"a" wrote in message
m...
hi,

we are finally ready to do something about flooring in our house.

We are looking at the Junckers Oak Wideboard Classic (if people have
ideas for other suppliers, we'd be very interested to hear them).

We are wondering about doing the job ourselves (hence our posting
here). The only thing is that we want a beautiful finish and are
wondering about how skillfully we can install these floors ourselves.
Given their quality (and their cost -- ouch!!), we would rather pay a
professional, than try ourselves and ruin the job. Our main concern is
the joint at the ends of the boards (not the T&G sides), getting these
to have a good perfect fit. Is this something that we can reasonably
expect to do ourselves?

We have done a fair bit of work ourselves (plumbing, rewiring,...),
but are sometimes a bit apprehensive about works like this which are
more "finishing" works.

The opinions of people on this group about trying this ourselves would
be greatly appreciated.

I sympathize - we agonized over this as well. We used Kahrs flooring (3
strip) which clicks together. I decided in the end that, if there were a
problem after fitting and I'd done it, I'd be stuck. If they did it then I
could get them back. We got them to do it and they ended up installing some
boards that should have been rejected (there was some filler in surface
blemishes, under the seal - this is not unusual to get a perfect surface,
but it usually looks like grain - this didn't!). Difficult to see at all
when laying (so I might have done it too) but very noticeable in lower light
levels when viewed at an angle. I got them back in and they stripped out
about a third of the area and relaid it, with no apparent drop in quality of
joins. Aside from that I could *probably* have done nearly as good a job but
I'm not sure about that even!

I removed the skirting boards and am refitting my own on top of the wood.

One tip, if you are removing a carpet first, cut it round inside the gripper
with a stanley knife and keep it. If you then want to work in there
afterwards, you can roll the carpet out on top of the wooden flooring again
(sweeping the back as you go). This forms a good protective layer if you are
fitting skirting boards etc.


--
Bob Mannix
(anti-spam is as easy as 1-2-3 - not)