Reclaimed floorboards or distressed new ones

[jollyboy]

3 rooms with pine floorboards: hallway, lounge, kids' room. The hallway and kids' room seem to have original boards (or nice ones anyway), while the boards in the lounge are more recent, and really shoddy (variable widths, someone's cut through a load of them in a line, some split, etc). We want to pull up the boards in the lounge and replace them. And we want them to look like the boards in the other rooms.

Do we use reclaimed boards? We're thinking reclaimed will be better for looking the same (assuming we get the right varnish), but then we'll have extra holes (assuming original holes don't line up with joists). The main problem, though, is all of the boards in the other rooms span the entire width of the rooms (4m+ some of them), and the reclaimed yards I've spoken to say their boards aren't that long. Which means the lounge would be the only room with joins.

If we use new floorboards, there's the problem of distressing them, but the main difficulty seems to be I can't find floorboards which aren't tongue and groove on sale anywhere. And I'm not sure I can get them long enough either.

Anyone got any ideas on what my chance are of getting boards over 3.6m long without tongues and grooves? Cheers.

 

[big-all]

heeelllooo and welcome jollyboy

you can easily get floorboards 5m+from your woodyard or timber merchants
to use full boards you need to remove at least the end skirting and probably have to pass the cut to length boards through a window

dont bother trying to match colours just go for different as they are different

 

[geraldthehamster]

You can buy boards that have been newly sawn from old beams - so, new boards with no holes, in old timber. I have done a bedroom in pitch pine, and a bathroom in pine. My boards came from here:

http://www.reclaimedfloorboardsuk.co.uk/

They will supply T&G or plain, in several widths. There are doubtless other suppliers as well.

I doubt you will get all the boards 3.6m long. However, I would be surprised if all the boards were that long to start with; it's normal to have a few joins. And if your existing boards have been cut, this was presumably to install wiring or plumbing to which you might need access in the future. So maybe consider a few strategically place joins.

It's also worth considering insulating under the floor, if you're taking it all up.

Cheers
Richard

 

[jollyboy]

Thanks for the replies. Good points. I think we're going to take the reclaimed option and not worrying too much about having joins. It's more important to the other half that the boards look the same as the other rooms, and she thinks it'll be easier if we get some reclaimed boards.

When it comes to insulating, can we do that? I thought we had to allow for ventilation?

Cheers.

 

[geraldthehamster]

When it comes to insulating, can we do that? I thought we had to allow for ventilation?

Cheers.

Search for "suspended floor" and "insulation" in these forums.

Assuming you have a suspended timber floor with a ventilated void underneath, you can insulate between the joists while making sure to allow free ventilation underneath, from the air bricks. The tidiest way to do it is with Celotex insulation boards, fixed to the joists with expanding foam (as I did). the less expensive way is to use rock wool insulation, suspended on chicken wire or similiar.

Cheers
Richard