Owning your own home

Ah I see, not your regular Victorian sashes, then.

May not be to everyone’s taste but we’ve just had Amitico put down across the whole ground floor. Very pleased with the finish and feel..

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not exactly... classic london's finest 1930s suburbia with an unusually wide all glass mega vista that is absolutely nothing like the rest of the street but we totally want to keep... minus the existing perished frame and cracks in glass... but if scaffolding / render is not standard pfaff, i may be tempted to a more standard approach

Any recommendations for a company to replace our knackered aluminium double glazing in SE London? Preferably with both Aluminium and PVC offerings.

Not cheap but outstanding. Bespoke Windows in Dulwich.

They did 8 of our windows over a week and at the end of every day there was ZERO mess or destruction, simply a brand new window in place. We thought very highly of them and they are lined up to replace a sliding door at ours once things start rolling again.

I paid £320 for scaffolding at mine (front only) - £1k seems punchy
They should be able to dispose of old windows - don't see why you'd pay extra for this (there is no window scrappage scheme any notion is just sales talk)

Looks beautiful.

Absolutely delicious

It looks really good. How does it feel?

Did it work out significantly cheaper than real wood, and what are the benefits of that over oak parquet?

what are the benefits of that over oak parquet?

Lvt (luxery vinyl tile) is an inert medium meaning that unlike wood it does not expand and contract (well it does but no where near as much, expansion is considered negligable) with changes in heat and humidity. This means that it can be laid in any pattern over any distance without considering expansion and mitigating it. Wood on the other hand, bar a few patterns that require very skilled labour to lay (block herringbone for example) cannot do this, modern timber floors all have a maximum span that they can be laid. You ignore this maximum span at your peril as you'll either end up with a bouncy hump in the middle of a room or, worst case scenario the pressure exerted on the walls will be enough to detach them from their standings (not just stud walls either I've seen bricks kicked out where floors have been badly fitted).

Also because the expansion is so much less you can lay the flooring right up to skirting boards and don't need to either take off skirting to lay underneath or use beading to hide the 10mm expansion gap between the flooring and skirting board.

Lvt also plays better with underfloor heating, as long as there is a thermostat in the floor to stop the glue melting.

Downside Vs wood; can't be refinished and it doesn't feel the same.

We have around 150sqm of LVT, cheaper stuff than Amtico, has been down for around 2 years now, we have underfloor heating, and would not have anything else now.

Yep what @bobbo said in regards to the benefits. I’ve had oak in my last two houses and with kids and animals found it was a pain to keep mark free. We had lots of digs and marks from dropped toys etc.

This stuff even though it can’t be re finished is super hard wearing. Yes you can cut it with a knife but for normal every day wear and tear it should not mark, it’s not affected by water either.

So for us now, with two kids a bulldog and a cat it’s ideal. We have underfloor heating in the kitchen and it’s working lovely.

It’s got a nice grain to it and Each individual tile has a bevelled edge, it does not feel like plastic & it’s warm to the foot. Cost wise it was £140 M2 approx fully fitted. Not cheap but it’ll last..

We have just had LVT (partially) fitted in our utility room but the contractors have fucked up and not screeded properly - there are various lumps and dips and tile corners are lifting already. I had nothing to do with the flooring selection or contracting (present from in-laws, who are now furious at the fuckup). At the risk of sounding like an ungrateful oik, I cannot see the point of LVT (at least in the large square tiles pattern we have) @ £50/m2, over a big roll of Lino @ £5/m2. What am I missing? They’re hard, scribed edges look shite, alignment needs to be sub-mm perfect, subfloor needs to be perfect and you don’t even end up with a watertight surface... oh and it just looks like cheap Lino anyway!

#savage

Sounds like a shit situation to be in.

Lvt does need special attention paid to the subfloor before laying it. But laying a wood floor still needs the sub floor to be in a pretty good state.

It is a good product when it all goes right but I can understand why in your situation you may not see this.

I don’t want to sound like a prick so apologise up front.

To give you some idea ours was laid over 2 weeks. That was approx 90m2. 1 week of preparing and 1 week of laying. They put a high temp screed in the kitchen over a concrete slab / screed and that was then sanded flat and filled / sanded till perfectly flat then they laid. In the rest of the house nailed ply to the floor boards then screed, again they sanded re screed and sanded re screed until totally flat again. 4 people. 90m2 preparing then laying. 12 m warranty on defects of fitting and lifetime warranty on product defects.

I used Quick Step Livyn click in the downstairs loo and I'm pretty pleased with it. Quite easy to fit and with an underlay managed to get away with some little unevenness

Tbh that’s the work I expected - we were told 5 days work for one bloke for about 9m2 - maybe longer if the screed needed a longer drying time. He was out of there after 3!

Your floor looks good though and I get the benefit of LVT over wood or something cheaper if you’re having it patterned and bordered . I’m just annoyed that what we’ve got was vastly expensive, looks cheap and is probably going to have to be ripped out and redone!

£140 M2

90m2

Gosh.

12 m warranty on defects of fitting and lifetime warranty on product defects.

Are they backed up by insurance on that? It's pretty worthless if they go to the wall.

Is it harder wearing than sheet stuff?

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No idea, they’ve been going since 1966. So hope they will keep on going

https://www.ajrogersandsons.co.uk/

Afaik yes, the wear layer is thicker and more durable and the manufacturing process is much more advanced.

Looking at those photos you'd of had issues laying a laminate / engineered wood / solid wood floor as well. Subfloor needed much more attention paid to it than was given.

Christ is that the utility room in question??

@Cornish_Bike flooring whilst not to my taste, looks like a mint job (you’d expect it at the price) but it’s one of those things that ties spaces together and feels like money well spent. In our new house there’s a mixture of flooring, none is particularly bad and some nice wood block parque but the inconsistency is a little jarring

Yep, the ‘dirt’ is adhesive that hasn’t been cleaned off properly. It was put in two weeks ago!

@Bobbo it’s clearly a shocking job (FIL is in dispute with the company), I think I’m just not a fan of the fake tile look.

yeah I would tend to agree with your post about there being little discernible difference between what you have and a roll of lino.