Browse Forums Flooring & Floor Covering 1 Jul 27, 2013 11:08 am Hi, We have a house that needs 127sqm of solid Blackbutt to be laid in the living areas. Can anyone tell me how long it usually takes altogether, to lay, sand and varnish this amount of wood floor? I'm trying to arrange trades but have no idea how long it will realistically take to do the floor first. I'm wondering if anyone else on this forum has had solid timber floors laid and how long it took. Thanks in advance Re: How long does it take to lay a solid wood floor 2Jul 30, 2013 3:26 pm Hi Scotty Dog, We had a hardwood floor laid earlier this year. There was approx 150sqm and it was laid onto ply. The guys had the ply down and about 20% of the boards in one day. So all up it took 4.5 days to lay the boards and ply. We elected to leave the floor for a while before sanding and polishing as we felt it gave the timber time to settle and dry a bit more. When they came back to sand and polish they were done in 3 days. Hope this helps...........just a word of warning though - ask to see some of the floors the layers have done....we had friends doing the same thing at the same time as we did and they were very unhappy with the final outcome....not sanded properly, swirly sanding marks through it (they chose stringy bark that had lots of sap runs - we chose ironbark....two very different timbers and two very different finished products) they had to pay the layers to come back and strip it, re-sand and polish again to get it to an acceptable standard. I've got some photos of ours on my thread if you're interested. Good luck Owner Building on 1800sqm Sanity Intact so far Locked up March 2012 Re: How long does it take to lay a solid wood floor 3Jul 30, 2013 4:16 pm Our floor laying started this morning and I was told it will take a week for slab prep, moisture barrier and laying. The sanding and varnishing will take another week but we will need to wait another 2 days before it can be walked on and 7 days before furniture can be put on it. We have 145sqm and the company we are using do 3 coats of varnish instead of 2 which I assume takes longer. So all up we can't do a lot in the house for 3 weeks. Our custom Gemmill Home in Bedfordale WA Build thread:https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=53788 Timeline on page 1 Re: How long does it take to lay a solid wood floor 4Jul 30, 2013 8:52 pm Apart of the accurate advice above, don't forget you need to acclimatize the timber before laying it. Could be a week or a month, depending on the timber and the house. Don't skimp this process, otherwise you'll get cupping or gaps. Do it once, do it right. I'm quite happy with my spotted gum laid over ply: Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Mind you, I had to put an additional two coats for a high gloss finish as I wasn't happy with the satin finish (3 coats) the first time. At least it shouldn't wear out with 5 coats! So make sure you choose your preferred finish carefully. Re: How long does it take to lay a solid wood floor 5Jul 30, 2013 9:12 pm Thanks everyone for your great replies I had guessed about 3 weeks but I just wasn't sure. Nice floors JB1. Re: How long does it take to lay a solid wood floor 6Jul 30, 2013 11:22 pm JB1 Apart of the accurate advice above, don't forget you need to acclimatize the timber before laying it. Could be a week or a month, depending on the timber and the house. I forgot about this bit Ours only sat for a week because it's the cold season but as JB1 said the time depends on the timber. Our custom Gemmill Home in Bedfordale WA Build thread:https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=53788 Timeline on page 1 Re: How long does it take to lay a solid wood floor 7Jul 31, 2013 11:25 pm JB1 Apart of the accurate advice above, don't forget you need to acclimatize the timber before laying it. Could be a week or a month, depending on the timber and the house. Don't skimp this process, otherwise you'll get cupping or gaps. Do it once, do it right. I'm quite happy with my spotted gum laid over ply: Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Mind you, I had to put an additional two coats for a high gloss finish as I wasn't happy with the satin finish (3 coats) the first time. At least it shouldn't wear out with 5 coats! So make sure you choose your preferred finish carefully. LOVE you flooring!!! Would you mind sharing which company you used JB1 ? Re: How long does it take to lay a solid wood floor 8Aug 01, 2013 12:26 am Glad you like it TBrown. I sourced my own timber. I found 180mm wide x 14mm solid overlay spotted gum (Hurford brand) on eBay (installed over 10mm ply over concrete slab). They are random length from 0.6m to 4.5m. It was advertised as feature grade, but I'm sure it's lower than feature grade as some of the timber weren't flat. At a negotiated price of $42 sqm, I overlooked the fact it wasn't standard grade, I bought a bit more for wastage as some boards had to be thrown out. Anyway I filled some of the knots and holes with epoxy and filled other imperfections with ebony timbermate, see below: Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ The photo above is the final coating with waterbased high gloss, which I think compliments the timber and knots/veins much more than satin. Here is a photo of the satin polyurethane finish Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ The installer didn't charge me too much extra for coming back to put the waterbased high gloss finish over the satin. It was a gamble with the cheap timber but I love it now. Basically it cost the same price as 80mm tassie oak. Hi Mofflepop, I would recommend finding a building designer to prepare plans, they should design to your specified budget. The benefit is you can tender the project out… 9 20353 Engineering timber is certainly a less fuss option, times cheaper to supply and install and better withstands humidity. 1 15884 If this is a custom build then I would expect the builder to set out the door frame closer to the wall to avoid the gap between architrave and the wall and or specify… 9 8289 |