Episode 10 - Flooring

This episode is all about flooring. So whether you're thinking of cozy carpet, timeless timber, or luxury lino, Kate and Jenny have got you covered.

Transcript

Episode 10 - Flooring

Jen: [00:00:00] You are listening to rip it up the renovations podcast. hi, I'm Kate. I run the Instagram page, Victorian 

Rathmines. And I'm Jenny. I run the Instagram account, Worker's Cottage.

Kate: This podcast is all about renovation and interiors from the renovator's perspective. We've been through it a few times between us and it hasn't scared us off. In fact 

Jen: we loved it so if you are planning to do up your own home you can expect to hear lots of advice from our own experience along with plenty of tips and inspiration. 

 This episode is all about flooring. So whether you're thinking of cozy carpet, timeless, timber, or luxury liner, Kate and Jenny, you've got you covered. 

Kate: Welcome back to the podcast. Hi, Kate. Hi, 

Jenny: Jen. Episode 

Kate: 10. 

Jenny: Episode 10. Of Potentially a Million. Yeah, yeah. Loads of responses to our last episode of Farrelly Co. That was such a fun one. I love that. It was so fun, yeah. If you missed it, it's episode nine and we had Farrelly Co.,

an Irish painting company, Professional [00:01:00] painter, professional paint makers answering all of listeners submitted painting questions. We've got a lot there. That was a really 

Kate: good one. Yeah. Ask the expert. Who are the next? Who's the next expert we should have on? If you're an expert, get in touch. Answers on a postcard.

Yeah, I really, 

Jenny: Enjoyed that. Yeah, that was great. So today we're talking about flooring in our kind of theme of what's next in your renovation planning. Flooring is one of those ones that you need to pick pretty early on because a lot of your Colour choices revolve around it and it's a big area.

It's a big area. 

Kate: So we've done walls. It's a big expense. Let's do floors. Yes, from walls to floors. Yeah, yeah. 

Jenny: What do you 

Kate: have? What did you put? Oh, we had a mix. So we had the original floorboards. Yeah, which we refinished in both houses. And we also have, so when you say originally solid wood, solid wood, original floorboards that would have been there since.

1880 in our last house, Isn't that amazing? Isn't wood amazing? It's ridiculous like you would expect some of them when you rip up the old carpet and whatever well these [00:02:00] are fit for the skit. And then you sand them back and they're like they're just so resilient, it's just amazing. So yeah we've sanded back our original floorboards in both houses up here in Dublin and I'm always kinda shocked how good they come back.

Those before and after 

Jenny: videos are an absolute joy. I know! You have them on your Instagram at victorianwrathmines and it is just 

Kate: Yeah, it's lovely to watch. It's such a pleasure to watch it. Cause they look so wrecked, like you just, you think like they're going nowhere and then you're like, Oh wait, wait, wait a minute.

What? How is that the same floor? Yeah. Yeah. I also find the stain 

Jenny: very satisfying. Yeah. Because they can, once they're sanded back, okay, they look kind of clean and you're, you're, that's wow. But then when you put the stain on, they go from this kind of building site look to just floor imperfection. And it's the same ones that have been there 

Kate: for a hundred years.

Yeah. And the stain is very personal. I think like you'll see a lot of houses now, especially old houses, they're sanding them back and then they do a white tint stain. And it's very minimal. I like it. I like it. Yeah, I do like it. It wouldn't be for me in my house. Yeah. It's more modern, minimalist.

Definitely. Yeah. It's very [00:03:00] Scandi kind of the reason I don't generally like it is because I think in all these old houses, 99 percent of the boards are soft Wood, like pine boards. Yeah. They're never old. Pine 

Jenny: is huge in Ireland. A lot of wood in Ireland, like pine kitchens, pine floors. That was massive.

Kate: Yeah. And it was relatively like inexpensive to do. Mm-Hmm. . So. The pine tends to have a lot of very obvious knots. Yeah, 

Jenny: it's kind of a marbledy. Yeah, 

Kate: I love the fact that like the dark stain kind of hides that a little bit. I don't like knotty wood. So that's why I tend to go for the dark stain on mine.

Yeah. 

Jenny: Yeah. Maple was another one that the That's been used quite a bit. Maple is really hard on the flip side of pine and that got imported and used a lot and that's a great one. So if you strip back your carpets or anything in your house and you find maple flowers, lucky 

Kate: you. Lucky you. It is a dream.

And then what you might find as well if you rip up your carpets is old parquet because a lot of people covered those. People covered all sorts of things didn't 

Jenny: they? 

Kate: Like red brick, parquet flooring, gorgeous old fireplaces. I agree, yeah. There's so many videos online of people ripping [00:04:00] up carpet and discovering parquet.

We never discovered any parquet. But we did put down parquet. In your kitchen? In our kitchen and our hallway. So we didn't have the original floorboards throughout the house. The house we had bought, had dry rot. So parts of the house didn't have the original floorboards and we were going to try and kind of match them but we poured concrete where we did the extension and we did underfloor heating so it kind of landed itself better to a new floor rather than putting original boards back down.

Yeah. So we went with a parquet floor there, kind of color matched the stain we used on the original boards but it was solid woodblock. Yeah. So the individual little pieces were all assembled on site. Were they? 

Jenny: Solid wood? Were they engineered wood? No, these 

Kate: ones were solid. Literally little blocks of wood.

I don't know what size they were, maybe 25 centimeters by 6 centimeters or something small pieces and then they were assembled. We did them in herringbone pattern On ours and they were glued to the concrete floor. Okay, and that works well with underfloor. It does it does It's really important though If you do glue to [00:05:00] concrete that the concrete has been properly primed and prepped for the glue because that glue can melt Absolutely, the glue can melt, it can crack, it can lift the boards and if you get a lot of moisture damage underneath that glue barrier or whatever it can actually You know, the floorboards can pop up.

Yeah, 

Jenny: yeah. It has to be left to dry fully. And it doesn't take that long. So it's not like you need to be out of the house or anything for a week. But it does need to be fully, 

Kate: fully dried. Before any weight goes down it or anything like that. But yeah, you mentioned engineered as well. I'm leaning more toward engineered in my new house when we renovate.

Jenny: Okay. I'm going to take one little step back here. Right. So we jumped straight into talking about what we're going to cover the gamut here. We're going to talk about all different types of woods. We're going to talk about laminates. We're going to talk about vinyl tiles. We're going to talk about We're going to talk about normal tiles.

We're going to talk about carpets. We're going to talk about polished concrete, and we're going to talk about some of my favorite kind of out there ones, which are resin, rubber and cork. Right. So we're going to get to all of this, but anyway, 

Kate: back to wood for now. Back to wood for now. So [00:06:00] I was always of the mindset, solid wood was the best.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it kind of is, I suppose there's a romanticism around it and you know, solid wood is solid wood. Right. I don't know about that, but engineered wood is essentially solid wood. But it's assembled on a backing board. Yeah. You can still stand it back. But it's usually pre finished.

Jenny: And really, cost aside, I can't think of one reason why that wouldn't be the choice to go for these days. Like, it just seems to be a 

Kate: total It's kind of a no brainer. The good points in engineered wood is you get less movement. So from kind of winter to summer months when the wood is expanding and contracting, you don't get gaps in your floors.

