Floorboard advice - mismatched repair jobs and weak spots

[Connor_King]

Hey - first time here so go easy

just about to take on a family members property (grade 2 listed, 1700s cottage) - took out some threadbare carpet in an upstairs bedroom and found a bit of a mess
the floor is uneven and some of the floorboards have been replaced in the past to various standards ( some are thin / half width of the original boards, some look like pieces of kindling nailed down to fill gaps haha)

Ideally i wanted to have the flooring in this room be visible and a feature of the room ( it will be an office).

but to get this presentable where would i even start?
I was wondering about taking it all out, going to a reclamation yard and acquiring some old floorboards to replace with

and if i need a contractor, would it be a job for a joiner? im pretty handy but feel like this may be a job for a professional ( floor needs levelling too)

 

[Cubist]

It's very unusual to see so many boards that have been replaced, and seemingly at the same time - the clues in the colour disparity. What do you mean when you say there are height differences? Are some boards simply thicker than others or have some merely cupped or bowed so that the middle or sides of a board is higher?

If there no dips or slopes affecting more than a single board then the joists are not likely to be an issue and re-laying the floor may be the simplest and cheapest approach. If choosing boards from a reclamation yard then you will need to match wood species, width, depth and colour to those you want to save from the old floor - sometimes easier said than done. You would however also need to remove the skirtings and architraves before laying the new boards and, of course, sand the floor to achieve a uniform colour before applying a final finish. A local joiner/joinery shop might take this work on, be careful not to let a supplier of new flooring sub-contract the work (check references), but any such would usually want to replace all the boards with new - commission on sale, higher margin, and easier to install so lower direct labour cost for him.

 

[Connor_King]

Thanks for the response, i think in the past the house has suffered woodworm - we have had a full survey and none found live now but i imagine thats why the boards have been replaced in large number in the past

in terms of thickness, it all feels fairly uniform, just some cupping / loose / springy areas where things are not quite as nailed down as they once where i think ( you can see in the photos how some of the nails have worked up and are now sitting proud of the boards haha)

is there any way i could identify the original wood? would help my googling to source replacements before i go and travel down to a reclaimation yard

 

[Cubist]

All the existing boards are pine, the darker and older ones could at a stretch be pitch pine. Loose or lifting nail heads have a couple of potential causes. The first is that the nail went back into a pre-existing hole in the board and the joist below and has worked loose because of board or joist bounce. The second being that the joist below has split/rotted/been munched to allow bounce to then push the nail head proud of the boards.

What widths are the newer/cleaner boards and the darker ones? It looks like the newer ones are about 100mm and the others 150mm.

 

[LadyArowana]

You could expend a lot of time and effort to make it look almost good as new, or you could go over it with a hand sander to improve it a bit, paying close attention to the border areas and then buy a really nice hand knotted rug to put on top. By the time a room has stuff in you stop noticing the floor. Old houses have history, as long as it’s sound…… or maybe I am just lazy.

 

[Connor_King]

@Cubist will grab some measurements when im back over there tomorrow - rough guess is the small ones are approx half the width of the larger - larger maybe around 200mm wide

the rug is always a safe bet - my worry is that the floor is such a checkboard at the moment id need so many rugs i might as well carpet it haha