Laminate Wood Flooring

[Momof2boys]

We really want laminate wood floors in our new home - it would cover 2 hallways, computer room, kitchen, and dinette. We just received pricing back from the builder and it's a pretty good deal (we're receiving a credit back due to not have hard wood floors in the kitchen & dinette, which was a free promotion).

Now the hard part - choosing a brand. The biggest thing I remembered from when we thought back last year about installing it in our current house is that a lighter color is better -is that still true ? We would have it professionally installed so we just want something that is of very good quality in lieu of the ease to install it. We have 1 small dog and 2 boys, ages 9 & 7 so they are out of the 'ride on' toys stage.

Any suggestions or advice would be of GREAT help. Thanks :thumbsup:

[ldn324]

I don't recall the name brand of ours, but we got it from Lumber Liquidators. We've had ours a little over 2 years and LOVE it. I can't imagine life without it.

We have one small dog, one medium dog and 4 cats - two with claws. They are a rough bunch, but the floors have held up almost perfectly. The only scratch we have is from a cat knocking a heavy metal candleholder on the floor.

Cleaning is a breeze too. For quick cleanups, I would recommend the Swiffer Sweep & Vac - a rechargable, battery-operated swiffer. It's like it was made for laminate floors (and for pet owners!).

As far as color, I'd say choose what you like. Ours is a light cherry wood and is very warming. Shows very little dirt and dust so that aspect may be best with the lighter colors.

Good luck with whatever you choose. I think you will love it!

[WheresWalt]

We Pergo'ed (is that a verb) our whole house, except the bathroom and washroom, this past year. Love the stuff. Easy to put in too. Tough as nails once you have it in place. Holds up to everything we have thrown at it.. literally. ;)

One thought though. We choose a very light maple color. Looking back, I should have chosen a darker color. The light is absolutely stunning but is much harder to keep clean with cats and kids. And I hate doing floors.

[Flower]

We bought ours at Home Depot (Canada) it is made by Exotics I believe. The colour is fairly dark and is called Wild Merbau - we love it! We have it in the finished basement and in a sunken-level bedroom and hallway - the bedroom is the kids toy room and my 3 year old can be BRUTAL!!

We have 1 chip and I don't know how it happened, otherwise we are very happy with it and clean up is a breeze, I like the mid-line colour we chose, not too dark,not too brown, and not too light.

[kaerbear178]

The only thing I would say about the dark colors is that they would tend to show more dust but I love dark wood/floors. I would take a look at Armstrong/Bruce, I think they have nice flooring, I spec it out a lot for projects that I do for my interior design classes. (9 more months until I am an interior designer!) Also take a look at Wilsonart, I think some of their stuff is decent. If you go into a store that sells wood flooring they will most likely have laminate as well, and they should be able to help you out on what to look for as far as quality. Good luck! I know it isn't easy, I sell tile and it's such a hard decision for people to make. I'm sure whatever you pick will be beautiful!

[DizneyRox]

GIven the choice, I would pick real wood over laminate EVERY SINGLE TIME!

I put laminate in my house recently. In the kitchen and the basement bathroom. Both look absolutely great and are holding up very, very well. We have big dogs which was part of the reason for going with laminate. That and the ease of install.

Two surgeries later on one of the dogs (torn ligaments), it's all I can do to not rip it out of the house. The stuff is very slippery! The dogs routinely face plant when walking on it, although it's much better now that they anticipate it, but we've put rugs down over the spots that take traffic.

I really don't like the sound of walking on it. It doens't sound real, which I guess should be expected since it's not.

I would really opt for real hardwood. Resale will be much higher on a real hardwood floor, you can't beat the look of it either. If you're worried about price, there is always 1/2 inch planks which are a little cheaper, or you can go with the engineered stuff which is laminated like plywood, but has a hardwood face on it that can be sanded just like real hardwood.

If you want some of the numbers that have been thrown around by my builder, they are $1.50 a sq/ft for installation and $1.50 sq/ft to sand and finish the floor. Add to that the cost per sq/ft of the wood and you have your cost. I'm not sure about installing laminate, but if the sq/ft charges are close to that for laminate I would say you're getting ripped off. Laminate goes down very easy. I would say even a monkey could do it for the most part.

Hopefully I can change your mind on the laminate. I will say that the newer stuff doesn't look all that bad, but nothing (and I do mean nothing) touches a nice hardwood floor. When you sell, you'll thank me! And if you really look at the numbers, I'm going to guess it will only make a very small change in your monthly payment. Yes, you can put it in later, but you're going to have to move all the trim work, etc in order to do it. Manageable yes, but not fun.

One bit of advice if you do go with the laminate, make sure (and I would watch them) that they use a sealer on the floor in the kitchen, and probably the dinette. They will tell you it's not necessary, or they will say that it was done, but unless you watch them with your own eyes, you won't be able to tell. Until the first time water gets on the floor and gets wicked into the seams. Laminate has a tendency to swell when it comes in contact with water, making the seams very visible. Seaming the seams will help a lot. A cheap way out is to only seal around the fridge and the sink, but it just makes sense to seal EVERYTHING! Please make sure they do that at least... Sealing the floor is done during installation by using a special caulk on all the seams before they are put into place. It's not applied after the floor is done, etc. You actually apply a glue like substance to the "tongue and groove" portion of the pieces (all sides) before it is snapped into place. You then need to wipe up and excess that oozes out of the seams, etc.

It's very tough to repair laminate flooring when something goes wrong.

[JanetMegan]

I'm going to go with the previous poster and reccommend hardwood as well. I know some other folks have mentioned the laminate not scratching but I have had the opposite problem. I have a dark color and it does scratch. It also shows my LONG hair and dust fairly badly. Maybe a lighter color would show the scratches less? I'm very gentle on mine with no kids or pets so I am surprised at how easily it scratches. Even a little rock inside a tennis shoe can leave a nasty scratch.

[Momof2boys]

Thanks for your opinions - now I'm really confused :confused:

We're hoping to get our to a flooring place this weekend to ask tons of questions. We don't plan on moving (although that's what we said when we built the house we're in now) so I'm not too worried about resale value. I just want something that's nice & wears very well.