Restoring wood block floor

Hi. Can anybody help me. I am in the process of buying a house. I am pretty sure that under the carpets on the ground floor there is original wood block flooring. The present owner tells me that the wood block was skimmed before laying the carpets but hasn't told me what materials were used. I think it may be concrete. (contracts haven't been signed yet so I can't go in and start ripping up carpets to see for myself !)

I would love to restore the floors to their original glory. I am a complete novice in DIY but am willing to put a lot of effort into it. I am trying to find out how difficult it would be to restore wood block that has been skimmed before I set my heart on carrying out the work.

Thanks for any help or advice.

If the floor has been screeded over, or some form of self-levelling compound has been used, I wouldn't set your heart on being able to recover the wood block flooring underneath without an enormous amount of work, which could involve taking up all the wood, cleaning it off and relaying it.

And if the wood was covered up, it's likely that this was done because it was in poor condition; depending on how well the work was done, the screed you have now may not be very stable with such a substrate.

You could experiment by tackling a small area and seeing how you get on.

If you do manage to expose the wood blocks from underneath the screed/concrete, this guide might help you bringing back the wood floor to its original lustre.

xerxes and woodyoulike

Thank you for your prompt response. I am hoping that the wood block was covered because of fashion rather than the poor state of the floor. If the sale goes ahead we will be lifting the carpets anyway to replace, so we will see what we find then. I will make further enquiries as to what might have been put under the carpet to level the floor. It is very disappointing as other houses in the same street have lovely wood block floors. I would love to be able to restore what was obviously an original feature, I just wasn't sure how easy that would be or how much damage screeding will have caused.

It's early days so watch this space.................