New house help

[scorpio stu]

Hello all,
Just need a bit of advice really.
We have just been to see a house that in parts is around 300yrs old.In the lounge and dinning room there are floorboards that are double width (presume because of the age of the house) and they are curled up on the outside edges.Is this just because of the age or could it be that there is damp underneath them ?
Unfortunately the owner lives abroad and have only spoken to the tenant who is not aware of any problems.
Any ideas,also if parts of the house are that old should it be listed as it's not.
Cheers

 

[chessspy]

Hi, scorpio,
boards curl due to the way they were cut from the tree, the wood butchers will queue up to explain that.
If you are contemplaiting buying a 300 year old house, you have to look at it as a kind of marriage, rather than a simple buy.
At first you will discover new pleasures, but as you become more used to each other there will be ups and downs, and you never get as much oral as when you were courting..(sorry, perhaps that's just me )

 

[scorpio stu]

A very good analagy chesspy !
take it you don't think its a problem with the boards then ?

 

[chessspy]

Hi, Stu,
I suppose you should pull one up and 'ave a gander.
I'm a brickie by trade, so my experience of these matters is slight.
however 300 years is a long time and you can't apply modern building standards to houses built shortly after Sammy Pepys was writing about the Backgammon tables, (set) given him by King Henry the eighth.
The Cpockrill family, (Sammy's descendants ) donated a, 19c Indian chess set to the museum of London along with the tables in the mistaken impression that they, (the chesspieces) were 17c also.
That is how we come to be saddled with an Indian chess set design called Pepys style, see,
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/chessspy/PepysSets
However that is all irrelevant to your problem, I should say that if there were a serious problem with damp and the attendant infestations you would be aware of it by now.