Our living room floor consists of basic subflooring that I painted some time ago. It’s time to start deciding what to do with it. Issues that I have to consider:
~Money / installation. I need to be able to install it myself, with help from friends if needed. I don’t have a chunk of money, so I’ll have to either save up or buy in partial amounts (if it’s laminate or something). And I need as economical a choice as possible.
~Utility - Our living room gets a LOT of use. Six people (four adults/near-adults and two babies), 4 cats, 4 dogs. Big kids with muddy boots that they forget to take off. Dogs who forget that they aren’t outside. Cats who shed. Babies who grind cookies into the floor. You get the idea. It’s sort of like a very small dormitory.
~Money. Did I mention I don’t have much money?
My thoughts so far:
~Carpet - I don’t think it’s feasible now…too difficult to keep clean, and it will only be a matter of time until it begins to get nasty. I did consider that industrial-type carpet that I’ve seen in hospitals and such–it’s sort of like carpet tiles, and it would seem that if one tile got stained, etc, you could just tear it up and replace it. I haven’t found any info on it yet, though, so I don’t know if it would be worth considering or not.
~Hardwood - Why can’t I just buy pine (or whatever) boards and nail them down? Isn’t that what they did in the good ol’ days? In the alternative, there is realio trulio hardwood, which I am not sure I could install myself.
~Laminate - This is, right now, my first choice. Looks nice, installable, and I can throw area rugs over it too. I think it’ll be pricey, though.
~Vinyl - I would seriously go with vinyl, at least until the kids are older and the animals are gone. I could still throw down area rugs, it’s easy to clean, etc. BUT we have an extra-wide living room, which would mean a seam (according to the flooring guy I talked to), and I am also concerned that if I glued it down, I’d have a mess later when I decide to cover it with something else. (Or can you just lay carpet/whatever right OVER vinyl? I have no idea.)
Any flooring experts? Home improvement types? Anyone wanna come help install the stuff? Heh.
My sister-in-law has no money and she did vinyl tiles. It’s do-it-yourself and durable. And no big deal when you want to cover it with something nicer when the troops have all marched on.
I put Pergo in my basement. It was pretty easy to do, and wasn’t unreasonably pricey.
I find it perfect for a rec room. It takes abuse, cleans up easily and looks great. I figure that even if it cost a bit more than vinyl or something else, it will last longer.
You can also get other brands that may be cheaper.
There is a glueless version out there too, but I think it’s more expensive.
Pine is really soft, so it would probably get trashed given the amount of traffic you’re forecasting. Oak is more durable but it’s also kind of expensive so it can take on a precious quality. You’ll be hollering at everybody to take their shoes off all the time. Either one you’d probably end up covering a good amount of the space with rugs, which would be an added expense.
You might just want to use carpet. I liked it when I was a kid but then I didn’t have to clean it. It’s great to roll around on. And we had shag back then.
You can lay laminate flooring over vinyl flooring. We did that in our kitchen. I have also removed vinyl flooring (leaving whatever stuck to the subfloor) and gone over it with a wood laminate floor. No problems with either yet.
What Monty Burns says is "excellent’ advice. Sorry, coudn’t pass up the Simpson’s reference. Actually, laminate flooring should meet most of your criteria. You could buy it as you had money for another box or two. you can install it yourself without expensive tools. It should also be removable and replaceable with no lingering adhesive or nails. There are also a wide range of prices, so shop around for one that fits the bill, literally. All you have to worry about is whether they discontinue that style before you’ve purchased all that you need. Just kidding. Don’t forget to include about 5% extra material to account for cuts and bad looking pieces.
By the way, I spent some of my most productive drinking years in Bloomington. What a beautiful place to live. Are you there for school, or real life?
I have to agree with everyone about the laminate. Although, I wouldn’t recomend the parquet style. We have it in our dining room and some of the small pieces that make up the design have started to buckle.
I’ve heard that bamboo flooring is incredibly cheap, and looks like pine.
We’re here for keeps, it looks like. My husband is a Field Supervisor/Paramedic, and has to be close to his work. I’d choose to live here anyway, though…beautiful city, great house (it has character, anyway), and my kids go to good schools. Compared to the small IN town I grew up in, Bloomington is a cultural haven.
Laminate is looking like a good choice. I’m still kicking around the idea of vinyl tiles…very tempting pricewise and timewise, but I know that in a few years I’ll want to put in laminate anyway, so I guess I should just bite the bullet and do it now.
