Solid hardwood vs Engineered vs laminate?

[Laura33]

As others said hardwood never goes out of style.

Except it did though. So many old houses had the owners put wall-to-wall carpet over hardwoods because a wood floor was seen as a dated, out-of-style thing. The previous owners of our house did exactly that. Good thing they did, too, because when we pulled up the carpet in the living and dining room for refinishing the contractor told us the wood still had a few refinishes left in it despite being a century old.

I remember complaining about this to my Granny years ago.  She did the grandparental version of eye-rolling and then started talking about how much she hated spending four hours every week on her hands and knees scrubbing and rewaxing the hardwood floors (3 active boys + no such thing as polyurethane), and that when they came out with wall-to-wall carpet, she was thrilled and couldn't wait to get it all through the house so she could just spend 15 minutes running a vacuum over it.  And I said, oh.

[seattlecyclone]

Yeah, that makes sense for many of the rooms. In the dining room I can't imagine it being easier to keep a carpet clean than a wood floor with the amount of food our "active boys" fail to keep on the table.

[LearningMustachian72]

Hey all,

I appreciate all of the input. We are leaning solid hardwood in maple but have not made a firm decision yet. To answer someone’s question, I was referring to mid century modern with MCM.

Interesting to see why everyone prefers one over the others.

[NotBadForADad]

Hey all,

I appreciate all of the input. We are leaning solid hardwood in maple but have not made a firm decision yet. To answer someone’s question, I was referring to mid century modern with MCM.

Interesting to see why everyone prefers one over the others.

I think that's a sound decision with what you have already. I wouldn't put hardwood floors in a $200k house. But in a half mill house, sure.

Also, if you already have them in the house, its better to keep the flow.

Better return on your investment too.

[Fru-Gal]

If putting LVP down in the basement/garage do you think you could very occasionally park a small car on it? Like once a year.

[MayDay]

The conversation about refinishing hardwood every 10 years is wild to me. I've never known anyone who does that or done it myself. Our house has solid oak hardwood from the 50's and I don't know if it was every refinished but not recently! One of the reasons I like real hardwood is the dings and scuffs and scratches on real wood look good (and bonus: hide imperfect cleaning lolol) whereas it looks crummy on laminate and other more fake/perfect looking products.

Prefinished wood can't be refinished because the finish is UV cured. This makes for a more durable clear coat but you can't easily sand it off.

Every house we've had laminate in, the laminate bubbles at the joints from any water. ANY. And it looks crappy once that happens. Plus it has a very flat/fake look.

LVP is certainly durable. I'd for sure consider it for a basement or something like that. In my older house it would look extremely out of place and like a tacky flip remodel but I can see why people use it. It certainly seems to make sense for a rental.

[SavinMaven]

Not all hardwood species are created equal. There is a lot of variation in water resistance and scratchability. We have hickory floors and I love them. When we were choosing, we had small kids. The flooring staff said "hickory will hide a lot of sins" and that is exactly what we needed!

[partgypsy]

As others said hardwood never goes out of style.

Except it did though. So many old houses had the owners put wall-to-wall carpet over hardwoods because a wood floor was seen as a dated, out-of-style thing. The previous owners of our house did exactly that. Good thing they did, too, because when we pulled up the carpet in the living and dining room for refinishing the contractor told us the wood still had a few refinishes left in it despite being a century old.

I always found this astonishing. I always advised refinishing if the wood existed.

Had two friends of mine rip up their carpets and exposed the wood but then they cover it with LVP because they couldn't be bothered to refinish it. SMDH.

A friend bought a old (1950s) house and the previous owners had laid wall to wall carpet in all the rooms. He's taking the carpet out and the wood floors look pristine, which is awesome.

[SunnyDays]

Maple looks very nice when new, but if you live in a climate that's either very dry or very wet, it will not stand up as well as oak.  More tendency to shrink or warp.  If you go with it, make sure you use a water based sealant, since oil based will turn the floor yellow over time.

My parents house from the 70's has the original thin strip oak hardwood, which they covered up with carpet in the 80's.  The took the carpet out in the 90's and the floors were still pristine, but yellowed.  And the door are now too short.  Refinishing helped the yellowing, but there's no solution for the doors, short of replacement.

