The Laurel Project at Richmond Park

Before the works

One of the main challenges in this large scale project was to resolve an issue with squeaking solid oak flooring and finish all timber floors throughout the property in a durable UltraMatt finish. Although in its early age, the beautiful solid oak flooring was laid directly over joists causing gappy appearance and a creaky noise in places.

To provide a perfect finish at the edge of floors and walls, white silicon was used at the bottom of the skirting boards with previous decoration. This challenge for the finishing around the skirting boards, required re-application of the silicon throughout entire perimeter.

Another major challenge for our floor restoration team was the finishing of a beautiful engineered oak flooring on one of the levels which

How we did it...

Installation directly over joists can prove challenging unless the joists run in a standard span of approx. 45 cm and create a well-levelled plane. Secret-nailing is used to secure the boards directly into the joists. Unfortunately this was not the case and has created looseness and unevenness in the solid oak installation base.

Our recommendation went for installation of new wide structural 20 mm oak engineered plank in prime grade, over 12 mm plywood.

While we would usually recommend 18 mm plywood for a subfloor base, in this particular installation there were number of other existing elements which would require keeping the new level to a minimum.

Standard 20 mm stair-nosing in combination with a solid oak scotia was used around the perimeter of a large landing surrounded by classic oak banisters around it.

Entire project comprising of approx. 240 sqm engineered oak flooring was sanded and sealed with Junckers HP Commercial UltraMatt lacquer within approx. 7 days.