Now that we officially own the place, it’s time to take up the hideous and worn-out Berber carpet in the living room. We were thinking of some kind of wood-type thing that doesn’t need to be stripped and waxed like the hardwood in our old house did. There’s a ton of different products out there, and they all promise to be the most fabulous thing ever.
So, for those who have experience with different types of wood flooring, real or fake, what should we be looking for?
A high quality laminate is what you are looking for. Shop around and you’ll soon be able to tell the cheap flooring from the nicer flooring. I still think real hardwood is the best investment, and upkeep really isn’t that much unless you intend to abuse it…
Laminate flooring runs the gamut from a thin veneer of real wood glued to a backing board, to a photo of wood glued to some kind of backing. You will need to do some homework. Here’s a good place to start.
Something I’ve seen recently is ceramic or porcelain tile designed to look like a wooden floor. They’re even available in long strips, like wood flooring materials. Perhaps more durable than laminate, but probably more expensive as well.
A real hardwood floor will act as a sounding board (I lived on a streetcar line).
The carpet reduced the noise by50%.
For wood:
Real wood - expensive, but will last forever with reasonable care
Engineered - a cross between real and laminate - a thin (<= 1mm) layer of real wood over a laminate-type base. This can be finished as either real wood (toungue and groove) or click-together laminate.
Laminate - all kinds of grades - the $1/sq ft is cardboard with a sheet of paper glued on better will have a harder surface and much harder substrates.
All but the real wood (installed by pros - nail it down, sand, sand again, seal, wax, wax again) will scream (1995 - 2020!) in 30 years, just as shag carpet now screams 1974!
Once installed, all that can be reasonably done with wood is to cover it.
For a living room, I’d go with carpet and leave wood to high traffic areas.
We have Armstrong Locking Laminate Flooring in some very high traffic areas.
Each piece is ‘printed’ with a different design. If I look for it, I can pick out the exact same piece of floor ‘board’ not to far from it’s twin. But you don’t notice it at all.
This floor was installed over concrete with a thin padding under it to help control noise. We got both the thickest flooring (about 1/2") and thickest best padding (about 1/8") inch.
What’s interesting, as it is installed over concrete is it is not nailed anywhere. It’s called a floating floor.
This floor is in very high traffic areas. Kitchen and entry way. And we have two dogs that come and go as they please through a doggie door. And a gravel driveway and snow on the ground 6 months out of the year.
We never take our shoes off or worry about it. But after 5 years, I would have to look for scratches. It has not shown any wear at all.
However, when we do our living/family/tv room, we will go with carpet. Just because it feels a bit warmer to us.
I’ve sanded and refinished real wood floors. It’s a giant pain in the ass. When this floor needs replaced (can’t even see when that may be) It will be like replacing carpet. Different work, cut each piece and fit it in and snap it down. No nails or carpet tacking or seaming or stretching to deal with though.
Lots of posts but all have missed one of the most important factors: What is the condition of the house/sub floor in general?
Engineered products and laminates are incredibly unforgiving when it coves to uneven flooring. Most require the floors be perfectly flat. In newer constructions this normally isn’t a huge issue as you can use leveling compound to even off slight imperfections. If your talking an 18th century house however you could be talking about prep work that puts your budget for a laminate well above a nail down hardwood.
I have laminate floors in several rooms (on top of floorboards). My daughter and I laid them to replace carpets as a dust control measure.
One tip I will offer is that the ‘experts’ seem to say that you should start laying across the room from the doors - this is plain wrong. Start at the main doors, because that is the tricky bit and the bit most people will be able to see. Finish at the far wall which is quite likely to be out of sight under furniture etc anyway.
