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Thanks Bob! My calling every prefinished wood flooring product laminated is like Southerners calling every soft drink a "Coke". The homes we sell all have true hardwoods. We have a couple available with 100+ year old reclaimed oak and black walnut flooring. Gorgeous stuff!
I love hardwood floors, but here in Florida, every step you take tracks in abrasive sand, and hardwood just doesn't hold up without more frequent -- and expensive -- refinishing. The same sand virtually fills the fibers in carpet over time -- when you pick up old carpet and padding, there is a layer of sand on the floor under the padding.
Most folks here go with ceramic tile for those reasons, but the house where we are now is nothing special and not worth the expense. So, I installed laminate. This is the pure laminate, not the engineered wood mentioned previously.
The first stuff I put into a spare bedroom and yes, it has a hollow, plastic, clicking sound. It also has three "fake" boards printed on every individual piece, and up close, it shows. Then, I found a better quality floor at Lumber Liquidators. Each individual piece is a single board pattern, giving a wide board look. It has the foam bonded to the back of the laminate and does not result in the hollow sound -- actually sounds pretty good, considering that it's a floating floor installed over concrete.
Then, my daughter and her family had an addition added to their house, and being a bit short on the budget, decided to go with wood-grain vinyl strips, individual planks of vinyl with a textured, wood grain appearance and color. They look terrific! The only tip-off that they are not real wood is that the strips are uniformly 36" long, so the pattern can be seen if one looks. Throw down an area rug or two, add furniture, and most observers will never know. When we tell folks, they are amazed.
We like it so much that we are going to do our entire new house in the vinyl wood grain strips, over concrete on the first floor and wood substrate on the loft and balconies. The best part is if they get scratched or damaged, the flooring company can remove an individual strip and replace it with no way to tell.
We have real wood as well. We have a 13 year old daughter who has alot of friends coming in and out and a 70lb+ dog and there has been no damage to the floors at all. They look soooo much better than laminate.
I saw on a home show though if you go with the laminate floors use the glue down method instead of the floating method....you'll have less noise.
Last edited by shannon94; 06-24-2007 at 11:18 AM..
Reason: who knew pre-teen was a bad word?????
I have to say that I know for a fact that large dogs, multiple small dogs AND kids do not wreck havoc on hardwoods. We have been in this house for 5 years w/ real hardwoods (not the pre-engineered wood floors) and there is nary a scratch on them from anything and that includes me dropping LARGE things on the kitchen floor (house was built in 1999 and prev. ownes had an indoor dog and 3 teenagers). I've dropped large glass bottles that have broken and not even made a knick. Our dogs run all over them and we even had one that weighed 80 lbs. I have two active kids and typically a house full of kids coming in and out from the backyard and half the time dripping wet from the pool. We have had no problems at all w/ the hardwoods. They are less slippery than the laminate wood floorings too. If you get a knick on the laminate it is just like vinyl flooring and there is no way to repair it. At least w/ real hardwoods if you do happen to get a large gash you can fix it easily. As far as maintaining them w/ kids and dogs and an active family - EASY! It really does not take that much to keep them up and they can last forever. If your worried about knicks from the dogs or anything then go with the handscrapped wood floors (which I LOVE!) and then scratches and indentations will be part of the floors charm.
Thank you for your comments. I'm truly undecided about laminate versus hardwood. I've talked to two flooring specialists and they say laminate is more durable and much easier to clean. The price for the high-end laminates is about the same as their hardwoods, but I'm relatively sure these are pre-engineered. Any advice from your personal experience? Also, how difficult is hardwood cleaning and maintenance? I'm planning on going ahead with this project within the month and as you know, it is a MAJOR investment, so anything you can tell me to help with this decision will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
If resale is any sort of concern for that price range I think the only thing to consider is hardwood or tile, perhaps a mix if it makes sense. We have a large, 130 lb german shepard and he does not harm the floors at all - one of our cats back claws during 'crazy time' has put more scratches into it than the big dog. Thankfully we opted for hand scraped so it just adds character to our floors. That's something we considered when making that choice (because handscraped costs a lot more). We know we have rough animals (though again, dog hasn't had an impact) and we never take our own shoes off, tread all kinds of dirt and debris up from the lake and yard... we're not neat freaks, so we chose hardwood to go with our lifestyle, the style of our home, and in consideration of resale if we ever go bonkers and decide to move.
You can get oak relatively inexpensive, but if you're thinking resale don't think too cheap, buyers are going to have to want that floor themselves later. Bamboo is nice, but often it comes in short 2-4 foot lengths. Nice houses require nice lengths (12-16 foot), imo. If you can mix and match, consider stone tile for the kitchen and hardwood elsewhere (we actually wish we'd done slate in our kitchen afterall, but the price we paid for installed random width oak was less than just the cost of slate tile. Get quotes, they're free, and see how much wiggle room you have. Easy to refinish the entire thing when it comes time to sell.
BTW, our flooring guy told us of a product called Soft Paws (http://www.softpaws.net/) that are caps to put on your dogs nails. We tried it once, but it was a) a pain when they fell off and b) didn't seem to make any difference with our old dog, he's just not that damaging. Might be something to look into if you're really concerned though.
Just one more vote for real wood,especially in that price range.
We found a gorgeous random wide board laminate that everybody thinks is real wood...until you walk on it!
The 'click' word was supposed to refer to the method of installation but it ends up referring to the sound.
It also just doesn't have that 'feel' of a good solid floor.
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