Unless you live like animals, carpet does not 'harbour' a single living organism. It's a scientific fact. It's your bed that harbours organisms. Carpet acts like an air filter for dust, waiting for you to vacuum it out. Timber flooring allows dust to be constantly stirred up into the air in the home unless you vacuum and mop daily. At the end of the day, go with what you like- carpet in bedrooms and not in high traffic areas is logical. I've manufactured carpet for years and wholesale carpet and hard flooring. There is a lot of misinformation out there about all flooring types. Happy to answer any queries.

Hi Andrew, I think you are asking what type of timber you can use to match your floors. You may like to consider either Karri, ( or Spotted Gum, Nyatoh or Tasmanian Blackwood) as these are readily available hardwood timbers in this varigated tone and grain pattern you have. It is also worth noting that Timbers that start out with red in them also actually fade over time to turn this nutty colour. Once you decide on a spiecies, your Cabinet Maker may also be able to hand pick colours to get the closest match. Hope this helps; regards Malcolm.

Hi Badobbs Structafloor will only span 600mm unsupported in the 22mm and 450mm in the 19mm version so no, it alone won't fix your issue. A simple fix would be to pull up the floor in the affected area and then 'pack' it up to level, THEN lay some structaflor over the new supported sub floor. This is done by getting a laser level and marking out the low points in the joists then making up packers to suit, or installing a packer and planing it down to suit. It depends on the level of dipping. It will be your cheapest option and definitely a job for your carpenter (unless you're handy). Regarding disturbing the floorboards that is nonsense. If there are other issues such as other sagging floorboards then you can address them at the same time, or fix them down properly with screws. I suspect that the real issue is that the wall removal did not take into account that the floor joists are usually fixed to it and they are now unsupported. If you get under there and find issues with your joists/bearers then it is not a big deal to install a couple of stumps/connect bearers to support them whilst it is open. We do it all the time. Either way laying a new floor over a subfloor without addressing it would be a waste of money and will degrade your new floor. Cheers

i'm guessing that a problem could be that the boards will shrink and create drafty gaps so i think my old builder dad would have laid the boards upside down, without nails to settle to the temperature and moisture in the room while he did other jobs for a week or two and then turned over the boards and, using a solid timber length to push the boards tight as possible before nailing and he would have probably appreciated the idea of adding some under floor insulation as well