Parquet floors was incredibly common many years in the past but a great deal of it was covered up with carpets back in the 70’s. It seems crazy now that someone could cover the parquet floors with carpets, but that was the thing of the day and fashions come and go. I’ve recently refurbished a range of parquet floors by sanding them down and re-sealing them when old carpets ended up being lifted and they still preserve their charm.
You will discover different types of parquet floor one can get making use of different wood that supplies a somewhat different grain, color and texture. Naturally you must usually buy your parquet flooring from a reliable provider so that you’re going to be getting best quality. Your flooring will need to survive a number of years and you don’t want to waste the cash on installing it only to have to re-do the work later. In addition as wood ages it of course darkens so to try and match the coloring of lumber utilising new pieces is kind of challenging.
Parquet floors comes in tiles that are made up of the short strips you see. So these are not all laid individually but instead as a kind of tile that’s approximately 300mm x 300mm squares. It makes it significantly easier to lay and will result in a better completed solution because naturally there’s much less room for error in laying them. They are glued down on the surface by using a suitable glue. Yet again the surface has to be fully flat in order to achieve a fantastic quality result. If your ground isn’t flat, screed it initially to take away low and high areas first after which lay your floor.
The individual strips are typically laid perpendicular to each other to give it effect but some quite fascinating patterns may also be found including herringbone, triangles and inserts are also doable. Parquet flooring is very versatile and you can lay the tiles in just about any pattern you wish and the choices are limited only by your imagination.
For the budget concerned folk out there an alternative to buying new parquet flooring is to use second hand parquet flooring. I have seen many houses have their old parquet flooring ripped out and discarded. This timber is still sound as most of the older houses used good quality teak in their floors. With a little cleaning and sanding those parquet floor tiles can be made to look like new. Don’t discount the value of second hand tiles.
To finish the floor, you should sand it using the floor sander, fill any gaps with a suitable gap filler, sand again and then move up to finer grits remembering to sand into the corners with a smaller rotex style sander. A good quality polyurethane should be used either in mineral based or water based. Water based is of course more easily applied, less messy and one can apply multiple coats in the same day as it dries very quickly. Remember to sand lightly with a fine grit paper between coats to get rid of the hairs which stand up after applying coats. This will result in a smooth finish. The polyurethane comes in either high gloss, matt or satin. The choice is yours.
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