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Hardwood gets my vote too. We had hardwood in our home and we loved it. It held up very well. We are in a rental home right now (waiting for the one with the hardwood to sell) that has Pergo and it just looks cheap. It has a hollow sound and I just hate it. I think it looks tacky. But, it is easy to clean. For resale, I would go with the hardwood.
I have Shaw laminate floors and I don't think they look cheap. Actually they look great. Until you look more closely and see the scratches and nicks. We have no kids or pets, but the laminate floors have still taken a lot of beating.
If real hardwood is too expensive for you, I would look into bamboo. I heard that bamboo flooring is cheaper than oak or others typically used for floors, but is actually harder. Plus it has the benefit of being repaired or refinished that laminate does not have.
Can laminate and hard woods both be installed on concrete in sub ground level areas without any warping? What is the typical care required for hard woods and what is the cost difference between the two? We are going to try to sell in a few years but for now want to make the best investment and just enjoy it.
Being that you are in VA, plenty of hardwood and probably a few amish folks, you might look with them. I found unfinished oak and walnut flooring of varying widths from .90 - 1.60 /sqft. Installation is another matter. You cant compare to wood floor. Its easy to clean and can always be made new again. More sanitary than carpet.
We installed Wilsonart laminate in our kitchen and breakfast room areas a few years ago and hated it the minute it was down. It made a hollow, clicking sound when walked on and sounded like we were walking on, well, plastic -which we were! We ripped it up and installed real wood and never looked back. The laminate is supposed to be indestructible - and probably is - but wood is a natural material and feels better to walk on.
We installed Wilsonart laminate in our kitchen and breakfast room areas a few years ago and hated it the minute it was down. It made a hollow, clicking sound when walked on and sounded like we were walking on, well, plastic -which we were!
I read the whole thread looking for someone to comment on that, and there it was in the last post....lol. I can't stand the noise that laminate makes, and combined with the fake looking woodgrain, I'd never put it in any home I built or owned. Maybe it's OK for starter homes (just maybe....lol), but not in a $1/2 million home.
When we moved into our house last year, we were thrilled it had new hardwood floors. My husband said that it didn't look like hardwood to him but what do we know & we'd never done much research on it. On the day we moved in, the movers dropped a box of glass stuff on the floor and then moved the box and scraped a huge gash in the floor of our dining room. We called the contractor who installed the floors to give us the name of a refinisher in the area and we were told that we couldn't do it because it was "finished" in the factory with a coating. This made no sense to use until we figured out that we'd been snowed with hardwood laminate. The first couple layers are wood but the rest is laminate. It is such a total rip off--so hard to clean and it creaks. The worst part of it is that because it's real wood on the top, if you spill water on it, the wood warps. Do not go anywhere near laminate wood. Real hardwood is the only way to go, especially up north in Virginia.
I'm with the majority... if you're talking resale value on anything other than a starter home go with real hardwood.
We've been looking at houses and even my husband, who usually cares very little about cosmetic type stuff, has become an expert on identifying laminate flooring. (he hates that annoying click-click as well) I guarantee if we made an offer on a house with it in, it would be a low ball one since we would be replacing flooring asap
The only problem with laminates, besides the fact that they don;t look quite as real, is that most of them cannot be refinished more than 1-2 times. So if you have a high-traffic area that gets a lot of wear, you'll have to live with the scuffed floors. Hardwoods can be refinished numerous times.
The only problem with laminates, besides the fact that they don;t look quite as real, is that most of them cannot be refinished more than 1-2 times. So if you have a high-traffic area that gets a lot of wear, you'll have to live with the scuffed floors. Hardwoods can be refinished numerous times.
I think there's some confusion here.
"Laminate" flooring can't be refinished AT ALL- it's a processed wood substrate with a plastic laminate top layer (think Formica). If it gets gouged, it's trashed. If water seeps into the joints, it swells. It can't be nailed down, so it moves and creates the telltale "click" sound.
There are also "engineered wood floors" which are what you're talking about when you say they can only be refinished once or twice. These are a multi-layer substrate (usually plywood), with a thin veneer of the actual hardwood (up to 1/8" thick or so). Since the real wood layer is so thin, it will only take a few refinishings, though they tend not to need to be refinished as often as true wood floors because the factory-applied coatings are tougher than field-applied finishes. They can be glued down or nailed down, depending on the application, and since the top layer is actual wood, they're very difficult to tell apart from true hardwood floors, except for the fact that the finish coat doesn't fill in the joints between boards like a finished-in-place real hardwood floor.
Most "hardwood floors" in new construction nowadays are actually engineered wood floors, since they've become less expensive to install vs "real" wood floors, and they also don't require all of the finishing time.
The two often get confused, so I figured I'd try to clear things up a bit.
Bob
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