Hi!
I've recently embarked on the renovation of an 18th century cottage. It's a terraced solid stone walled property. As far as I can tell the work that's been done on the property (in recent years) is minimal, I'm one of two owners of the place in the last 70+ years... I'm a fairly inexperienced DIYer so you might require some patience!
I'm wondering what flooring options I have. We've set our hearts on Parquet, so I'm interested on firstly what my options might be there. When we moved in, the ground floor was fully carpeted, over more carpet and over some lino type stuff. In patches, mostly where furniture had been covering the carpet it had become wet and moldy. We've since stripped everything from the floors, revealing a solid screed of approx 40mm, straight onto earth. There were quite a lot of salts present on the screed when the carpets were removed, but it's approx 3 months on and the floor is now bone dry and salt free.
I'm posting because I've read that old places like mine need to breath. This tends to contradict most common advice - seal the floor up.
At the moment I'm assuming that a breathable floor is the only way to go, but if I want to lay Parquet the only way I can see of doing that is to lay baton, ply and parquet over the top, with some sort of venting incorporated into the skirting? Even if this is a viable solution, it's not ideal, as the ceilings are already pretty low in this place.
Have I gone completely down the wrong road, or has anyone got any knowledge they'd be kind enough to share with me?
Thanks in advance,
Jake