From day one, I have hated the back boiler in our dining room. All 1930’s houses in the UK used to have one, and some still do, but we couldn’t even have a warm bath downstairs, as the boiler wouldn’t heat enough water (not the mention it doesn’t really fit into my idea of contemporary). In order to remove the old back boiler, the old carpet had to come off and they had to lift the original floor boards. Just as well we didn’t put in the laminate flooring first!
Luckily, we found an excellent boiler specialists in our local newspaper called, Danny Williams Plumbing & Heating, and were delighted with their work. You can find them here:
http://www.boilerguide.co.uk/listings/danny-williams-plumbing-heating
It is quite common in the UK to put the boiler in the kitchen but this takes loads of cub board space so we wanted the boiler in the upstairs hot press. Luckily, they were able to accommodate this request and have the new boiler tucked away upstairs.
We decided to have our new laminate flooring fitted afterwards in every single room downstairs and what a difference does it make! We had some difficulty choosing between laminate and engineered wood but in the end went for laminate. I did a lot of research on what kind of flooring would work for us and also compliment our house.
In the end, we chose Quickstep Perspective 4 Natural Varnished Oak with a V groove as this is supposed to expand the room optically. We also wanted to make sure that there were no breaks where the doors are so the floor would flow seamlessly in all the rooms.
The flooring was installed by O’Brien flooring (www.obrienflooring.co.uk) We were very happy with the end result and Barry’s work. In fact, we are so impressed with him that we are having him back this month to do our kitchen floor.
We have had the laminate now for two years and it has been incredibly durable and scratch resistant. What I love about it is that it looks like engineered wood but has the durability of a laminate floor. It is easy to clean (even with the v groove!) and even though you need to be careful with spills, we have it in our conservatory which has been leaking from day one (yes, really!), and the floor still looks fantastic despite the occasional puddle. I can absolutely recommend!