Whatever you buy, don’t get WHITE. This is obvious to anyone who has ever owned a white laminate floor. You get it all clean, then someone walks on it and it’s all over.
There’s something called Pergo Presto, it’s a glueless version of Pergo laminate flooring. Apparently it is only available at Home Depot. Just cut to size, and snap-fit the boards together. I put my floor in with just a jigsaw, hammer and a portable workbench. Figure on about $4 per square foot. Since it isn’t glued at all, you can move your furniture, put a few strips down, and move furniture right back on top of it.
It actually looks pretty darn good, you’ll notice it isn’t a real hardwood floor under hard sunlight, but it’s WAY better looking than vinyl. I’m sure there are other versions of this type of product, if you do a bit of research.
I have laminate flooring (and several large dogs). I love it. The cleanability is great and it also cuts down on fleas. I bought mine from Costco and installed it with my brother-in-law. I did a 13X17’ room for about $400-450. As I can afford it I plan on doing the rest of my house.
The flooring options sound good, but I recommend that you not get a floor that is just one very light or very dark color. Either one will show dirt very easily. Pick a medium toned beige color that has an intricate design. This will look cleaner longer.
I put in linoleum once. I couldn’t get the seam right, so it looked crummy. It didn’t matter much, because the rest of the floor didn’t hold up. Phooey on it.
Last year we put in laminate. Looks good, kind of expensive. I worry about scratching it, but it’s held up so far.
Ceramic tile has many advantages. Kind of a pain to install, but not terribly expensive if you stay in the bargain section.
Avoid carpet like the plague, even if you can afford it. It’s dirty and unsanitary and needs to be replaced fairly often. My choice, if I were building a house here in Arizona, would be polished cement, but since you live in Indiana your house is probably not built on a slab.
I’d go with ceramic tile: wide range of prices, easy to clean, lasts for a long, long time, looks good.
The house I grew up in has 1x3" varnished pine flooring in the living room that is approximately 90 years old. It had carpet over it for about 20 years. When my mother decided to turn the living room into a dining room she ripped out the carpet.
I will admit the floor isn’t Home Beautiful-pefect but, quite frankly, the scars, dents and scuffs make the room homey, lived in and comfortable. But maybe that’s just us
I like pine, and I agree with you…it has character, and I’m all about character. (Because character is cheaper than an interior decorator and expensive stuff, heh.)
My only concern about pine is all the work I’d have to do to finish it…sanding and varnishing or sealing or whatever. I can just see it getting half-finished and then forgotten.
Unfortunately, my husband is not gonna do the work on this, so it will be up to me and my sons to get it done. And given that my attention span is about 3 minutes, I have to consider how to get it done in the minimum number of steps.
Laminate flooring is a fairly easy DIY project, especially if the room isn’t an odd shape like our kitchen was due to the cabinets. We installed it in a 10 X 14 foot dining room on Super Bowl Sunday last winter. I did all the prep work on Saturday (removed the carpet and pad, removed the baseboards, etc.) so we were ready to go on Sunday. We were easily done by the time the game started around 5:00. We used an Armstrong product with glue. I don’t remember the cost but I know we bought it on sale several months before we installed it because the price was so good. If you’re not in a big hurry maybe you can wait and find it on sale.
I know some people don’t like the visibility of the seams in bright sunlight that you get with laminate flooring but that doesn’t bother me too much. I will gladly trade the durability you get with the laminates for that. You can tell it isn’t real wood but the vinyl flooring we covered over didn’t look exaclty like the tiles it was supposed to look like either. Our floor has held up very well for us and since it isn’t attached to anything it can always be removed easily if we ever want to put something else down.
Ceramic tile has been mentioned in this thread some but I don’t think I would go with that if I were you. It’s only advantage to me is that it obviously wears extremely well. On the other hand, it takes much longer to install than laminate flooring and is a more difficult job. It also wouldn’t be a “comfortable” floor for a living room (very hard and cold). I’ve installed it in bathrooms and a foyer, areas where you don’t hang out very long. I wouldn’t like it in a living area.
I’m with Squish on the ceramic tile. We’ve already retiled our foyer, and we’ll probably end up tiling most of the house, including the living room (the two of us are as messy as your house full of kids and dogs). I can’t say it’s as cheap as laminate or vinyl, but at least the tiling part can be done in bits and pieces (grouting needs to be done more or less at once). And it’ll last forever. The marble tiles that were originally in the foyer are still good (except that they’re ugly and of course most are broken from knocking them out of the floor.
But, our slab is concrete so we didn’t have to put down cement backerboard before we tiled.
Thanks!