And the winner is..............

Traditional method, un-finished timber floors.............

After much research and the fact that the floor needs to be laid before the doorjambs and skirting have been installed, we have decided to go the raw timber floors.
The reason for this is that they will be sanded and polished after handover and hopefully the tradesmen won't do any serious damage to the floor, and it's only scratched a little and can be sanded out.

I am very anxious about it but the majority of the work will have been done and hopefully nothing bad happens.

I did do some re-search on the pre-finished floorboards and came up with these difference compared to the traditional method.

1: They are installed just like unfinished floorboards however they are all the same size and can look a little uniformed or tile like .

2: No need to put up with stinky smell from the urethane, however the boards have a bevelled edge and the surface is not smooth.

3: A friend of mine has the pre-finished and complained that the polish chips if you drop things on it. I did see it and have never seen that happen with normal floorboards but of course they would get a dent or scratch they are timber after all.

Just a few observations that I made, here is hoping we have made the right decision!

Pre-finished Solid Timber V's Un-Finished solid timber

Right from the start we have always wanted solid timber floors, I am not a fan of tiles and I have never really liked carpet that much either.

So when faced with the question would you like Pre-finished solid timber my head started spinning! I had never heard of it, I just assumed that you could only buy the raw timber and get it sanded and polished onsite.

Obviously we have got quotes and it is a good price however is it as good a product? I don't know I can't find any arguments through google that say its completely awful or better than the traditional method. from what I can gather the only thing different is the beveled edges and the fact it is sanded and polished in a factory, and it's not enough to sway me one way or the other.

We are off to research some more today by visiting several more flooring places and hopefully we will have a clear cut decision sometime soon.


Here are a couple of photo's that I found

Pre-finished spotted gum solid timber

Solid timber spotted gum raw and polished onsite

Waiting for our Contracts…….exciting!

Not a lot to report, we have signed off on our colours after making a few tweaks and filled out the paperwork for the council, we have decided on who will do our demolition and cut down our trees (more council paperwork to be filled out) we are also in the process of sorting our landscape plan and now we are waiting on our contract hopefully ready by the end of next week!

I am aware that our local council is a little slow when signing off on paperwork but I really do hope that it doesn't take too long I am now ready (well almost …Still have a house of stuff to sort, throw out and pack, and to find a place to live!)

We still need to get an official quote for the floorboards which is difficult when no one will tell us how many square metres of floor we will have left after taking off the wet areas (So far this is the only thing that has annoyed me, I am not sure what the big deal is and why MDJ won't tell us …rant over!) of course we can take the plans to our floor guy and he should be able to estimate it, but it would be much easier if we already knew!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and New year, Being in the industry that I am in I worked over the holiday break and am now officially on holidays for a couple of weeks (Yay) so will have plenty of time to get myself organised and up to date with paper work, and spend some quality time yelling at the kids (just kidding I am sure we will do some fun stuff too)

here is hoping that our paperwork will be into council before the end of the month!