@ sally wastie....Would have loved those pine kitchen cupboards....before they were painted. Had I a strong yen for :a bit of colour"...(and I do love colour), I would have had a new glossy multi coloured counter top, probably something very striking and then oiled the pine cupboard doors There were no work benches in the kitchen of my 1920s all pine cottage ( always say that the kitchen was an afterthought since it is positioned just of a hallway and consisted only of a sink and a wood burning stove.) I built a small bench/table using VJ pine slats I'd removed from elsewhere and then put a thick pine top that curved out from the small straight bench to form a little round kitchen table..Then came the fun, I painted the benchtop and table a datk teale colour, gave it a flecked faux marble finish and a couple of coats of high gloss waterproof varnish. Nothing terribly amazing but it did give the old...'kitchen space' a bit of a lift. Had a larger round kitchen table with a formica top and timber legs...so gave the table-top the same teale treatment as the bench and it now lives on the veranda that came a few years later. Yes! Teale of any shade always looks good with timber. The only pity was that the kitchen walls and ceiling here were terribly smoke stained and had been painted a really horrible pre WWII green. Begrudgingly, I repainted the walls but used a bright orange/yellow to complement the dark teale colour ( this particular yellow is a good colour to keep the flies out) and, in keeping with the era of the house, I installed a built in dark timber kitchen hutch found at the dump shop. The kitchen is the only room to have been painted and repainted....but still have the dark timber parquetry floors. If you get tired of all timber a few splashes of bright colour in well-thought-out places do not go astray. If you have vertical timber panelled walls and you are feeling hemmed in... a good trick is to stain a small section of panels a darker wood colour or with a coloured stain to shift the focus from all the timber. or you can bleach the timber panels lighter. This idea can create interest extending ceilngward from behind a furniture piece...say low display cabinet...or just in a section of wall. You enhance the all timber 'look' with an eye -catching timber panel of another timber hue...like having a mahogany panel set in a light timber wall... Just a few ideas for those feeling a bit claustrphobic in an all timber house....understandable, not all of us aspire to live in a log cabin...but if carefully accented, an all timber interior can be extremely impressive and will not date. This is a pre-digital shot of the glass panels I had installed in the wall around my bed head...its really faded PIC but you can get the idea. Looks better today since the glass has been decoratively frosted with patterns. The sunroom behind the bedroomThis is also a pre-digital PIC showing the little timber kitchen bench with the teale table top. The end and other side of the bench is stained timber. This little table seats 3 or 4. Pity you can't see the old parquetry floor here. Old formica table given a lift with a Teale coloured painted top...there's no room for it in the ' kitchen space'. Amazing what a little lick of the right colour can do in an all timber house.

Anyone who has the luxury of an old 1900s timber floorboards is, in my view a very fortunate Houzzer and would have a very difficult time trying to get anything today that remotely resembled those boards. I have a Queenslander from that era. All Queenslanders has tongue and groove Hoop PIne floors and they were nearly always covered in newspapers with "lino" ( made in England) over the top...so were well preserved. The advice I received about these untouched floorboards that had been seasoned naturally for many years prior to use was to initially "feed them" with a mix of kerosene and pale boiled linseed oil and then stain them if I wanted then give them a couple of sealant coats that would still allow them to breathe. I opted for just a kero and pale boiled linseed oil sprayover whenever they looked "thirsty" and I've used thick rugs to protect them from wear and tear. I've had them like this for 30 yrs or so and am very, very happy with my floors...and they are soft wood. Every couple of years I douse the floors with turpentine as this penetrates the timber and prevents termites, then continue on with the stain, kero and linseed oil mix...then get them buffed. That's just my story that may be or not a little helpful, I was born in Victoria so am familiar with the balck Japan satin that was used down the boards exposed each side of the hall runners....and the boards were the wider ones. Its a pity that multiple sandings compromise the tongue and groove..sometimes such floors need reinforcing from underneath. After acertaining that, maybe a light.soft timber "overfloor"rather than a hardwood would be the go although quite a bit of maintrnance for the first few years. You could stain it any colour you wanted. by getting a light to mid brown or teak stain and give it several coats allowing drying in between until you were satisfied with the colour. Its a good thing to keep in mind that timber flooring from that era was very well and naturally seasoned for years prior to being sold for use...the idea was to seel people timber that would last. I have put on a couple of decks here and am rather disappointed to see that the newer timbers are showing signs of wear and deterioration whilst the original timbers are still as unblemished and solid as the day they were used to build my old home. I think that was a very good lesson for me. All timbers today are kiln dried for expediency so, since they were not permitted to "age gracefully": and gently they are not naturally strong. If ever I do any more timber renos to this place I will be sourcing old timbers form places being demolished. These often cost more...but there's method in that madness! I'd say to anyone wanting their floors to stand the test of time...Buy old timber and treat it as it would have been treated of old. Should have some photos of these floors somewhere. I'll post them if I can

Hello Stella In the flooring industry this type of flooring was called a floating floor, because it sits on an underlay. Now it is called an engineered floor (and stops the first question being about the noise underfoot).... but the noise remains depending on the level of the floor and the type of underlay. Engineered floors have a number of layers of timber/ply at right angles to allow the expansion/contraction of the grain to be controlled. The top layer is the prefinished or raw timber species that you want with the other layers in various ply. There are cheaper alternatives again that have particle board (chipboard) or mdf backing with a laminate printed pattern. These are, in my humble opinion not worth opening the box. A solid timber floor can be laid a multitude of ways. Over concrete, I waterproof the slab, level it and glue and nail a plywood sheet. The timber is then laid over it, sanded and flooded (gaps filled) then sealed with a finish being either oil or water/oil based polyurethane. It can also be stained before sealing. With the engineered floors, they come from all over the world. Some are made in China, some are made in Indonesia, some are made in Europe and so on. A major supplier to a lot of the flooring companies is a company called Premium Floors. They supply products to eg carpet shops inc Quick-step and have done for many many years. Their website is worth a look before you go out into retail outlets. As to your original question, when I built my first family home I installed a readyflor (premium floors as it happened) floating floor. The floor withstood some almighty parties (before kids) and still looks amazing 18 years later (it hasn't been sanded at all). Today, I only install solid timber floors in our work purely because of personal preference and the type of renovations we are doing, and when requested by a client we have sourced from Europe. Cheers

Polyurethane timber floor finishes are the most durable and economical floor coating available for floor sanding and polishing projects. Especially if you are considering the resale of your home in the future. Liming or white washing your floor certainly is in fashion at the moment but is far more expensive to do. If you are still interested in liming your timber floors take a look our blog for some more info . http://budgetfloorsanding.com.au/?s=liming+timber+floors http://budgetfloorsanding.com.au/timber-floor-finishes/timber-floor-staining/