You don't get maybe buckling when it's kind of moved and it's kind of adapted to a new house. So I think engineer can be literally more solid underfoot. So this is an 

Jenny: issue with solid wood, right? If you're thinking about it for your house, It does. It can warp, or at least it can shift, especially if there's humidity or heat.

So, traditionally they haven't been used, wooden [00:07:00] floors haven't been used in say, kitchens, certainly not in bathrooms and then wouldn't have been used. really recommended for underfloor heating because that heat can cause 

Kate: it to warp a little bit. For sure, yeah. And I think engineered floor as well gives other opportunities for really amazing patterns.

Yeah. So sometimes you can get like, say, if you're looking at parquet floor, you get mansion weave, which is a really cool one. Oh yeah, very classy. You get something like Versailles or basket weave, and it comes in kind of pre formed Okay, so you don't have to, 

Jenny: because if you're, if you're having someone lay down parquet flooring, they literally have to be 

Kate: hands and knees.

Yeah. Cutting individual bits and assembling them like Tetris. Yeah. 

Jenny: And it's, you know, there's a huge amount of, I mean, you can't be a centimeter off because that throws the whole thing off then. So it's a lot of work. There's a lot of work. Which can make it very expensive. Very expensive. So, would that cut down to the expense then, I 

Kate: suppose, if you're laying on it?

Yeah, well, I suppose definitely on assembly, and like, in fitting itself. Your floor will 

Jenny: Your floor will 

Kate: Delighted with you. But I think it does lend itself better then, you know, to, to kind of, maybe spaces that are slightly off, you know, off kind of square and [00:08:00] stuff like that, might be a bit more forgiving.

And it's pre finished, so someone comes in, glues these back together. Panels of engineered wood down and done, the floor is done, it's ready to go. And if you hate the color of it and five years time you wanna sand it, you still can sand it. Yeah. And 

Jenny: probably easier to take up and replace it if you want to than it's with the 

Kate: lath.

Yeah. It works pretty well with under floor as well because of the multilayers in it. You know, it's pockets of air that are kinda heating up and holding the heat. So the fact then that 

Jenny: it's stuck onto that block underneath means that it doesn't, it, it's not allowed to work as much. It doesn't expand to contract so much.

So you have transfer. Yeah. What about water? Does. Does 

Kate: water still? Yeah, it would kind of, it would still be the same as solid wood. You wouldn't be leaving a puddle of water. So you would want to mop up spills pretty. Yeah. So maybe not the kitchen. Not as bad as something like laminate, which would have like maybe an MDF or a A chipboard kind of backing on it.

Laminate would be the cheapest of the kind of fake wood, we'll call it, or whatever. You 

Jenny: can get waterproof laminate, but then you're kind of into a slightly more expensive one, and Sure. You may as well go through. You 

Kate: may as well know what that's Yes, exactly. Exactly. That would be my kind of thinking. So I'm.

Leaning [00:09:00] more toward the engineered boards, just from an underfloor heating perspective, less warping, less movement, and what you will find with original boards, or solid wood boards, during the night if you get up and you go to the bathroom or whatever, you'll hear them crack and creak when you stand on them.

Yeah, I've heard that. No, it's nice. It's not nice when you have two small kids and you're trying to keep asleep though. And you're trying to creep out of their room or whatever. So like, yeah, it's all, all things to be considered I suppose. It's just more practical maybe. But I like, if you follow my Instagram, you know, I love original boards.

Like if they're there and they're in good enough condition, I'll bring them back. Like, so it's where I don't have those original boards. I'd be thinking about putting something like this in. And another reason I suppose, original boards mightn't be for everyone is. A lot of the time they're kind of on a suspended floor in these houses where there's a big void underneath it, lots of drafts.

Mice. And if you're Potentially mice, seriously. Yeah, for sure. Mice, drafts, like so, if you're not lifting those boards and insulating under them, they can be quite drafty. 

Jenny: Yeah, which you can do. So if you find that you do have those beautiful solid wood boards and you want to keep them [00:10:00] But they're on a suspended floor underneath and you have gaps coming through.

You can get them all lifted. You can put an insulation layer down on top, underneath, and then you can replace them. It's obviously a bit of a 

Kate: cost, but you don't have to throw those boards away. Yeah, we did it in our first house where we lifted the boards. You lose about 10 or 15 percent when you lift them because just some of them will break.

They're nailed down, right? So Some of them are going to crack. Yeah. So you do have to find a kind of, I suppose, replacement for that 10 or 15 percent loss. But we put quilt insulation down because it's kind of breathable and you should kind of use something somewhat breathable in these old houses.

And we relayed the boards. So you still have that kind of gapped look of old floorboards, but you have the insulation under it. The other option, a lot of people have asked me this, can you put them back down? If you put down a concrete floor and underfloor heating, can You kind of can, but you kind of have to put some sort of solid board over the concrete and then lay them onto that.

Jenny: And you might be running into height issues then, you need to, because there's a minimum height that every room has to be and it's a It's very strictly adhered to. So if you're putting down layers and layers, you could run into a bit of an [00:11:00] issue where you're just 

Kate: a centimeter or something too short.

Yeah. But I think the original boards laid back down in concrete just never looked the same. You don't have those kinds of original gaps that were kind of between the boards and all that. So yeah, you can, but I wouldn't. Yeah. 

Jenny: Okay. Okay. One quick thing there. You mentioned. And dry rot. How do you spot it?

So if someone's peeling back their, say, carpet or laminate or whatever on a house, how do you know if you 

Kate: have dry rot? It'll be crumbling. Like literally just crumbling dry. The wood will literally, you can pinch it with your fingers and it'll be crumbling away. I mean, it could be somewhat similar looking to having bad woodworm.

Yeah. Now woodworm you'll see is very obvious. You'll see paths in the timber of woodworm. Like tunnels, like holes. Exactly. Where just little worms have been tunneling around. Like little worms have literally been tunneling around. How you know the woodworm is alive is usually if you come down. Kind of say in the morning time or whatever or you haven't been in that room for a while You'll see what looks like white sawdust on the floor.

And that's actually the droppings from woodworm So that's just so 

Jenny: like they've eaten through the water. Yeah 

Kate: Exactly. The sawdust is their poop So that's a good indication that your woodworm is [00:12:00] still alive a lot of the time in these old houses There'll be evidence of woodworm, but most of the time it'll be dead So if you find the wood is very crumbly and still quite damp and you see any evidence of this kind of white powdery stuff Then the woodworm could be alive and you might need to repair and replace, you know, bigger areas.

Good tip for 

Jenny: antique shopping too, if you're looking for like solid wood, anything, you know, dressers or wardrobes or anything. Okay, so that's, that's a lot to do with wood. And then on that, right, so this applies to, say, wood, laminate, LVT, everything, but the pattern of it. So you had in your old house these kind of large, not large, but you'd like wooden planks, let's say, is what you've got.

And then you chose to get in a herringbone parquet. That's the pattern I went for as well. What made you 

Kate: choose the herringbone? I thought it was quite timeless. Yeah. And I know at the time chevron was becoming quite popular around the time we did our first. So chevron is basically a zigzag. Yeah. It's like it's almost like the herringbone, but they've cut the tips off.