With the price of pre-finished hardwood so low I would not recommend laminate to my worst enemy. Even good laminate is a crappy product. It consists of a thin wear layer over a microscopically thin cosmetic layer on top of brittle HDF. It is a low durability product, is just as vulnerable if not more to water damage as hardwood. We always remove it when doing flood restoration where sometimes the hardwood can be saved because it will dry out properly. The click together surfaces are prone to damage before and during install that results in improperly aligned planks. I can tell a crappy laminate floor with my eyes closed because a click together floating floor is never going to lay truly flat. The only reason to buy laminate is it is cheap and can be installed (poorly) by monkeys. Buy it for your rental property or kids playroom but not your livingroom.
If you want something that looks like wood, get wood. Polyurethane has made it unnecessary to wax hardwood for at least thirty years. Pre-finished hardwood comes with a super hard factory applied finish, but you cant beat the smooth look of sight finished hardwood. Modern finishes like Bona Traffic are very durable and require no maintenance. Current dustless sanding systems are truly dustless and can make a tired old hardwood floor look amazing. I just had a thousand feet of oak hardwood refinished in a 1957 bungalow and it looks fantastic. If you are on slab or below grade you can get an engineered hardwood which comes in both floating floor and nail down varieties.
If you want something a little different (but more expensive) try cork. Very durable, soft and warm on the feet. Another super hard wearing floor is Vinyl Plank. It comes in glue down and floating floor varieties, looks a lot like laminate but is a commercially rated product made to last. Commercial grade fabric backed vinyl floor like Tarkett FibreFloor can look surprisingly good, and gives you a very tough low maintenance floor.
Tile has become very affordable and properly installed will last forever. I a lot of people do not like the hardness and cold feel of tile. VCT and Marmoleum offer the look and durability of tile but are still soft and warm under foot. They both require regular sealing so they are not commonly used residentially. Luxury Vinyl Tile looks great, is warm underfoot, and can be grouted like true tile. Unfortunately it is not very durable and having just installed some I would not recommend it as a good product. I am going to replace mine with proper porcelain tile.
Wow. Couldn’t disagree more. The laminate we have looks great after 5 years of abuse in a very high traffic area, with people and dogs that constantly track in dirt gravel snow and water. Absolutely no wear pattern yet, and the only scratch it has is from when a piece of gravel got under a heavy table leg and I dragged (drug?) the table a few inches to put a leaf in.
This just isn’t true anymore. Maybe in the early days of laminate, but now they come in a range of quality and the high-end stuff is very rugged. The laminate layer is thick and the factory finish is extremely durable. As others have mentioned, floating floor systems can be problematic if the subfloor is not level. But there are non-floating laminate products that install essentially the same way as hardwood.
There are also engineered wood laminates that have a real-wood veneer over a cheaper substrate. Those are also available in floating and non-floating systems.
Whatever you do, I highly recommend a factory finish over attempting to stain the floor yourself. It will be a much harder finish and more consistent. Staining a floor is a real art and I would not recommended it for DIYers.
I replaced 15 year old, scratched up and dented beyond repair hardwood floors with a high quality laminate 2 years ago and am very satisfied. There are no noticeable scratches and with a 2 tone pattern it doesn’t show dirt/dust very easily. It was easy enough to install, too. A buddy and I knocked out 800 sq ft in a weekend.
We had something like that in the kitchen of a short-term rental we had after we sold our old house and bought a new one, and in the basement of our current house.
It is very durable and more importantly for a basement is waterproof as it won’t warp if wet. However, to me it doesn’t quite look like wood. The grout lines are still there. It wasn’t very expensive per sq ft. It was cheaper than real wood or real stone would have been.
Let me chime in about laminate, which I just finished in our lake house living room and dining room. I was scared about how it would wear but it’s doing well. I took Consumer’s Reports results and since it’s a second house we didn’t want to spend a lot, so the $0.99 Lowe’s in-house brand was just as we needed. We looked at many options but this was economically our best option.
I came across this thread and was wondering if anyone has purchased any laminate wood flooring from an online vendor and had it shipped with any problems? I’m looking to save some money and wanted to see if anyone could share their experience.