Walnut or beech? Solid wood floor or engineered flooring?
Your Ideal Home

We are moving into our new house and we can't make our mind about the colour of our kitchen :S I love walnut but we don't know if it looks too dark. If you were buying a second-hand house with fitted kitchen, would you prefer a walnut kitchen or a beech colour? Also, we've been told that we can't have solid wood floors over concrete slabs, but most new houses now have concrete slabs!!! So none of the new houses will be able to have solid wood?? that doesn't seem right, any experience about it?

I recently put walnut in a Kitchen Living room, it was a laminate but looked very well. You should have no problem laying a solidwood floor in a standard construction for a new home. You need to have a proper underlay and space around the wall for movement etc. We went for a White Kitchen with Walnut Counter top and Walnut Door handles and Moulding. Overall it looks very well. Much happier than any other choice of timber.

Thanks,

Lisa

Thanks Lisa :)

I think walnut has so much character because of its colour. I just want a look for the kitchen that, is not traditional but it will not look totally out of place in 5 years. Regarding the solid wood flooring..... does anyone know the difference between engineered floors and semi solid? I have read so much information and some website just left me even more confused!!

Solid wood is flooring that is completely wood throughout generally abotu 18mm. Semi solid or engineered has about 1/3 of the board solid wood approx 6 mm. The rest of the board is made from manmade material. Engineered flooring can be more stable and not a prone to movement.

Other differences: Laminated flooring cannot be sanded. Semi solid and solid can be sanded back. Also you can buy these unfinished or prefinished. In my experience the prefinished, saves a lot of effort, sanding etc. People often go for solid or semi solid so that they can sand it again in a few years, but I have not seen many people ever do this. Have alook at these websites

From American

http://www.woodfloors.org/consumer/
http://www.hardwood.org/

Within Ireland

http://www.irishhardwoods.com/
http://www.keenm.com/
http://www.bearfoot.ie

From UK

http://www.floors2go.co.uk/
http://www.flooringsupplies.co.uk

Good Website with floor planner software: http://www.karndean.com/intro1.asp

The Above is a list that i found useful in the past and may save you a bit of time searching around.

Thanks,

Lisa

Here are two Images you can have a look at for some ideas

http://i2.tinypic.com/snnyq0.jpg

http://i2.tinypic.com/snnz4p.jpg

A project that I worked on.

Lisa

Those are excellent links Lisa, thanks a lot :)

We were told that we couldn't install solid because of its height, it will be a big lip and uneven with other flooring (tiles) like our hall or kitchen. What would be normal for solid wood over concrete slab? 3/4" ??

18 to 24mm is normal size for flooring. There are also floor levelling compounds that can be got to bring up the level of the floor. But it shouldn't be too big a difference. Also another method if you have the height is to lay 8 x 4 sheets of plywood or OSB and then secret nail the flooring to these, The floor will be much firmer under foot and any movement issues can be accomodated for in the space left between each floor board. Problems occur if you want to join the floor to another floor level such as a Tiles etc. but it is worth investigating.

RM

Thanks Richard I think I wasn't clear enough. We are not planning to put wood flooring over tiles. It's a brand new house and doesn't have any flooring other than concrete. So I was just worried that if we put solid wood it might be too thick and then the transition from the living room (with solid wood) to the kitchen or hall (with tiles) , the height (level of the floor) would be too visible. That is one of the reason we were giving about why not to lay solid wood floor over concrete slab. They told us we could only use semi solid

The difference is hardly noticeable. We have one room in our house where we put OSB Board and then solid wood flooring down. There is a difference in the levels but this isn;t much of a problem. The solid feel of the floor is much better and it is a large room so there is no movement underfoot. We may consider doing the same in the hall and then this will bring the levels back to the same. I wouldn't worry about small differences in floor levels the only thing to consider that it doesn't affect the door openings in any way.

Thanks,

Richard

Richard: What did you use the OSB board for? I understand for what it's been told that I can put SOLID wood floor (not engineered or semi solid) over our concrete slab! I wonder why they told us we couldn't We were looking at more wood flooring this weekend. It's quite confusing. Some say that engineered and semi-solid are the same And others that are different! :S I saw the boards and to me they look different. Can someone offer some lightening on this??

We had a look at homebase wood flooring, I believe their prices are quite expensive, compare to specialized stores in hardwood. Just a comment :)

can anyone give any prices estimations please? thanks

Not to drag out an old subject but walnut floors will suck a lot of light out of a room - I was going to do the bottom of my house in walnut but since I have a long kitchen with a normal height ceiling, the walnut would have killed off a lot of the light bouncing around the room. The lighter a colour is, the more light it reflects - in my case I didn't have any direct light coming in to this part of the house so I went with an oak instead to maximise the natural light in the room. I've no idea what the layout of your place is but it's a consideration. Shame though, walnut is a beautiful looking wood.

Any suggestions for tile colourings in a kitchen area with the rest of the house having Black walnut laminate? After lots of pondering we have decided on the following colour see:

http://www.balterio.com/collection.php?cid=4&con=eu&lang=en

however Im unsure that I want it in the kitchen area. Looking for inspiration..

lisa ,get a good fitter /carpenter.you can put any floor you like down.the person who told you that you cant put a solid floor down on concrete does'nt know anything about flooring.they sell or lay laminated floors and that all their vocabulary stretches to.get your solid floor and get someone who knows what to do,and stick the wood directly to the floor with sika T 54 floor glue.do not nail to battens or osb/plywood,glue is by far the best.leave 10 -15 mm gap around the walls.skirting will hide this.ok ? 

lisa i was thinking about the glue again and the only thing about the glue is ,if you change your mind (as women are known to do from time to time)it is not easy to take timber up off the floor.it is pretty permanent.it would not be ideal if you had under ground pipes,but if you know what you want it is the stongest and longest lasting job and the timber will not spread ,leaving gaps in the joints.you can decide yourself but if you want to replace it in the near future use a floating floor on underlay.

Will glueing stop gaps forming between the joints in the boards. I haven't seen this done before and did think it was to common in Ireland.

Thanks,

Richard

We want to put down semi-solid (Walnut) wood flooring on concrete floors downstairs.  Problems is that the semi-solid that we have been advise as being better is rather expensive.  Would anyone be able to reccomend a less expensive alternative?

Also, we are a little concerned that the wood floor would make the house much colder than carpet, would this be the case?

Any comments would be much appreciated.

hi, what price were you being charged ?

semi solid floors in tullamore are around 18 euro per sq meter. i know dublin is about twice the price

regards malachy.

Thanks for your comment Malachy.  We decided to go for carpet.....the added exercise hoovering will do me good!

Have a listen to Bob the Builder, he knows what he is on about! You can lay almost any floor you like anywhere u like. You must prepare the substrate to accomadate whatever you are laying. Any advise I can give just ask!

Patrick

MESSAGE

I was also thinking of getiing a walnut floor downstairs - getting extension for kitchen/family room, am trying to decide on colours,  but if I go with white kitchen, walnut worktops and walnut flooring throughout, what colour doors should I go for?? Don't really like white doors but would anything else be too dark? Would appreciate anyones suggestions!

 

Hi anng, White doors only I'm afraid. If you start mixing other colours in, it may look to haphazard. You could also choose to use a white door with a toughened glass insert, put a manifestation (frosting) on the glass and it would look v good. Just make sure the glass is toughened and keep the "frame" or surrounding white painted section of the door to a minimum, say 50-70mm left and right and 100-150mm top and bottom. Hope this helps.