So they've gone point to point. Yeah. 

Jenny: Which is a bit more modern. Whereas the herringbone, it's two triangle or two rectangles. 

Kate: [00:13:00] They don't cut the tips off. Exactly. Yeah. They overlap. Moment overlap. Yeah, exactly. And herringbone is actually easier to install 'cause you don't have as many cuts as Chevron.

Yeah. So a lot of the times Chevron will come as engineered boards of 60 by 60 centimeters or something like that in little panels, but I just thought it was quite timeless. It look like something that could have been in the house anyway. So that's kind of why I went. I think it's very pri Yeah, it is actually.

Parisian apartments. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a dream. And the 

Jenny: basket weave I love. But I feel like that. That's very grand, like I would see a basket weave in like a New York penthouse on top of a, you know, like really old. The 

Kate: panels are quite big. Yeah, because like when you actually do that pattern of the basket weave or What's the other one?

Versailles is kind of a similar kind of big square or mansion weave like mansion weave the name Yeah, I always make a big 

Jenny: grand entrance hallway in a big old mansion or something. I think that it can look good there It's not personally my favorite style. I love the herringbone is my favorite, but yeah 

Kate: I think big repeated patterns you need a big space for them big time 

Jenny: Otherwise you all repeated [00:14:00] patterns work brilliantly in a small space.

So I have herringbone in small planks you So what are we looking at here? They're about kind of 20 ish centimetres I suppose by about 5 or 6. Same 

Kate: as, I think very similar to what you had. Yeah, they're pretty much 

Jenny: identical to what size one had. I love it in any space. I don't think herringbone, I think it works everywhere.

But I think the small planks in a repeating pattern look, work brilliantly in a small house because You get a bit of a infinity, endless kind of feeling to it. It's the same with anything on wallpaper. I just love a small repeating pattern. I think it looks brilliant in a small, in 

Kate: a small house. Yeah, it does.

It does. And it draws your eye out because especially the herringbone and the chevron and stuff, it's kind of like arrows pointing in a direction. So it gives you length without having to run boards lengthways, I think. 

Jenny: Yeah. And boards lengthways is another good look, especially again, I would go small house, small boards, big house or big space.

Yeah. Big boards, kind of chunkier boards. I think it works to, to marry it to 

Kate: the overall space. Yeah, I think so. And I think, like you said there, 25cm by whatever, 6, something like that is what we have. I think that's the sweet spot for herringbone. It looks the most traditional. I don't love the big herringbone.

I don't like the big herringbone. [00:15:00] But it is more 

Jenny: of a maybe modern look. So, it's there. If you 

Kate: like it, there's nothing wrong with it. I think those proportions are right for me. Yeah, great. The 25 by 6 or whatever it is. I never get sick 

Jenny: of it. No. I absolutely love it. It's my number one favourite. I would 

Kate: do it in every house from here on in.

Yeah. No, I did love ours now and I, I miss that floor and I'm kind of looking at the different options for our next house and like our, sorry, our next renovation in this house but like, yeah. I just don't know, engineered. Do you go the herringbone or do you just find more of the original boards and continue it out?

I think 

Jenny: it depends on whether the spaces are defined or not. Because I don't like really two different types of wood, or two different patterns, let's say, coming together, obviously. I think if they're in different rooms, go for different ones. But if There's a continuation in the space, I would just have a continuation of the type of flooring.

Or change it all together, like do, you know, go tile in one space, if you want to differentiate it. But I don't know, I find it quite jarring when there's two different types of wood up against each other in a continuous space, or two 

Kate: different types of patterns. Well I'll tell you, [00:16:00] if we don't go with engineered wood in this house, I've mentioned this on here before, the house we bought that we're hoping to renovate later this year is It's kind of a little warren of small rooms.

Jenny: Which is kind of why you got it, right? Like a 

Kate: lot of rooms is more usable than huge people. When you have kids, especially, you know, you want space to kind of watch them when you're cooking or whatever, but then you also want to play room space to hide their shit. Like, so I think like, because it's a little warren of rooms, I have to be really careful with the floor choice.

Like you said, it has to be a pattern that matches the space and some of the rooms cut off other rooms. So how does that floor continue through those spaces is really important. And one floor. I kind of lost the vote on our last house was terrazzo. Oh, here we go. I love it. Well, 

Jenny: you have terrazzo tiles. I have terrazzo tiles, but for listeners, terrazzo is polished, a version of polished concrete flooring.

So you pour down concrete, but that has lots of, let's say, pebbles, just to make it super simple of different material in it. So that when you polish it down, you can see , those shapes Yeah. Come through. And it just 

Kate: [00:17:00] looks, I absolutely love it. And I think the difference for, for me anyway, with Polish concrete and.

terrazzo. It's just that level of kind of different aggregate or those pebbles or whatever. Like sometimes you can have, you know, chunks of marble in there. Sometimes you can have colored stones, whatever. Like that aggregate is, is a much higher percentage in terrazzo than in polished concrete. So it's not just a load of gray cement to me.

It's like color, like it's a way of bringing in like flecks of color and like, just, I just think it's amazing. I think it's also very 

Jenny: timeless. The terrazzo has been around forever. It's also. Basically bulletproof. Yeah. Any kind of polished concrete effectively. Although the one thing I'll say is if something goes badly wrong and there is a big crack, like if your foundation shift or something, it's really, you have to replace the whole 

Kate: thing.

It's really expensive. It's very hard to finish. Yeah. Or you could do that Japanese thing. What's the word? Oh, like the Wabi Sabi. No, not Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi is when you just embrace the kind of flaws. Yeah, embrace the imperfection and 

Jenny: you could put like a colored thing down. A gold thing. You could pour some gold around 

Kate: and see the [00:18:00] crack.

Yeah. 

Jenny: Golden Boxing Repairs I adore it, I love the polished concrete floor look I love the terrazzo floor look, I think it's all gorgeous It's amazing, it works with underfloor heating as well It works really well with underfloor heating So imagine that, like you're padding downstairs and you've got your flat terrazzo floor with all those beautiful flecks of colour and it's warm.

I just 

Kate: think that unbroken kind of run of flooring in our house might work quite well as well. So 

Jenny: that's what I'm leaning towards. So talk to me about colours then, because this is a big consideration. If you're thinking, and this applies to polished concrete on its own or terrazzo that has that aggregate and pattern in it.

You need to be really careful about. The color. So, and you need to be very specific with your installer about what color you want. And I know a colleague of mine got polished concrete poured down and it was just a lot darker because the wrong bag of cement basically was ordered by accident until it was down then.

And what can you do? Rip the whole thing up? Yeah. That's too expensive. So I like a lighter look. I like a 

Kate: lighter look as well. Yeah, I'm kind of with you on that. And [00:19:00] I've kind of researched this because I was worried about that grey concrete look. Yeah. Because I don't really like that. I just think our house is, our light is grey enough in Ireland, we don't need more grey in our houses.

So what I came across was that, you know, polished concrete might have 30 percent aggregate or pebbles or stones or whatever, or bits of stuff in it. Whereas terrassa will have like close to 70%. aggregate stones, pebbles, bits of marble, whatever. And then that leftover is cement, right? So you'll have less of that cement in a terrazzo, but you can also have that cement in different kind of, I suppose, shades or tints, everything from almost a white to your kind of standard, yeah, standard kind of gray.

