Solid Wood Flooring in Nottingham

Nottingham has a surprising amount of original floor still in place, because a quarter of its houses predate the inter-war estates, and in The Park that floor is protected: restoring it is the first solid-wood job, replacing it the second. A new Windsor board goes into the Edwardian houses of Mapperley Park and West Bridgford, tongue and groove over the joists or a plywood deck, once the timber has spent time in the room and the void below has been checked.

It is an owner’s floor in a city where nearly a third of households rent privately and Lenton and Dunkirk are let to students by the street. A landlord does not need a board that is sanded and refinished across decades; the engineered range does that job at a lower cost, and it is also what the slab of a Clifton estate house and the heated screed at Trent Basin require, since a solid board is the wrong construction over either.

With semi-detached houses at 33% of the Nottingham stock, the common layout in Nottingham is a timber front room and a concrete kitchen. Solid oak suits the first and not the second: it is fixed to timber, not to a slab, and it should stop at the door to the extension. Where the whole ground floor is concrete, an engineered board is the honest recommendation, and the guide linked below says why.

Terraced houses are 27% of the homes in the Nottingham district, and a terrace is where solid oak is at home: the original floor was solid timber on joists, and a new solid board is fixed the same way, nailed or screwed through the tongue into the joists or a ply overlay. The 90 mm Windsor Narrow boards suit the proportions of a terraced front room. What the terrace needs first is a dry, ventilated void underneath, because solid timber follows the moisture of the air around it.