Engineered Wood Flooring in Nottingham

What the fitter finds under a Nottingham carpet depends on the decade the street was built. Sherwood, Mapperley and the Arboretum are Victorian and Edwardian, so it is boards on joists with a void beneath; Aspley, Bilborough and Clifton are inter-war and post-war estates on a slab. More than a quarter of the city’s houses are over a hundred years old, which tips the odds towards the first, and levelling is then the job before the floor.

An engineered oak board is the one product that suits both ground floors and the third one as well: the heated screed of Trent Basin, Pelham Waterside and Trent Bridge Quays, where the range is listed as compatible with the heating. In The Park and the Lace Market the original floor belongs to the conservation designation, and a new board laid over the old one, not in its place, is the answer that needs no consent. Wide Victorian and Weybridge planks suit West Bridgford; the narrower Ascot suits an NG5 terrace.

Semi-detached houses are the largest group in Nottingham, 33% of the Nottingham stock, and the typical semi has two ground floors in one: a suspended timber front room and a solid concrete kitchen or later extension. Engineered oak can run through both, floated on underlay over the timber and glued to the slab, so a knocked-through room reads as one floor. The join between the two bases is where the level is set, and it is worth checking before the boards are ordered.

Terraced houses make up 27% of the homes in the Nottingham district, and in Nottingham that usually means a suspended timber ground floor: boards over joists, a void underneath, and often a slope from front to back. An engineered board goes over that once the old boards are screwed down and levelled with a ply overlay; the cross-laminated core tolerates the small movement a suspended floor still makes, where a solid board would open at the joints. Order the acclimatisation time into the plan, not out of it.