wood floors(HELP PLEASE) (hardwood, best, Raleigh, laminate)

[MikeJaquish]

"From everything that I had read, real wood would not hold up to doggie accidents(MikeJaquish might want to comment on this)."
Comment? Sure, I will.

I don't know, but I have a hunch that the prefinish with 10 coats would do better than sanded and poly'ed would.
But I think you made a very good choice for your circumstances, and showed great foresight on the transitions between rooms.

FWIW, I was in a home that is listed at $549K last week. It had wood in all the rooms, and then cheap laminate in the bonus room. The wood wasn't great, but it was sure better than the laminate.
Laminate floors that have that wavy, bouncing, floating feel, or feel like a chair leg or spike heel would puncture the floor are very uncomfortable to walk on. They are the ones that scream "cheap," IMO.

[Kevin HW Engineer]

Originally Posted by MikeJaquish

I bought top end, quarter sawn oak from Lumber Liquidators.
.

Another point about quarter sawn wood, is there is a bit less expansion & contraction in the width of each board versus the same wood if it were plain sawn. I installed unfinished red oak, rented a sander. 10 years later, there are a few dents & scratches...
...oh look, here's here's where I dropped my pliers...

I used plain sawn instead of quatersawn, as that was what my budget allowed. There are noticeable gaps here & there during the winter months. These paper thin gaps close up in the humid summer months. The beveled edges of pre-finished boards hide the gaps.

I saw one house in NC with hickory floors. I like the look and the durability, but hickory is less dimensionally stable (vs humidity) than oak.

Here is a small page on wood movement
http://eslllc.com/html/stability.html

For example, mahogany expands/contracts about half as much as hickory. Furniture made with dimensionally stable woods are less likely to tear themselves apart over the centuries. Craftsmen also use floating raised panels (e.g., the 6 panel door) to allow movement. Mahogany is a soft wood. I can dent it with my fingernail...imagine what a big dog could do...

I know one guy who makes his cats wear booties so they do not scratch up his precious wood floors. No comment....

My son dropped a "drinking bird"on the oak floor.
http://demo.physics.uiuc.edu/LectDem.../PIC00016a.jpg
The red liquid is quite an effective dye. I will need to sand / restain that section of floor before I put the house up for sale... In the meantime, my wife hid the spot with an area rug.

[lpnny]

canine ,
my hubby has installed the laminate wood flooring in our family room and living room. It is wonderful....I too have dogs and not a scratch on them--he my hubby did his own scratch test at the store before deciding on the brand of flooring called Bruce--actually it is much better than pergo! The sales men lit the flooring on fire, scratched it with a nail and sissors with no damage to be seen or felt. It was very reasonable. We did a 20 x 16 room for under 1,000.00 with the special padding included. This of course was self installed. It was easy to install and my hubby and his buddy did it in 2 weekends.
we purchased the flooring from Home depot.
love it love it!!!
lpnny

[canine7]

i think im eventually gonna put in wilsonart estate plus pacific birch laminate(everywhere but bathrooms)if anyone knows someone thats great at installing floors let me know-

[StillMissingNC]

BTW canine7, et al, http://www.ifloor.com has an outstanding flooring material sample viewing capability where you can magnify the sample to an unusually high resolution. If you haven't already locked in your choice, you may find it useful. It does not necessary have every selection magifiable, but most. Canine7, your current selection was not magifiable, but you can look at the same type of material, probably. The Wilsonart "Red Label Collection" has the beveled edge that I mention in a previous response

I have also done a small room using Wilsonart(the older glue type) and it has been tough as nails.

[canine7]

thanks for the info,
the wilsonart estate plus laminate flooring in pacific birch is beyond awesome(imho) but it seems crazy expensive....Its 5 -6 bucks a sq foot just for the wood,then with the underlay and labor its about 8 bucks a sq foot-that seems like alot-atleast for the average joe like me....I know its top of the line laminate but thought it would be about half of that...HIGHLY RECOMMEND checking it out---seems great,can hardly tell its a laminate.

[canine7]

has anyone ever used ifloors,they have it at 4.09 a sq foot and it says they provide installers---any personal experience using this site?

[StillMissingNC]

I used IFloor.com for the materials when I put down the Witex over 3 years ago. The installation of the glueless laminate is not difficult if you have some basic carpentry skills and your floor is already sufficiently smooth and flat to start with. In addition to the planks and underlayment, you will need some kind of moulding with which to finish it off. Installer/sellers will generally use raw wood moulding and transition strips and stain them to match the planks since it is cheaper that way. The matching, mfg'ed moulding can be quite expensive. However, that is what I chose to use for my installation. In some cases, I used other mfg's transition strips because they were cheaper and matched adequately. So you can see that you have to cost out the whole job carefully to be able to compare it with a turnkey installation. This wasn't an issue with me since I knew that I was going to provide the labor.

The main difference is that I paid about $1.60/sqft then and now the same 8mm planks, although they don't have exactly the same names, are $2.84.

I'm sure that IFloor.com just subcontracts locally for the installation services and ships the material to your door. So, if you are not going to do the job yourself, you might be better off going with the best turnkey job that you can find locally and save yourself some logistical trouble. I would suggest looking at Angies' List for Raleigh seller/installers and see if you can come up with one that stands out in cost and quality. And, maybe some of the locals on the forum will provide you with some good experinces too.

Just looking one of my receipts, I see that I also got a shipment from Witex USA out of Keenesaw Ga. which came through a www.floorone.com order. I never had any bad experiences with either vendor. I just looked at the floorone price for Wilsonart Pacific Birch and it was $3.48. So it might be worth taking a second look at just getting an installer and buying the materials yourself if that's is workable for you.

[canine7]

more awesome advice,THANKS-KEEP IT COMING.
2 comments-First,i do panic a little since i have no carpentry skills and i have heard something about letting the wood "acclimate" or something in your house before you put it in...not sure what that entails.
Second,what exactly is angus list?Pardon my ignorace,really appreciate the comments

[StillMissingNC]

Understand, you should do whatever you feel comfortable with.

The need for acclimatation is because materials vary dimensionally with humidity and temperature. You simply want those materials to arrive at a stable position within the environment of your house before you merge them together. Even then there are still variations in temperature and humidity within the house that, over the entire length of the room, can cause changes of maybe a few tenths of an inch. For that reason, you use spacers during installation to keep the planks a small distance away from the walls so that they can expand without contacting the wall and maybe buckling the flooring. I've found that for laminate flooring and an air conditioned house that the problem is almost non-existent. So, although they do tell you to let acclimate, I believe that you can start to work with it almost immediately. This may not be true for other flooring products.

Sorry about Angie's List. Angie's List is a website that provides a compiled list of customer reviews of various companies in terms of their own experience with the companies. For example, if you bought a water heater and had it installed, you might write a report for Angie's List describing what kind of price and service you received. All of the reports for that company are available for anyone looking for similar services. This is better explained on the website http://www.angieslist.com/AngiesList...utTheList.aspx .