After putting my foot through the floor in our 'new' house I've discovered we have a bad case of woodworm. That's all sorted, and I've just started preparing to lay the new floorboards.
I want to leave the floor exposed and just give it a few coats of varnish, but whilst spending 5 minutes trying to peel the label off the first board, I re-read the following sentence which I had miss-interpreted in the shop:
[b]"IMPORTANT - Constructional grade only, not to be used as an alternative to laminate flooring or as a floating floor over concrete"[/b]
For some reason when choosing the boards, I assumed this was telling me I couldn't lay the boards over an existing floor as you would with laminate.
Does this mean the boards aren't hard wearing enough to be left exposed? Or have I miss-understood the warning? I don't want to put them down, give them several coats of varnish, stick the skirting on and decorate the room only for them to look a complete mess with gouges and scratches in 6 months time. Unfortunately I've removed all the packaging and have had them 'resting' for the last 3 days to let them acclimatise so not sure Wickes will take them back.
They did have some other wood floorboards intended for being used as the final floor, but for two rooms worth it was an extra £150 and all the label suggested was that they looked better. Plus my 2.4m boards size up perfectly with the ends resting on a joist so I will have very little wastage, whereas the 'proper' boards are shorter meaning I'll have loads of unusable offcuts :(
