Flooring: Real wood or laminate?

[turbostang]

I'm flooring illiterate, but here it is in a nutshell.

I have 4 maniac dogs, 1 at 100lbs, and 3 at 20lbs or less. Also, 2 elderly cats - the reason we're ditching the carpet with only living in the house for 1 year. Between them bieng the heathens that they are and me walking in and out of the garage (workshop) - we've succesfully ruined the cream colored carpet.

Moving right along - I have questions as to durability of the different types of wood-type floor coverings.

Laminate - ease of installation I guess.. supposedly more durable for claws and maniac JRT's.

Real wood / overlays - looks better? more expensive, but not as durable?

Am I on the right track? Am I missing any pros/cons?

[ELVIS]

i put laminate in our entry, hallway, and living room. between a big rott and Jr the carpet would have been garbage. had it for prolly 5yrs now. still looks just as good,

god bless.

[2165 Turbo Rail]

real wood you can sand and refinsh... fake you cannot

we have real wood floors in our entry way and formal living room and as long as you hit it with some cleaner every so often it stays looking perfect.

I know someone that has the laminate and its about int he middle of the room where there is a desk chair that has distorted the color of the floor... the only way to fix that would be pull up half the floor, replace 5 or 6 pieces of the laminate and then lay the rest back down...

if it were real floors you would fix just that spot pretty easily

[dville_gt]

we did ~1500sqft of black walnut in our house about 1.5 years ago and it has held up perfect to our dogs (on of which is a jrt mix who is crazy). we went with a more matte hand scraped finish and the finish looks exactly as it did the day we laid it. we bought all of the wood from simplefloors.com

here is a picture from our party the other night (i'll take better pictures later if you are interested).

[mstng86]

Zooming in to the girl in the blue vest

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[Shaggin Wagon]

Zooming in to the girl in the blue vest

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You know how I know we are not gay, I saw her firsttoo,and didnt even know there was even a floor at first!

[turbostang]

James, are they actual wood floors or a laminate? Did you guys lay it or have it done?

[dville_gt]

they are engineered hard wood. instead of being 3/4" thick they are 1/2" thick, but the bonus is that the finish is applied and baked on, it is supposed to be a lot more durable then the finish you would apply to hard wood after you lay it (since you obviously can't bake it on). the other nice part is that they have grooves that allow them to slide into each other, so you just glue them together and use an underlayment pad. this is nice because the floor is "floating", so if for some reason your foundation shifts slightly or something the floor is not tied down, supposed to help with the floors doing crazy things and allows for more expansion/contraction. we did all of it ourselves, including the stairs, and we just bought a few boards of walnut and made all of our own transition pieces and nose pieces for our stairs.

be careful if you choose the "pre-distressed" look, make sure it is hand scraped because some of the stuff that comes out of the machines looks super cheesy once it is installed (i especially don't like the wavy stuff or floors with that super gloss finish)

[dville_gt]

this gives you a little idea of how the underlayment pad works, you obviously cut the excess off before you trim out. it also makes the floors quieter to walk on.

[dville_gt]

The stairs were a real PITA though. They wanted $60 a step for just the nose piece so we made them for around ~50 and they fit like a glove (finish came out a little different, but i actually like the contrast). We did both the rise and run of the step in wood.

[Tyrone Biggums]

Dville, what kind of sound do you get out of your floors when walking across them. I really like the look of yours, but have seen some that sounded "hollow" when walking across them with harder soled shoes on and are almost unbearable when pets are clicking back and forth across them.

[dville_gt]

Dville, what kind of sound do you get out of your floors when walking across them. I really like the look of yours, but have seen some that sounded "hollow" when walking across them with harder soled shoes on and are almost unbearable when pets are clicking back and forth across them.

I personally think the floating floors with a quality underlayment pad (mind you these are not cheap, you are looking at least $1 sq/ft for a good pad), make for the best sounding floors. They don't sound hollow at all, you don't feel any type of give from the pad, but it really eats some of the harshness of hard floors if that makes sense.

[dville_gt]

Oh, another little tidbit of advice, go with the widest plank available. Not only do I personally think they look the best, but it's less rows you have to deal with!

[mstng86]

No word on the chick?

[dville_gt]

No word on the chick?

It's one of my best friends girl. Funny story actually, she spent the night at our house (downstairs) and sleep walked up the stairs into our bed. Sarah woke up mid way through the night like WTF (thankfully this chick was on her side and not mine or I'd have been killed). We went down and got my buddy who came and woke her up. Might be the strangest thing I've ever experienced. This girl has never been to our house and somehow sleep walked straight into the master bedroom and into our bed (for God knows how long we slept 3 wide!)