And then you could hopefully, well, this is what I'm hoping anyway, it's kind of more of a sandy color. The sandy color is beautiful. I love it. There's a real warmth to it. 

Jenny: Now there's specific types I like. I like, again, the lighter toned sand color. I don't want it too yellowy or too kind of, like there's a risk it goes just beige, which isn't that [00:20:00] nice.

I like a lighter, warm 

Kate: sandstone almost color too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like that sandstone. That's what I'm hoping from the cement kind of point or that kind of main color. In terms of the flex, sure, like, the world is your oyster, you can put whatever you want in it. Yeah, you can have it, innit? Like, I've seen these amazing ones.

I saw one before, it was a white base, and then it had black and really yellowy flex of marble. That's class. I adore that. It was amazing. I actually still have the screenshot saved, cause it was what I wanted to do in Elastos, and I still love it. And it was actually Do you think you'll win that battle? I don't know.

Pian, if you're listening, we all are 

Jenny: voting here for we're 

Kate: all voting for the Jatso 3. That's what I'd be kind of I think a terrazzo and a wood kitchen. Could you imagine? 

Jenny: Oh, you've been talking about this wood kitchen and I can't 

Kate: bloody wait. I just think it would be class together. I just think it would be so gorgeous.

There's something a little bit kind of seventies about it as well. I think that wood kitchen and that kind of old terrazzo, whatever. But revamped, 

Jenny: right? So like something, when something happened in the seventies in Ireland, there's a lot of 

Kate: wood kitchens, like don't, no, no. So we should move on from that and evolved wood kitchen.

Yeah. Yeah. A little bit more kind of [00:21:00] minimal. Yeah, I 

Jenny: couldn't love the sound of that more. I think that would be unreal. And so when you talk about the colors of aggregates then, right, you mentioned that it can be marble, it can be, typically it's quartz a lot in Ireland. It can just be stone, pebbles sometimes that are in there.

And you can have everything from white all the way to black. You can have different colors. So I have terrazzo tiles that have a kind of a, dark reddish rusty color there's yellow there's green i love that i think 

Kate: that's i think it's gorgeous yeah lovely warm colors and then you have that raspberry paint to kind of yeah that kind of pink pinkish colors 

Jenny: and it gives you a lot of scope then because it's a way to bring in color that isn't overwhelming because you can get away with a lot on your floor i think 

Kate: even though it's a really large space.

They are classic. Like colored glass, I wonder. I don't know. I wonder can that be used as an aggregate. Yeah. Because I think that would be really pretty, could be polished up, wouldn't it? I'm not sure. I don't know. I must have a look. If anyone knows, let us know. Yeah. Can you put glass 

Jenny: into trousseau flooring?

Yeah, can that be your aggregate? Yeah. I wonder would it be hardy enough? Like what if it, if you're walking over it with heels or something? Yeah, yeah. Is there a risk that it might crash? Who knows? But [00:22:00] then, yeah, anyway, let us know. We'd love to 

Kate: know. So that's my I love that. But I'm slightly, I'm cautiously optimistic because I know the amount of aggregate you want exposed.

And I'd like a lot. I think when I get it polished, the price goes up and up and up. So the more you polish this floor, the more expensive it's going to be. And the reason the price goes up 

Jenny: and up and up is purely because the amount of times that the person laying it down has to go over every single centimeter of it with that sander to polish it down.

And that reveals more. Of the aggregate they can change shape almost, you know, because these are these are all organic shapes They're all different pebbly type things. So the next layer of polish could reveal a slightly different Flooring surface, which is lovely. 

Kate: Yeah, and I've also not necessarily an interior floor but I've also seen people do it on driveways and things where they pour their cement and Then they power hose the surface rather than polishing it outside.

So what it does is they It exposes the aggregate a [00:23:00] little bit the first few millimeters in or whatever. Okay. And it gives you this kind of textured, bumpy, Yeah. Stony 

Jenny: surface. It's nice flat then. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Yeah, but it's solid. Does that continue to wear away then over time though? Like, would you have tire marks in it and stuff?

Kate: The rest of it's concrete, so it shouldn't, I would think, but I thought it looked pretty cool for kind of an outdoor option. Yeah, I love that. I really 

Jenny: like that. Okay. So that is polished concrete and terrazzo, which we, safe to say, we're probably the biggest fans of. Yeah. Next one that

everyone's probably going to have top of mind is laminate. Should you get laminate? Should you not get laminate? I'm going to come out and say, do if you're planning on getting rid of it pretty quickly. Yeah. Don't bother spending money on it. Yeah. And if you're thinking of a more permanent option, I would instead get the engineered wood.

Or, I would get vinyl tiles, which is what I got the last 

Kate: time it would come to that. Yeah, laminate is definitely a cheaper option. I definitely wouldn't put it in any high traffic areas. You might get away with it for a cheap option in bedrooms and stuff like that if you wanted to. But do be aware, like, laminate is very ticky.

[00:24:00] Like if you have a dog, you hear a ticky. As in, like, you walk across it, it's tick tick tick tick tick tick tick. So, like, I, that, that really annoys me. It sounds very hollow. Cause it's kind of generally like a floating floor. It's not really glued or screwed down. And laminate, you can't sand it, right?

No, you can't sand laminate. You just have this thin layer of essentially fake wood or wood look on the top. And once that wears away, that's it. That's it. So if you're buying 

Jenny: laminate and you're putting it down, buy extra. Find somewhere to store it. Because if anything gets damaged, and it will, it just isn't the sturdiest thing in the world, then you can replace it pretty easily.

That is the benefit, I suppose. Cost is the benefit, right? Laminate is cheap. And that's the benefit. And if you're, if you don't need it to last forever, then brilliant, go 

Kate: for it. Yeah, there's a place for it, I suppose. Low traffic, maybe something that's slightly temporary. We actually put laminate in our dining space in this current house because we knew it was going to be coming up in a year.

Yeah, you put it down yourselves, did you? Yeah, we put it down ourselves. It's actually stupidly easy to put down. Stupidly easy, yeah. yeah. The only bit that's kind of tricky is the cuts around where maybe radiator pipes are. If you have any [00:25:00] jutty out bits like a chimney breast, you know, getting those bits right.

Yeah. And a trim around skirting. That's a little bit tricky, but other than that, like, it's super easy to lay. Now, we put it down. We bought it. It was like, I think, 16 euros a box in Homebase or something. It was grand. It was like, I think it worked out about 10 euros a square meter or something like that.

I think it was 2 meters in a box or close to 2 meters in a box. Anyway, we laid it ourselves just as a temporary measure. And the walkway, say, from our The entrance to the dining space into the kitchen is obviously the high traffic area and the pattern has gone from there already. Oh for god's sake.

And zeroed. So the pattern is just printed on with laminate, right? Pretty 

Jenny: much, yeah. So if you have, obviously if you have wood the, the, the pattern runs through it, like it's a solid block. Laminate is material that a wood effect has been printed onto. So it, it can 

Kate: wear away pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah. Or sometimes it can be just a really thin layer.

pin pin split layer of timber glued on, you know, so almost like a veneer, I guess. But it's yeah, it's, it's really just a kind of a temporary thing, a cheap [00:26:00] thing or a low traffic area like bedrooms or something that you might have a rug down anyway, and it's, you're only seeing the edges, but it's super cheap, like cheap, cheap, cheap.

