Right now I am in that stage of picking the colors and what to upgrade. One of the options I am looking at is upgrading the standard flooring from the standard vinyl.
It’s decent vinyl that they put in the kitchen and bathrooms. Howver, I like tile a lot more. However, tile is $13 a sq foot. A decent price, but still expensive to do. $5K+.
Another option is laminate flooring that interlocks, similar to purgo. This is $4.75 a sq foot and I think it looks good.
However, it’s new and different. I have talked to two real estate agents and neither has ever seen a home that actually has this stuff.
Is anybody familiar with this type of flooring? (I don’t have a brand name, BTW.) Do any dopers have in in thier homes? If so, do you like it? Dislike it? Why?
We put this stuff in our entryway about a year ago. I like it - it looks good, and is an inexpensive alternative to real tile. I think if you look closely you can tell that it’s not actual tile, but I don’t think people really look that closely. If money isn’t an object, go for real tile. If it is, this stuff looks WAY better than vinyl, and it’s much more inexpensive.
Just make sure when they install it that they line it up properly. Ours is a bit off, but in an almost unnoticable way (we noticed it about 8 months after they did it, too late to bitch. Had we noticed it sooner we would have.)
Lots and lots of companies make this now. Formica, Pergo, Wilsonart, Armstrong… many more.
I considered the tile-look laminate when we had to replace our kitchen floor. The only thing that held me back was that I couldn’t find the look in the tile size I wanted. What I liked tended to come in huge blocks, and it looked like patio tile, not right for my little kitchen. Ended up going with wood-look by Formica (unlike Pergo, they have some options that don’t have a lot of “plank contrast” which is the only think I don’t like about some faux wood floors).
In terms of care, I love it. It seems indestructable. It is SO MUCH BETTER than my cheapo contracter-grade vinyl. The kitchen looks warmer and homier for it.
My boss was redoing her kitchen at the same time, and they went with the tile-look. Their final choice of design was greatly influenced by how it looked in their house. They said once they got some tile samples home, the way the light hit the laminate made it look much different than it did in the showroom. What was their first choice became something they loathed. You might consider waiting until you have more the house done so you can really see how a tile sample would look.
Here’s the other thing: with this kind of flooring, you only have to buy as much as you need. With vinyl, you have to have one continuous piece that is as big as the biggest rectangle required to cover the floor surface. You might end up buying much more square footage than will ever go on your floor. For example, if your fridge is flush against your cabinets, you will need an extra width of 2+ feet of vinyl to go under the fridge. Sure, you don’t need it under the cabinets, but you’re going to have to buy a piece that has that extra 2+’ the entire width of the vinyl.
Finally, the real expense is installation. Even crap-ass vinyl needs careful installation. In the end, the incremental cost of choosing laminate over vinyl isn’t that much. Or at least, it wasn’t for us.
Lots and lots of companies make this now. Formica, Pergo, Wilsonart, Armstrong… many more.
I considered the tile-look laminate when we had to replace our kitchen floor. The only thing that held me back was that I couldn’t find the look in the tile size I wanted. What I liked tended to come in huge blocks, and it looked like patio tile, not right for my little kitchen. Ended up going with wood-look by Formica (unlike Pergo, they have some options that don’t have a lot of “plank contrast” which is the only think I don’t like about some faux wood floors).
In terms of care, I love it. It seems indestructable. It is SO MUCH BETTER than my cheapo contracter-grade vinyl. The kitchen looks warmer and homier for it.
My boss was redoing her kitchen at the same time, and they went with the tile-look. Their final choice of design was greatly influenced by how it looked in their house. They said once they got some tile samples home, the way the light hit the laminate made it look much different than it did in the showroom. What was their first choice became something they loathed. You might consider waiting until you have more the house done so you can really see how a tile sample would look.
Here’s the other thing: with this kind of flooring, you only have to buy as much as you need. With vinyl, you have to have one continuous piece that is as big as the biggest rectangle required to cover the floor surface. You might end up buying much more square footage than will ever go on your floor. For example, if your fridge is flush against your cabinets, you will need an extra width of 2+ feet of vinyl to go under the fridge. Sure, you don’t need it under the cabinets, but you’re going to have to buy a piece that has that extra 2+’ the entire width of the vinyl.
Finally, the real expense is installation. Even crap-ass vinyl needs careful installation. In the end, the incremental cost of choosing laminate over vinyl isn’t that much. Or at least, it wasn’t for us.
Pergo flooring isn’t new, it’s been around in Europe for over twenty years and has a fantastic record. I have put it in dozens of kitchens with nary a callback.
