A guide to the different types of floor covering available, with pro's and con's of each type. Choosing floor covering used to mean picking a colour of shag-pile carpet. Luckily, nowadays there is a huge range of options available to us lucky DIY-ers to choose from. But exactly what is available and what are the pro's and con's of each type? Here is a run-down of the most popular floor coverings, and although it is not definitive, should help you make a more informed choice.

A DIY guide to laying rubber and woven-backed carpets correctly. Make sure the floor is clean and dry. Rubber-backed carpets will need to be stuck down with 50 millimetre wide double-sided tape around the edge of the room. Woven-backed carpets can be held with special gripper strips nailed to the floor (or stuck to a concrete floor) around the edge of the room.

Once your room is marked into quarters, dry lay the tiles (lay them out as you want them, but without adhesive). This allows you to see how the tiles will fit and allow you to adjust the centre slightly if needed.

A guide to the basics of laying laminate flooring. This guide relates to both the interlocking type of laminate flooring and the tongue-and-groove variety. We will show you how to lay both properly, but much of the preparation and the finishing applies to both types.

A DIY guide to lining a wooden floor with hardboard so that you can lay floor tiles or laminate over the top. Read on and get more information.

A DIY guide to repairing and restoring damaged or tired woodblock (parquet) flooring. Woodblock or Parquet flooring can be very attractive in any home, but especially in period homes. Over time, a woodblock floor can become faded and damaged, even losing some of the many hundreds of individual wooden blocks which make up the pattern. Having a Parquet floor completely replaced is extrordinarily expensive, so knowing how to restore and maintain your existing floor is well worthwhile.

A guide to the different types of treatments you can apply to wooden floorboards, and how best to apply them. As with any painting or varnishing job, preparation is the key. However, the correct preparation is even more essential when the paint or varnish is being applied to floors. Floors obviously take more of a beating than walls, etc, so getting it right first time will mean less repair work in the future.