I’m buying my first house, and I’m still in the option period, but I’m starting to think about what I want to do with the house.
The house was built in the '80s, and has old dirty carpet and weird old tile in the guest bedroom that needs to go. Hardwood flooring is of course popular, but I’ve read a bit about concrete floors and it can be cheaper and look good when done right and with a certain aesthetic, like here’s an example.
Has anyone put in new floors lately and have some advice or opinions? I don’t need to go super cheap with this, but I also don’t want to spend crazy money either.
My brother-in-law runs a flooring place in Memphis, and when we came to him saying we needed to replace the carpet in our living room with wood, he almost exclusively suggested luxury vinyl plank flooring. There are several youtube videos that extol the virtues of laminates and vinyl, as well as other options.
Ha, that’s not an incorrect statement. I do kinda like the cold minimalist look of it on design blogs but it’s hard to envision in real life. I would think some rugs or certain finishes would keep it from being too morgue like.
Ooh, that’s not bad. Did you get it for your living room? And if so, how do you like it?
I have a small 1 bedroom guest house about 450 sq ft. I pulled up all the carpet, painted the concrete floors and put in nice area rugs everywhere. Almost wall to wall. I love it.
Closed loop carpeting can also snag, which cut loop doesn’t. We’re about to replace the old closed loop in our new house, and it has snags in every room.
Real wood floors are a true luxury and probably not worth the cost; if you like the look, go for Pergo or the wood-look ceramic tiles. We put hardwood floors in our old house and they were nice, but probably didn’t justify the cost.
Go for warm. Wood, when done right, will never go out of style. See if you can do wider planks (5" instead of 3 1/4). And just do white oak. It’s a blank canvas you can stain pretty much anyway you like. Going with the off-beat stuff will most likely make you prone to warpage. Oak is tried and true.
Don’t do “wood look” ceramic tiles. They will be more expensive than wood and look cheaper. And they will be cold.
Not a flooring suggestion but: Do I ever regret that we didn’t fix the squeaky floorboards when we redid the upstairs hallway. When you’ve got them exposed is the time to do it! Find the ones that squeak and screw 'em down before you cover them back up!!
If you put in ceramic tile, make sure the grout is level with the tile, or broad and sloping. . Mine are not, and the one thing i hate about my kitchen is crumbs and grains of stuff getting caught in the grout. Hard to sweep them out.
Number one, concrete would be “crazy money”. It is installed by specialists using special tools that make the floor suitable for indoors. It’s not like laying down a patio. Cement powder (sand?) is the devil.
If you can afford it go with wood or stay with carpeting, maybe even tile but use rugs. With a hard floor of any kind every crumb, cat hair or tiny piece of lint will stand out and make your house look dirty even when it isn’t. Concrete, tile, all those hard floors are murder on breakable things like glasses and phones and children’s bones.
We have hardwood thru the top 2 levels of our home. We had the existing wod refinished and added new wood to complete the main level. I’m a big fan of wood - personal preference - and that would always be my first choice.
We recently installed vinyl plank in the lower level, and are very pleased with the result. We made the choice primarily due to low thresholds which precluded wood, and because we wanted the same flooring in our family room and the unheated 3-season room. We are happy we had it installed rather than doing it ourselves. You will have to choose between glued edges and completely free-floating. I’m very happy we chose a version with a “grain” - feels very nice under bare feet. It is NOT bullet proof - we scratched it carelessly dragging a heavy piece of furniture. But it seems to be very durable for our dog.
We also chose a wider plank, which I like the look of. If you look REALLY hard, you can find the repeat. I tend to be a stickler about such things, and a good installer can really hide that. When you choose a product, consider whether some of the more complicated patterns might look more fake, or whether the reveal would be more obvious.
Both wood and vinyl are essentially equivalent very low maintenance. Many people mistake the vinyl for wood. While I think it looks very good, and could be mistaken for wood on a casual glance or in pictures, if you knew what wood looked and felt like and looked carefully, you would not mistake it IMO.
IMO, concrete looks very nice, but concrete floors are very hard if you are doing any significant standing. I would not hesitate to use it in a basement, rec room, or maybe a bathroom or kitchen instead of ceramic tile, but would hesitate to use it elsewhere.
Leaving aside the concrete vs. wood vs. tile discussion (although I would personally go wood), my advice is to make sure you take out what’s already there down to the subfloor.
The previous owner of my house remodeled the kitchen, and while it looks nice, there is a noticeable 3/4" rise in the tile from any other room. While this doesn’t really matter day to day, it does matter if you want to replace your stove or dishwasher or something else, because the new floor usually doesn’t go under those appliances, and having less clearance can make getting the old one out or the new one in a pain in the butt (or it can become impossible).
So, whatever you decide to do, do it right and take the old crap out before putting new and shiny down.
We redid our house last winter - laminate everywhere except the bathrooms, solid vinyl in the bathrooms. I like it - attractive, easy to clean. If I had a do-over, I’d choose a laminate with more texture, because the floor can be slippery, but I’d probably still choose a laminate.
It’s more than cold to the touch. It’s the coldness of a museum. The warmth of wood isn’t like it’s going to make you feel hot in the summer. It’s warm as in more human.
Tile has it’s place, in bathrooms and other wet areas. But living areas are best with wood and carpets.
We’ve got friends with a concrete slab which they have polished as their flooring. It has a surprisingly good thermal mass which means it retains heat, but is also cool underfoot in warmer weather. We’re planning on the same thing when we do a renovation extension to our 1900 home, with the addition of underfloor heating which is actually very cost effective (not recommended under wood as it can cause warping). But the extension is modern so the concrete will work - I’d go wood otherwise.
Up here in Chicago I agree with you. But Houston can get pretty tropical. I’d imagine there are swaths of the south/southwest where tile throughout is the standard.