A combination of Maple Pergo and mulit colour slate tile is what I have specified for my dream kitchen to be built some day far in the future
This is actually one of the reasons I am leaning towards it.
The home I am building is a modular. They lay down the floor in a factory, controlled setting and then put the couters and appliances on top. Because it’s done this way, I would think that it will be much more straight and lined up than a contractor (or myself) could do once the house is built.
Thanks, Cranky. You jolted my memory. The name brand I was looking at was Armstrong.
I agree that Purgo style laminate flooring that is faux wood looks great. I put it in myself in the condo I am living in now. I love it. However, it was the fact that tile is being mimicked rather than wood that I was wondering about. It just seems harder to do without looking bad.
I also prefer the tiles that are larger in size. Unfortunately I need to make all these decisions up front before seeing the results of any of them. That’s the way it goes with modular. On the plus side, everthing is overbuilt (for transport) in a controlled factory setting. Every angle is machine cut exact and I am sure everything will line up. Also I don’t have to pay a mortgage on a construction loan for months of building. They plop it down in a few days and you don’t pay till its placed.
Thanks for the advice. You are right, of course. It’s just that I hadn’t even heard of laminate tile floors, so it makes me wary.
I am also building two units. One to live in and another to sell. I am thinking I am just going to put the laminate in one and sell the other with the vinyl. I don’t see the few grand that it will cost me increasing the sale price of the unit by that much. Not too sure, though.
I talked to my construction staff and they enthusiastically endorse the stuff. The only possible drawback would be if you somehow managed to scar the flooring, sanding it out may not be an option. In an area subject to water damage, you will need to seal it.
Works pretty well for me. Make sure to stock up on some replacements, though, because the pattern will vanish by the time you manage to scrape it with a counter or something and have to replace a tile.
I had Wilsonart wood-style laminate insatlled in my living room, dining room, and all of my bedrooms in my condo a few years ago. It is indestructible - not a scratch on it. Pergo isn’t that great - my contractor refuses to install it anymore because so many clients have had trouble with it. He has Wilsonart in his condo.
We considered Pergo for our kitchen and ended up with ceramic tile. I have nothing against laminate, however we weighed the pros and cons of the durability and look of it and just preferred the tile for our situation, despite the higher cost . The one drawback of laminate is that if you get any kind of leak or leave water sitting on it it will buckle very easily and can be a pain to repair.
The stuff is made of paper (Saturating Kraft grade) impregnated with a phenolic resin and compressed under great load at high temperature. HPL, or High Pressure Laminate. The “look” is a printed paper. Same BASIC stuff as your Formica countertops, but this has a different base material. Good material.
Good point, Chefguy and E-Sabbath. I will make sure to get some extra material from the builder if I can. I haven’t needed to replace any of my purgo flooring in the 3 years I have been walking on it. However, I can picture it being a bitch if you needed to replace a piece and couldn’t find an exact match.
I was going to buy the interlocking floor but a friend of mine warned me that crud and dirt gets into the cracks and it is noticeable. He also said that if any water gets below the surface it warps the floorboard. So I opted for carpeting.
I put Pergo in my very high traffice kitchen during the remodel 9 years ago.
Run a damp mop over it and it still looks a good as the day I did the job.
Mine is the glue together type, not the snap type.
I love this stuff.
A friend up the street put laminate planks in her kitchen. It was the snap-together kind. Her sink overflowed on day, the water went into the cracks & the edges of planks curled.
If you put this in a potentially we area, you must seal the joints!
On the other hand, we were in a home store & the floor was covered in different types of floor covering in roughly ten-foot squares.
A large gouge was on the floor, from something heavy being dragged. It started on the hardwood planks as a large gouge and continued onto the laminate as a scratch. A FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) had a furniture store with the entraceway covered in laminate planks. The store burned, when they returned after the fire, the ashes could be brushed away to reveal the still-good planks below. The stuff is tough!
$15/foot for ceramic tile sounds very high. I bet you could shop that to much closer to $2-3/foot (materials cost).
My folks have Pergo in their kitchen. My Step-dad laid it himself and didn’t have any complaints about that operation. It is tough and cleans easily, so my mom likes it and they were thinking of the visiting grandchildren when they decided on it. It looks great, I would say.
There are 2 downsides that I can think of:
It is slick when in stocking feet, and the dogs can’t walk on it (they slip on it and out of instinct put their claws down, which makes traction much worse–poor things).
It is noisy when anything hard is dropped on it or kids playing on it.
