Parquet floors was extremely common a number of years back but a lot of it was covered up utilising carpets back in the 70s. It seems crazy now that anyone could cover the parquet flooring utilising carpets, but it was the thing of the day and fashions come and go. Ive just lately refurbished various parquet floors by sanding them down and re-sealing them when old carpets have been lifted and they still maintain their charm.

There are different varieties of parquet floor one can get making use of different wood that provides a somewhat different grain, colour and texture. Naturally it is best to generally order your parquet flooring from a trusted supplier to ensure you're going to be purchasing top quality. Your flooring will need to last numerous years so you dont want to use up the cash on installing it simply to have to re-do the work afterwards. Additionally as timber ages it obviously darkens so to try and match the shade of timber with new pieces could be very hard.

Parquet flooring comes in tiles that are made up of the short strips you see. So they're not all laid individually but instead as a type of tile which is about 300mm x 300mm squares. It makes it very much less complicated to lay and will result in a better finished product because naturally there is less space for error in laying them. These are glued down to the surface using a suitable glue. Again the ground must be entirely flat in order to achieve a good quality outcome. In the event the surface is not flat, screed it first to take away low and high areas initially after which install your floor.

The individual strips are generally laid perpendicular to one another to give it effect but some quite pleasing patterns may be found such as herringbone, triangles and inserts are also achievable. Parquet flooring is very versatile and you can lay the tiles in just about any pattern you wish and the choices are limited only by your imagination.

For the budget concerned folk out there an alternative to buying new parquet flooring is to use second hand parquet flooring. I have seen many houses have their old parquet flooring ripped out and discarded. This timber is still sound as most of the older houses used good quality teak in their floors. With a little cleaning and sanding those parquet floor tiles can be made to look like new. Dont discount the value of second hand tiles.

To finish the floor, you should sand it using the floor sander, fill any gaps with a suitable gap filler, sand again and then move up to finer grits remembering to sand into the corners with a smaller rotex style sander. A good quality polyurethane should be used either in mineral based or water based. Water based is of course more easily applied, less messy and one can apply multiple coats in the same day as it dries very quickly. Remember to sand lightly with a fine grit paper between coats to get rid of the hairs which stand up after applying coats. This will result in a smooth finish. The polyurethane comes in either high gloss, matt or satin. The choice is yours.