So 

Jenny: brilliant. There's a place for it. Exactly. And no, that place for it is not in the kitchen or the bathroom. You can buy. You can buy very high quality laminate that is treated to be water resistant and all that and that's brilliant. But again, I'm back to if you're doing that, then just go for the 

Kate: engineered wood altogether.

Yeah. Yeah. You're not far off in price. Yeah. The backing board and cheap laminates is like a An MDF maybe? An MDF or some sort of fiberboard. If you're a dog piece on that, you spill a glass of water and no one notices, it's going to seep through the cracks and that board will swell. Yeah, and we've 

Jenny: all seen that look in apartments that we've rented over the years where there's just a weird piece where the floor is kind of coming up or it's swollen or something.

Yeah, it 

Kate: looks terrible. So that's what we think on laminate.

Jenny: and a place for it. Nothing wrong with it. It's your cheaper option. If that's what you need and you need something temporary, then by all means you have our blessing. Please go for it. Now on to my favourite. Yeah. Which is the 

Kate: luxury vinyl tile. Oh, yes. Bloody. Love 

Jenny: these right? [00:27:00] This is, when I was shopping around in whatever 2019, 2020, engineered wood was available.

It was really expensive It's actually come a long way since then so I would go back and look at it now with new eyes That said, I got luxury vinyl tiles Three brands you can get in Ireland. There's Carandine, there's Antico. I got Moduleo for cost reasons and also I think it just looks great It was the only one available in those, that small Herringbone plank that I wanted and the color that I wanted which is a much lighter almost kind of whitewashed.

Kate: Yeah, it is almost like a 

Jenny: whitewashed oak, is it? Yeah, yeah. So, vinyl flooring is effectively bulletproof, it comes in all the individual tiles, so you, you know, whoever's laying down your floor needs to lay it down. It's glued onto a surface, it's glued onto a screed, meaning it's perfect with underfloor heating, which I have and love, and it feels wonderful.

You can, you know, Set a bonfire on it if that's what you choose to do. It's absolutely fine. It's perfect in kitchens. It's waterproof It's perfect in bathrooms. It effectively lasts [00:28:00] forever Another major reason that I went with Moduleo is because a lot of their flooring is made from recycled vinyl So they take in for example old lino partial rubber recycling and it's it's a recycled material so 

Kate: That's that's wonderful 

Jenny: and it lasts 

Kate: As far as I know, forever.

And you don't get any pattern wear or anything like that? Nope. 

Jenny: The pattern is printed throughout. So, it's almost solid. You can't, obviously if you do get some kind of stain on it that you can't buff out. You can't buff it out. You'd have to replace it. So I do have some extra. Well you said they're 

Kate: individual tiles.

They're individual tiles. So very easy to pop one out. Absolutely. 

Jenny: If you need to. Yeah. And I've never, I don't know what could stain it at this stage. I mean the amount, how often have I poured red wine on almost every surface in this house? And if that doesn't do it, like, it's just wonderful stuff. It's so easy to clean.

The surface, whatever the surface of it is, is made of, means that it just doesn't stain. Like stain doesn't seep through it. Yeah. 

Kate: I love it. Brilliant. It looks great as well. It looks great. I think it looks really natural. Yeah, it does. And [00:29:00] the fact that you have a tiny kind of, I suppose, little bevel or kind of micro bevel around each piece makes it look like wood flooring because of the individual pieces.

Yeah, the texture makes a big difference. 

Jenny: Yeah, which I think as well reduces that clacky clacky sound you're doing here, sorry. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, because it's more, it's also a tiny bit softer, I suppose, than like just the Super, you know, hard laminate or hardwood. But yeah. 

Kate: Yeah, yeah. And even the way the light catches it, you can see that texture through it.

Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. It looks very realistic. Yeah. So I love it. That's, I would hands down 

Kate: go for that anywhere. What are we talking, cost wise, in terms of that versus engineered wood? 

Jenny: At the time, mine was a good bit cheaper than engineered wood. Now, I think engineered wood has come a long way, so it's worth the price.

Yeah. Pricing again. The other two brands that I mentioned, Carnegie and Nantico, were really expensive compared to Moduleo. I'm not 100 percent sure why or what the difference is. I have not noticed any quality issues in Moduleo, so I'd be really happy to recommend it. But it was very affordable. It was the cost of maybe, like, a higher end laminate.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, next flooring then. Next flooring. Carpet? [00:30:00] Carpet. Carpet. Carpet is Oh, tiles! We never even spoke about tiles, but we actually spoke about tiles. We've covered tiles a lot, so 

Jenny: go back and listen to our 

Kate: bathroom episode. Yeah, I don't know if it's a point, is there a point in rehashing The only thing 

Jenny: I'd say is that you need to, obviously we're talking about flooring here, right?

So there's certain types of tiles, you need to be looking at tiles that will hold up to high traffic areas specifically. 

You need to rule out certain types . Especially if they have a layer, some of them are kind of a, this lovely kind of glass looking tile. They've got like a, a coating on top. Like a glass crackly kind of coating. Yeah, which looks so beautiful for the 

Kate: walls. Do not put this on the floor. Yeah, yeah, because it'll crack and damage over time.

Yeah, 

Jenny: exactly. Okay, yeah. It won't hold up to high traffic. So you can have, you can have that, you can have concrete tiles. I have that on the floor in my downstairs bathroom. Perfect. Yeah. Hold, they last forever. Especially the ones I have, they're terrestrial. If anything happens, you can buff out any cracks or anything like that, surface 

Kate: cracks.

I think I would generally say though, if it's for the floor, just be conscious of kind of overly porous tiles in general, because you'll get staining. So like, if you're going for a [00:31:00] natural stone, lovely. But make sure they're properly sealed so you're not ending up with stains really quickly. 

Jenny: And again, we spoke about this in the bathroom episode, seal it properly and do not put down a white grout.

I'm, I don't care what you've seen that you love the look of, you're going to be driven insane. On your floor. On your floor. On your walls. Fine. On whatever, like a non, you know, high traffic area, fine. Do not use white grout. Use a grey grout, use a black grout, use whatever colour grout you want. They come in all different colours.

But don't use white. It will stain and it will break your heart and it's 

Kate: just not worth it. Yeah, and especially I found we had Victoria Mosaic in our kind of kitchen run because we didn't want to put the parquet in there just because of any stains or whatever and I did find even with the mid grade grout Like you it was fine But you could see little grease spots because sometimes the grease spots are really hard to clean and because there was a lot of grout lines because it was a small tile You noticed it, so I can't even imagine what it was.

And you can't clean it. 

Jenny: Like, I'm sorry now, but it's better, I'm, life is too busy. You can't be down on your hands and knees cleaning, [00:32:00] like, especially if you have small tiles. So what would you do, dark grey or black? I 

Kate: mean, I'd do less bright lines. Yeah, smart. To be realistic, I think, yeah, the smaller tile on the floor is a lot of work.

