirting and even used the off-cuts for a jigsaw to play with Raph. What a useful material. It is really hard wearing, but I much prefer it to tiles. If you drop something on it, it does crack, and if it wears out, you can sand it all back and start again. It's a floor that really moves with the house and gives unheated warmth and nicer sound proofing than tiles too.

When we moved into our house on our wedding night, all our floors were unsanded. When we were on our honeymoon, my family, as a present, sanded down all of our upstairs floors. They looked fantastic and were like this for the last 6 years. However, for the last 2 years Emily has been trying to persuade me that we should paint them white. I was reluctant, only due to the maintenance issue with white and because I've seen badly painted white floors that chip and look rubbish. 

So, I decided to research it, lightly sanded the skirting and found a Ronseal diamond floor paint which leaves a really nice, not too shiny finish and goes on so easily with a roller. With a couple of undercoats and about 6 coats of paint, I was pretty much happy with it. We also painted the wooden stairs up to our attic bedroom and they look fantastic.

It does take work to keep clean, but it adds a ridiculous amount of light to our upstairs rooms which is amazing to just admire. It is also really useful for Emily to take photos everyday.

When my parents changed the floor in their house, they took up the 80 year old pine floor boards carefully, made a table for their garden and gave us the remaining boards, still attached to the joists. I made a couple of 'X' housing joint legs, attached them, put a 12mm bar through it and this is now our dining table. That is the beauty of working with really good quality materials. Treated with care, Clever flooring really can make such a difference.

Rob