Parquet Flooring in Sheffield

Parquet in Sheffield goes into the Edwardian reception rooms of Nether Edge and Broomhill, where the proportions carry a Marlow block laid in basketweave or brick bond, and increasingly into the fifties semis of Crosspool and Ecclesall, where the solid slab is the easiest base a block floor can be glued to once the damp-proof membrane has been checked and the surface ground flat.

A block floor needs a datum, and on a stepped Sheffield ground floor each level gets its own centre line rather than a pattern carried across the step. Over the heated screed at Gleadless Valley the block is the engineered Oxford construction. A Versailles panel needs a room broad enough to show several whole panels, which in Sheffield means a Dore or Ranmoor drawing room rather than a terrace front room.

Semi-detached houses are 38% of the homes in Sheffield, and the semi's knocked-through living room is the room most often floored in herringbone across Sheffield: a pattern floor gives a long room a centre. Set out from the middle of the room, not from a wall, and where the room crosses from timber onto the concrete of an extension the two bases are levelled to each other first, because a glued pattern shows every step in the base.

Terraced houses are 26% of the Sheffield stock, and a terraced hallway is where a herringbone floor earns its reputation: the pattern leads the eye down a narrow space and makes it read longer. The base is the work. A pattern floor is glued, so the old suspended boards are overlaid with ply, screwed down and levelled; the 90 x 450 mm Oxford blocks suit the proportions of a terrace better than the 125 x 600 mm ones.