Yeah, yeah. So I'd probably 

Jenny: avoid it this time. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, yeah, I don't have small tile anywhere, and where I do have tile, which is in my, So my entrance hallway, I have a black grout. I also, sorry, a huge thing if you're going for tiles, especially in a high traffic area, I would really recommend choosing a pattern.

Some type of a pattern because it'll hide dirt. Upstairs, in my upstairs bathroom, I just had normal ceramic kind of matte finish tiles and I love them they're so beautiful they're like a dusty pink and they're this hexagon pattern and they're so fab and they're a nightmare to clean they're just so hard to keep clean.

Because they're matte? Yeah because they're matte and because they're just I think a plain color or something like that and the surface area is big they're not very forgiving. Yeah which is fine in my upstairs bathroom because it doesn't you know I'm not going up there like outdoor shoes or something like that but I would never put that in my hallway it would just be a nightmare so in high traffic areas hallway you [00:33:00] 

Kate: Yeah, I definitely considered that, what I was saying about grout lines, if you're talking about, you know, those beautiful kind of Victorian tiled hallways.

I love them, but you have more grout lines. So just consider it like from a cleaning perspective that Make grey ground or darker. And get, I 

Jenny: think everyone is on tenterhooks actually, because you got a scrub daddy sponge recently. How's that going as we're talking about grout cleaning? 

Kate: I don't have any grout to clean.

Okay, bring it over here so we'll try it. But I'll tell you what I do clean. I clean my walls an awful lot because I have a Vita who gets them very dirty, especially when she comes back in from walking. flings mud from her tail and everything everywhere when she's very excited. So it works quite well for that.

Right, good stuff. And dried on porridge and yogurt on my kitchen walls. I mean, listen, 

Jenny: if anything 

Kate: you get off dried on porridge. That stuff is like, that stuff is like cement. It's like cement. We should make floors out of that actually, dry porridge. Love it. 

Jenny: Palace porridge floor. Okay. Get the scrub daddy.

Or get those magic sponges. I don't know. Again, we've mentioned them before. I don't know what they're made of. I don't want to know. They're incredible. You get [00:34:00] them in the pound shop or Mr. 

Kate: Price or somewhere like that. Magic sponge. Amazing. I got them on Amazon anyway as 

Jenny: well. Or a razor sponge. You can look for it.

Isn't it a razor? I think they're a mild abrasive. So be careful with them. 

Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Be careful what surfaces you put them on. But sorry. On tiles, if you are thinking about it, do have a listen to our bathrooms one. Yeah. Because we go into a lot of the tile kind of detail a bit more. Yeah. Yeah. But just do consider.

Grout. How is it going to keep clean? Yeah. Yeah. Because your floor is not 

Jenny: going to be as Episode 7 I think. Was it 6 or 7? Episode, yeah. Okay, then carpet. 

I have carpet upstairs, which I love, and carpet on my stairs. Stairway, which I wouldn't be without. Only places downstairs. So not downstairs. No, carpets downstairs 

Kate: are disgusting. Like outdoor shoes coming in, they're just 

Jenny: disgusting. Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, I 

Kate: wouldn't have a downstairs either.

I just think it's a bit old fashioned now, carpets downstairs. Big area roads, fine, you can take them out. You can, you know. Hoover, then you can get them cleaned, whatever. But carpet, you can't really properly clean it. And downstairs is just, it's just dirtier. And I think it's dirty [00:35:00] in Ireland 'cause our feet are wet coming in.

You can't be asking all your guests to take off their shoes all the time. It's just, I dunno. I think it just should be stairs and above. I'm with you and no, no shoes. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we ripped up all the old carpets because I just couldn't handle the musty smell 

Jenny: anymore so. But I'm just going to come out and say it and I know I sound like a bit of a privileged princess here.

If I bought a new house, or a second hand house, I would take the carpets off. I just couldn't be dealing with somebody 

Kate: else's old carpets. Okay, this is all dead skin. Because of the willies.

Jenny: There's just like, I know they're going to be clean, but like if 

Kate: I don't just stop. They could have added a pet as well. Like, I know I have a pet and you have a pet, but like, there could be old dogs. Yeah. You wouldn't even know, like, so you just don't know the carpet. Oh, 

Jenny: somebody could have given birth on that carpet.

You just never know like if it's anything. It's 

Kate: just like using someone else's pillow. 

Jenny: Oh, no. God. I just, I couldn't. I know, bring them in, steam clean them, whatever. But I just feel like they do never get the actual dirt out of them, like they're just rotten. 

Kate: Yeah, so we had [00:36:00] stair runner in our old house. We had a looped wool kind of wool blend or wool mix, looped wool kind of boucle carpet and then we did a tape binding.

So we did kind of like a tan and then the tape was kind of a black tape. On the staircase. On the staircase. And then we actually used the same carpet in our guest bedroom on the return. of the house and the kind of landings and then our main big bedrooms, the front of the house were just the original floorboards with rugs, but I loved that looped wool and I think I'd do it again actually.

It feels lovely underfoot. Yeah, lovely. Bit of texture and it's not as kind of velvety, you know, that kind of, it's not as plush as the kind of plain twist style, 

Jenny: but I loved it. When you have the wool blending you need to worry about moths. I don't know. It's the pigment. Any natural fibres. Well, wool in particular.

Moths love wool. Yeah. So wool carpets, you just, you have to find a way to like treat them or completely get rid of moths or whatever 

Kate: it might be. We saw a lot of moths when we moved into our old house. Yeah. Or this house. Sorry. When it was when we moved in originally. We'd see these tiny little moths and I looked them up and it looked like they were fabric moths rather than the big ones you'd see outside.

Yeah. [00:37:00] Specific type. So we got some moth traps, we put them up in the attic space because there was carpet up there as well and we put cedar rings in all our wardrobes. Yeah, I have cedar rings on everything. So apparently how the moth traps work is they capture the females or something so then they don't reproduce so they just die off or whatever they don't.

Pretty dark isn't it? Something like that. There's something about the smell of them where I can't remember if it catches the males and then they can't, I don't know. Whatever way it works anyway, it just gets rid of them at source pretty much and the cedar rings then in our wardrobe and it just, they never came back, I didn't notice them again.

I've never seen them actually eat up the carpet anywhere. Yeah, it happened, it happened to my mum on my mum's carpet, she just had patches of moths eating the carpet, and like, I never saw a moth in her living room, but they do They do. Like, they really go through it. And sure, once you've like, one little ring on your carpet, then you have to replace your whole carpet.

Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. It really put me off getting wool, or, yeah. And wool is harder to keep as well. Yeah, it is. It can kind of pill a little bit, or whatever, you know. You can get fluff off it, and [00:38:00] You can't really bleach clean it, whereas the polyester ones you can bleach clean and they're kind of bomb proof.

Kate: Yeah, my upstairs carpet, given that I have a pet, I won't go into detail, but it's so cleanable. I've never been able to not, like nothing has ever stained it permanently. And that's just a polyester blend. I would say if you have small kids or pets, probably go polyester. Yeah, I think so. Because these days, I know it's probably not the most sustainable option, even though you can go for recycled materials, but yeah, these days.

Jenny: First of all, the quality of the polyester is so good. Especially if you get some kind of blend. It's very hard to tell some of the difference. I think the cheap ones, historically, would have been quite shiny. Yeah. I don't think that's the case anymore. So there's some really good ones. There's even some really good textured kind of weave ones that are fully polypropylene or something like that.

