Flooring in London
The most useful thing we can say about flooring in London's older neighbourhoods is: check before you replace.
Old North, Wortley Village and the Woodfield streets are full of original hardwood, and a good deal of it has more life in it than the owner assumes. Where enough wear layer remains, sanding and refinishing costs meaningfully less than a new floor and produces a better result, because it keeps board widths and species that are no longer easy to buy. That check is a measurement rather than an opinion, and it matters most for engineered floors, whose thin veneers often cannot survive a full sanding.
Where a floor does need replacing, the subfloor becomes the job. A century of joist deflection, board subfloor laid diagonally, and level changes where an addition met the original structure all sit underneath, invisible until the old covering comes up. Every rigid finish reproduces the surface it is laid over, so tile cracks at a flex point and click-lock planks separate along a dip. We lift a section and look before quoting a finish, and the levelling gets priced as its own item.
In Masonville, Sunningdale and the north-end subdivisions the plywood is sound and the work is a level check, attention to squeaks while the fasteners are reachable, and a material decision.
London's rental market makes one specific recommendation worth stating. In a student suite or an income unit, rigid-core LVP is the right answer nine times out of ten. It takes heavy use, it cleans, and individual planks can be lifted and replaced without redoing the floor, which over a decade of tenancies is worth more than appearance.
Below grade, London clay means the slab gets tested rather than assumed. Engineered, LVP or tile over a proper moisture break are the sensible options, and solid hardwood is not one of them.
Flooring is not permit work unless the structure underneath is being altered.
Before pricing a replacement in the older neighbourhoods it is worth finding out what is already down. A great deal of London's pre-war stock has original strip hardwood under the carpet or laminate that went over it in the 1970s, and where that floor has enough thickness left above the tongue it can be sanded and refinished for less than a new floor costs. Not every board survives that test: previous sandings, water damage at radiators and doorways, and cut-in patches for later ductwork all reduce what is left. But the check takes minutes and occasionally turns a full replacement quote into a refinishing one, which is worth knowing before the material order goes in rather than after the old floor is in a bin.
Where a refinish is not viable, the old floor coming out is also the opportunity to deal with whatever it was hiding, usually a subfloor that has been patched around ductwork and plumbing over a century of alterations.
We also handle the painting that usually follows and the rest of our London service area.
East along the 401 the housing runs to a different mix of eras, covered on flooring in Cambridge. Further east the tri-city stock is largely postwar with plywood subfloors, dealt with on hardwood flooring in Kitchener.
