When Sally and Andy moved into their 16th Century home, they knew they had a big renovation ahead of them, Sally explains “When we moved here, it hadn’t been touched in nearly 70 years. There were 28 leaks on our first night. So, we always knew that we were taking on a huge project. We needed a new roof, electrics, plumbing, kitchen, bathrooms etc. Our builders did the main works in a year and then we are still doing the smaller jobs – the latest being the Games Room where we used your fabulous floor”!
When designing the games room, the couple had to consider multiple factors. In addition to being their home, this beautiful property is used for location shoots and an Airbnb. This meant the design needed to be brilliantly hardwearing whilst still maintaining a great aesthetic! Drawing upon inspiration from Pinterest, magazines and Instagram, Sally put her love of interior design to good use and began to plan their large-scale renovation!
When asked what inspired their floor decision, Sally explains “As we had the dark wall of the parquet flooring and the dark-ish wall of the brick I knew I wanted a lighter floor to contrast. It also needed to be very hard-wearing and easy to clean”. To that end, Sally chose Tintagel from our Natureffect XL collection.
Tintagel offers a cool and contemporary colour, whilst still maintaining a rust oak effect. The registered embossed top surface creates a realistic wooden look that not only makes it near impossible to tell apart from real wood but also remains extremely durable – which was an important factor for Sally:
“As it’s a games room it gets a lot of wear and tear, so I didn’t want to always be on edge about people spilling stuff or wearing high heels… I loved how real it looked and also how hard wearing it was”. When discussing the style Sally went on to say “I was after a paler colour to contrast with the wood and brick wall but still wanted the wood effect”.
Sally’s involvement didn’t stop at design, when it came to the installation of the laminate flooring, the couple were all hands-on deck and installed it themselves. Sally recalls “We were concerned having never laid a floor before however the how-to video on the V4 website was very helpful and after a few full starts, it really was quite simple”.
Click here to watch our helpful video on how to install our Natureffect Laminate flooring.
Continuing the DIY projects, Sally also created a herringbone style parquet feature wall in the games room using upcycled flooring from the main home:
“The parquet was lifted from what is now the dining/sitting area of the kitchen. We lifted it as we wanted underfloor heating so we have had them stored in the garage knowing that one day I would have a use from it. Someone I follow on Instagram made a parquet wall in their bedroom and as soon as I saw it, I knew that was what I wanted to do. It was my lockdown project and it’s probably my most proud DIY job.”
Sally explains that the flooring had ‘totally’ lived up to their expectations and that she couldn’t be happier!
“We love how hard wearing it is and to be honest how it doesn’t look like laminate… It was designed perfectly and once we had watched the how to lay video, we found it very easy to lay ourselves even though we have never laid floor before”; and when it comes to cleaning sally tells us it’s ‘so easy’ and that ‘It’s had a lot of wear and tear and looks brand new’!