Kate: And you wouldn't know. You wouldn't 

Jenny: know. I think as well, another major tip that I picked up when I was carpet shopping is that it's actually all about the underlay. So you can, you can really scale back and get. a much more lower cost carpet that isn't a very thick, deep [00:39:00] pile, but instead opt for a thick plush underlay 

Kate: which is, doesn't cost anything 

Jenny: basically, free, they give, no they don't, it does cost something but it's much cheaper than the carpet.

But then you get that really soft feeling, it's easier to clean then because you've got a lower pile. You know, it's not so deep 

Kate: still get the plushness. You don't get the flattening that you would from a deep pile, which flattens over time. And it's good for sound insulation. Brilliant 

Jenny: for sound insulation.

That's perfect. Yeah. So yeah, that's the one benefit I suppose of carpet over anything else we've spoken about earlier is that it is incredible for sound. That's why I always would have it on the stairs. Yeah, it makes sense 

Kate: in the stairs. And a lot of people want it for bedrooms 'cause they feel it's cozy.

And it is. It is cozy and you know, like I said, it's good for kind of warmth. It's good for sound from downstairs. People are watching the TV and all that in your bed. So yeah, I'm all for it upstairs. I'm all for it. In the bedrooms and 

Jenny: on your stairs. Yeah, on your stairs. It makes sense. I did the same thing as you on my stairs where my upstairs carpet.

extends down my stairs. I had them cut it into a runner shape so you can do that. [00:40:00] Carpet stair runners don't, are not expensive. You can just make a stair runner out of any carpet you find so you can extend it, you know, throughout your upstairs. And then I have a taped binding all the way down in admiral red, which was so cheap.

I think it's like, I can't remember. It's a few euro per meter length. Like it's really, yeah, yeah, 

Kate: yeah. On the tape binding you definitely pay, you pay per linear meter right? Per linear meter, yeah exactly. So if you have a relatively small stage it's not going to cost you that much. The stair runner, if it's a plain stair runner like we had, you'll be paying per square meter.

Yeah. So they'll kind of Stair runners can get expensive. 100%. 

So then if you're not going for a plain stair runner, You can get like actual custom stair runners. You 

Jenny: can get the most beautiful. I'm obsessed with stair runners I have Pinterest boards galore on stair runners because some of them are just incredible. I love them. They're amazing I nearly got a leopard print one.

Oh, I remember you saying that. I know I was sending you loads, so 

Kate: I remember you said that and I was like well each their own I'm not sure it's for me, but cool Am I glad 

Jenny: I didn't. There's a certain house if I [00:41:00] was ever doing like A really like, avant garde, super modern, or maybe kind of retro style.

There's one I saw that I keep coming back to, and I'm sorry I can't remember where it's from, but it's like a silvery grey. Like a snow leopard print. 

Kate: Yeah, yeah. So it's a little bit, it's not too wild. But oh my god, it's just like a subtle print. Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen some people use actual runners.

Like as in just carpet runners. That you put, that you put in a hallway or a kitchen sometimes. Yeah, and they just use multiple ones of those 

Jenny: upstairs. And you could just glue them or like tack them down with little nails or something like that on the edges. And they stay, yeah. Yeah, so. 

Kate: So, I think that's a really cool option if you're, you know, up for a bit of DIY.

That only really works if you've got a 

Jenny: straight stair. Yeah, if you've got a curve on your stairs, then you have to cut and match. Cut and match. 

Kate: Pattern match. And that becomes very complicated. Yeah. So the pattern matching is where it kind of gets complicated and these purpose, you know, main stair runners with stripes or whatever kind of pattern, there's a few of them I have in mind from my own house.

One Roger Oates. 

Jenny: Roger Oates. 

Kate: Oh my goodness, they [00:42:00] have some beautiful stairway. If you haven't looked them up, just look them up. Like they're just to die for. And then another one is Sophie Cooney. Yeah, oh they're 

Jenny: so beautiful. 

Kate: Like amazing amazing runners, real feature. And our staircase in this house is not that huge.

If we had like this enormous Georgian or Victorian staircase, well maybe I wouldn't be thinking about it. But because our staircase is pretty straight run, one turn, one turn. quite narrow I think, you know, it's worth the 

Jenny: investment for like a real statement. It's expensive per square meter but if you don't have that many square meters then you're not, you know, it's not too bad.

Yeah, exactly. You've been looking at those since before you bought your first, your last house so if you still love it then I would just get 

Kate: it. Well I loved, I actually wanted raw jokes in our last house but our last house had kind of a return and two landings and two turns. Yeah. It would have been the whole thing.

Really expensive and then it's very hard to kind of do the landings because you can't do full landings. 

Jenny: Yeah, so it only kind of works if 

Kate: you've kind of straight run on your stairs, I think. So yeah, thinking about it for this house, thinking about it. 

Jenny: I also really love, just in terms of [00:43:00] carpet fibres, I love like a rattan or a sisal.

Love it. Like natural material, but much more resilient than wool, it doesn't tend to get eaten by bats necessarily. It's kind of rough. But I really like that under my foot. It's almost like a foot massage 

Kate: or something. It's very natural. Yeah, it wouldn't be the cozy feeling 

Jenny: It's not cozy feeling, but it's lovely.

It's 

Kate: very neutral. It is. Yeah, I love it. It would feel very beachy or something I think underfoot. 

Jenny: Yeah, and what I love it with is with rugs So I know putting rugs on carpet doesn't really make sense. But with that, you know, rattan or sisal material Because it's kind of rough Anyway, I think you can put big plush because it's a very neutral So you can put big plush rugs over it on top of it then as well like around the bedding area.

And I think that just looks so 

Kate: nice. Yeah. And I think you get, you can get rugs in that material or in jute as well, which is kind of a 

Jenny: cheaper. That's the other one. J U T E. Yeah. Cheaper 

Kate: kind of version, I suppose. And it'd be worth trying one of those rugs first and see what you think about the feeling underfoot before maybe committing to a [00:44:00] larger area.

Some people hate 

Jenny: it. You know, I'm not, it's not universally loved, but I love it. I really, really love it. Yeah, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I think about 

Kate: carpet. Stairs and upstairs only. Get really good underlay, it's worth it. It's worth it, yeah. And if you've kids and pets, stay away from wool, maybe.

Or moths. 

Jenny: Or moths.

For a final flourish, right, I have some My article that just came out in the Examiner this past weekend I wrote about some unusual alternative floorings and I fell in love with them. Kate and I were talking about this before we started recording, resin. So there's a few different types of resin, epoxy resin is basically, it just gets poured down.

You've definitely seen it, but you've probably seen it in maybe like a hospital or a canteen floor or something. And it's been really dull and grey. But there is the most beautiful house in the January edition of Architectural Digest, it was his couple. And they, one of them was a designer, and they renovated this Paris apartment.

And they used, because you're [00:45:00] literally just pouring a liquid down, you can dye it any colour you want. It's almost like a screed. It's just a, yeah, it's basically a screed, but it's made from resin, yeah, instead of concrete. But you can dye it any colour you want, and they had these beautiful, wavy patterns throughout their really colourful apartment.

