Laying a new floor in a 400 year old cottage has its challenges.

We love living in the countryside (you may have noticed). There are very few downsides to living in a field next to some woods with no neighbours for miles. One of the few, is mud. 

All it takes is a couple of days of rain, 2 children, a dog and a cat to turn the kitchen into something resembling the front of the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury. 

When we first moved in the ground floor was a thread bear carpet. Well I say carpet, it was some heavy duty material held together with mud. 

In our old life in Manchester our new(ish) build had perfectly Screeded level floors, with beautiful Karndean designer Vinyl flooring in the kitchen, 22mm Scandinavian solid wood plank in the living room and hall. Beautiful but completely impractical for a Cottage in the country.

Garden Cottage represented a new challenge. Not a single straight line exists in Garden Cottage and the entire building is on a bit of a slant. The height difference in living room floor from one end to the other was nearly 25mm! 

Fortunately, I found the perfect flooring that gives us everything we need it is a Engineered Wood Flooring. This flooring gives us the easy wipe down floor we need but this is just one of the many benefits of having this type of flooring.

The other benefits and why I’m pleased we invested in it are it’s easy to maintain, its great for my son who has asthma and I love that it is considered to be environmental friendly as it is manufactured using ethical forestry practices. Another benefit of engineered wood flooring is that you can order it pre-finished, which implies that installation, is easier, faster and often more cost-effective compared to solid wood floors. You can simply walk on it once installed, without waiting for a day or more for the floor to dry, which is handy when you have a small house with children and animals that don’t like to wait to run around.

So after many hours on YouTube, some innovative packing and some extra wide beading, Garden Cottage’s ground floor is now a mud free zone (for about 10 minutes a day!)