Upstairs bathroom flooring ideas - access to pipes?

[hotbadger]

Hi

We are going to redo an upstairs bathroom. It is a very old house so has wooden floorboards (currently painted white) with large gaps between and a fair bit of damage from over the years.

Under the floor we have a lot of electrics and a main gas pipe as below is our electric/gas cupboard.

I would consider tiling the floor but my concern is any problem with gas or electric may then mean we have to rip up our tiled floor? Am I being over cautious ? do most people lay permenant over these things and just deal with it if it ever needs to come up for maintenance?

Would love your thoughts on this.... What other option is there? e.g. a tighter floorboard or? We want to stay high end so don't really want to use vinyl etc.

Thanks in advance!

 

[crazydaze]

It's a dilemma that only you can answer, if access is most important, then tiling etc will be a no-no.

 

[hotbadger]

Don't know if I am putting too much emphasis on access. Do most people just take the gamble that they don't need to take a floor up, or do most people not have pipes and such under tiled floors?!

 

[crazydaze]

Most people don't consider it, and worry about it if they need access.

The number of tiled floors in upstairs bathrooms with underfloor heating systems suprises me for example.

 

[Burnerman]

I have this running battle with 'er indoors too.....a compromise - sort of - is to use laminate flooring so the destruction if required isn't so drastic!
John

 

[foxhole]

If you had to consider access for everting in the home you would have no floor coverings, tiles are fine , keep a few spares if you must.You could always access from below if 1st floor, plasterboard is cheaper than a retile.

 

[hotbadger]

Thanks all -

managed to reach a compromise, we're going to try using pine slivers to fill the gaps in the boards, then sand and seal/paint.

Obviously still creates a mess if we get a good finish then need to lift the floor, but at least I feel better about it

 

[geraldthehamster]

When I re-did our bathroom, I removed the old, tatty floorboards and replaced them with 8 inch tongue-and-groove pine boards that had been re-sawn from old beams. Similar to the pitch pine (even nicer) boards we used in the bedroom, but less expensive.

I arranged all the under floor pipe work so it could be accessed from under one of two boards, and removed the relevant tongues to make these boards removable. I fixed the boards to the joists with brass slot screws, which I think look fine, and you can't see which are the removable boards, as all are fixed the same. Finished with three coats of Ronseal Mattcoat polyeurethane varnish.

If that helps. You could also do this with oak, if that is not high end enough.

Cheers
Richard