It just looked magic. So then I looked into it more to research this article. And it's amazing stuff. It's basically again bulletproof. Now, you were saying you had an apartment 

Kate: that you rented before. Yes, so my apartment in Amsterdam was a real minimalist kind of apartment. It had plywood kitchen. I didn't own this apartment, I just rented it, but it was like plywood kitchen, plywood Murphy bed, plywood wardrobes, and then it had a grey resin floor.

And like, that was it. There was like nothing else in the apartment. Which is cool, right? Very, yeah, very cool, very minimal. Very Amsterdam. And I liked it, actually. I really liked the floor. It was very simple. It's scuffed a bit though, so you'd have to be careful if you rub or sold kind of black shoes because you would see the 

Jenny: scuff marks.

Yeah, it can develop kind of a patina almost which you either like or you don't but it does look, you might want to put down a rug maybe in very high traffic areas. 

Kate: Yeah, now it does buff out, it's fine. [00:46:00] It's just if you're someone that gets annoyed by those little scuff marks. It's the 

Jenny: easiest thing in the world to clean, right?

It does, it buffs out no problem at all. Would you get a 

Kate: scrub dolly on that maybe? Something like that? Yeah, maybe. But you wouldn't probably see it if you did that pattern you were mentioning. Yeah. Minus just pure 

Jenny: flat grey. So, pure flat grey is fine, but like, if you're going a bit bold, Like you can add, you can add like metallic accents to this, you can add glitter to it.

I mean, it's up to you, right? I mean, I don't know. I see you next and it's like, but I snow leopard stairs, like glitter floors, what color grout? Luminous pink grout? Yellow. I definitely 

Kate: love you so much. If anybody 

Jenny: out there wants to buy me a new house to do off, please let me, just give me free reign. I promise you I'll deliver something really cool.

But yeah, so you could do any color you wanted. You could, you can then, if you have that gray color. You can get this kind of marbledy effect almost throughout it and that can look like a polished concrete but much, much, much, much less expensive. I just think it's a really cool option, a really unusual option.

I'd love it on like a bathroom, you know, if somebody was, wanted to go really wild in a [00:47:00] bathroom for a lower cost. Yeah, it's a really good option. look amazing. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. The second kind of out there option that I found was cork. So cork is wood, obviously, it comes from wood. trees but it comes from the bark of a tree so it's really really sustainable because the bark regrows around the tree so they basically harvest you know the bark piece by piece and then it regrows typically oak trees and it regrows and what you end up with so they can make basically anything out of it it comes in these either kind of square tiles or in normal wooden flooring planks but it's this lovely kind of mottled effect which i think can look Gorgeous, like a second amazing insulation amazing insulation.

It's waterproof So you can use it if you wanted to bring it through in through your kitchen. You can do that It's wine proof. We know that it's wine

It's wine proof perfect for wine actually And it works the underfloor [00:48:00] heating Amazingly enough. So it's just a nice magic. Yeah, amazing Very soft underfoot. Yeah, that's one the last one that I came across which is probably You My least favourite of all of them is rubber. So, this is typically made from recycled rubber.

Where I would love this is maybe in a garden. Or your yoga studio. Or if you have No one needs to bring a mat. Yeah, you don't need to. I think we have it in my gym actually. If you have like a home gym or a music room. Oh, does it come in mats? You can get it in a big mat. Or you can get it poured. You can get a liquid rubber.

We actually have rubber mats in our 

Kate: gym. Yeah. In our garage. Kind of space. We have like one meter by one meter, but big heavy kind of rubber mat. Yes, you could just lay it 

Jenny: down like that or you can get in a big roll and lay it, lay it so it all looks You know cohesive and it doesn't have lines through it.

There is such a thing as liquid rubber I wasn't able to find a supplier in Ireland for that. But you can get it dyed then you can get any pattern you want throughout it, which is pretty cool. I think it's an amazing sound insulator. So I think it would be really cool for if you're a musician in the house [00:49:00] Your children viol or God forbid, a drummer and you have one of those outdoor rooms.

It could be, that's where it could be really cool to, to put it down. It's also good in Slater, so very, there some kind of out there options for people 

Kate: who need something a little different. Hmm. Is there any other flooring you haven't covered? Probably wood covered tiles, 

Jenny: Lam. Lino. We didn't cover 

Kate: Lino.

Well, that's essentially 

Jenny: what LVT is. LVT effectively is Lino. It's a new version of Lino. Yeah, it's Lino with an upgrade, but I'm thinking of, I actually remember when I was living in the Netherlands, we were renting a house and usually Dutch houses, if you're renting them for over a year come, when I say not furnished, I literally mean they take out the light fixtures, like there's no flooring or anything, you have to put down everything.

Okay. So one house, we just went and bought like a big roll of lineup flooring and put it down ourselves. 'cause again, it's stupid easy. Like there's no point paying someone 

Kate: to do it. You just cut 

Jenny: it with visitors, put it down. It's cold. It's, but you know, again, it's kind of bulletproof and it's, it's a perfectly good temporary option.

It's stupidly easy to install. I completely 

Kate: forgot that we had it in our [00:50:00] last house because, oh really? When we moved into our house, it hadn't been lived in for whatever, 30 years or whatever. The back of it, someone had poured a concrete screen and never done anything with the house, the previous owner or something.

So the kitchen area, I say kitchen area because there was no kitchen, there was just a concrete floor and we put down rows of lino from the hallways or something 

Jenny: like that. This is back to when we were talking about laminate, if you're looking for something temporary that's going to last, like lino, if you get a really cheap one, it can tear, you know, if you drop something on it or you're walking on it with high heels or it can kind of roll up at the corners if you don't have it.

Oh! It's 

Kate: a perfectly good option. Dogs can't chew through it. Dogs can chew through it? My dog actually chewed. The coroner left it one day and she obviously started digging at it, just was bored in the house by herself, and chewed a good, I'd say, neat foot square, maybe. Into bits. Lovely. Yeah. So, dogs can chew it.

Okay. Dogs can chew it. Make sure the corners are secured well and not rolling up the top. But yeah, it is a good temporary option 

Jenny: if you're moving into a house. Perfectly [00:51:00] good temporary option. You know, easier to put down than laminate. So if you're only, if it's, you know, if you need to just cover something for a while.

Kate: When you rip up those disgusting carpets. She just remembered, 

Jenny: when I first bought this house, again, it hadn't been lived in in a number of years, and it was freezing cold, and I bought a roll of lino and put it down in the downstairs bedroom. Yeah, it's a great temporary option, yeah. It's perfect, yeah, it's perfect.

That's flooring. Rugs is a whole other episode that we'll come to another day. 

 In summary, huge fans of terrazzo. Yeah. Big fans of engineered wood. Everyone 

Kate: just, like, if you know Cian, just tell him that terrazzo would be a great idea in your house.

You should 100 percent go for terrazzo. Well you've been talking about it long enough. Kate's wish. And maybe I'll have some pictures to show you 

Jenny: this year. That is it for flooring. If we missed anything, or there's anything that comes to mind, or you have questions on anything you can contact us. Our details are in 

Kate: the show notes.

See you next time. See you next time. Bye. Thanks If you found that [00:52:00] episode useful, please do us a huge favor by giving us a like, and a few stars and especially click that subscribe button. Thank you.