[GreenSheep]

I grew up with a house that had hardwood floors, and I had them installed in my first house when I redid the floors. They looked beautiful, but I was always worried about scratches, spills, etc. I was disappointed to find that the floors in the new construction house that we loved, and ended up buying about a year ago, are not hardwood but LVP. (I knew this when we bought the house, of course, but when I first saw the real estate listing photos, I thought it was hardwood until I read the details.)

However, I'm thrilled that I didn't get to choose the floors in our current house. They have fooled tons of people who have come to visit, and they hold up to our two dogs, one of whom was a large puppy when we moved in. The bigger dog is constantly tracking in water, dribbling water when she lifts her head from her water bowl, etc., and when she was younger, she loved to flip her water bowl over. We wipe up the water, of course, but it's not the end of the world if we miss a spot or don't notice it immediately. The floors look fantastic, and we enjoy the peace of mind that comes with not having hardwood, even though before this, I was a hardwood purist.

In case there might be someone out there who doesn't know this, I keep an old trick in the back of my mind for hardwood floors, and it turned out it worked great on our LVP floors, too, when a staple got stuck in the bottom of the vacuum and made a huge scratch in the floor before I realized what had happened. Just rub a walnut on the scratch, back and forth, perpendicular to the scratch, and it will disappear.

[LearningMustachian72]

Hey, we actually found some LVP we like that is much more affordable than hardwood and will allow us to tackle some other projects we would have otherwise put off. It will also be nice to not have to worry about our dogs having accidents or scratching the floor.

Now my only concern is off gassing.  I know you can get some that do not contain phthalate or formaldehyde.  Appears the Home Depot brand avoids these.

Any other potential toxins to avoid or specific brands that are safest?

Any thoughts this one way or the other would be much appreciated.

[gooki]

Glue down or click together LVP?

As for off gassing, do you have a garage you can open up the packs and let them breath for a few days/week?

[MMMarbleheader]

We installed hickory floors in our house. Love them. Te variations hide the west thought it is minimal as hickory is very strong

https://www.llflooring.com/p/mayflower-3-4-in.-millrun-hickory-solid-hardwood-flooring-2.25-in.-wide-10024880.html

Forbo marmoleum is my absolute favorite under foot but it is hard to install and not the best with wear or water. But with the Matt finish it’s the best!

We have wide pine in an existing room which such, huge gashes

[BudgetSlasher]

In the past 5 ... or so ... years I have laid both hardwood and engineered flooring in our house.

We did 3/4 hardwood on the first floor, it was purchased from a local lumber supplier and manufactured by an in state company. It is beautiful and has a lot of character. (it was also more expensive)

We chose solid wood on the first floor for the same reasons you mention, mainly it is almost infinitely refinishable. We are also chose to do nicer finishes in the living areas and the master and slightly lesser finishes as you get to the private/lesser used areas of the house. 3/4 wood come in varying lengths so it is easy to prevent the joint lines from lining up.

Solid wood flooring has all the drawbacks of real wood. For installation that means there can be a little bit of deformation that can take some additional effort to get into place and fastened. After installation it means that there can be seasonal changes. We did our installation in two phases across the first floor at different times of the year which could be seen (if you closely) afterwards as the seasons changed. At the time of the installation our house was only heated in the winter ... now it is heated and humidified in the winter and has A/C and dehumidification in the summer; and again if you know what you are looking at you can tell that the floor was laid at different times.

Upstairs we did a 1/2" engineered with a 2mm wear layer that is advertised as being able to be refinished once; we figured that the upstairs will see less wear and less grit and by the time it needs to be refinished a second time it is unlikely we will still be hear (I estimate that is decades away). After looking at many options and samples we bought from HD; this had the added benefit of being able to order a comfortable waste factor from the same lot and return the unopened boxes at the end.

Our engineered flooring was back in plywood, essentially it is 1/2 plywood with a thick maple veneer layer. Since it has all the properties of plywood, especially dimensional stability it was easier to install. It also means that it is less impacted by seasonal variation in humidity and temperature.

One draw back during installation was that the overwhelming majority of boards where the exact same length (sometimes I would have 3-5 boxes open and 100% of the boards were the same length). This meant that often joint spacing could only be adjust by the first board in the row. Some people might be bothered by the aesthetic of all the boards being the same length. With our brand of flooring I found the transition and termination pieces to be less than ideal, often the would lap on top of the flooring rather than being flush, so I ultimately made my own.

I don't have experience with installing laminate flooring, but I have never liked the feel underfoot of a floating floor installation.

As has been said, do not over do the floor compared to the rest of the house. 

[big_owl]

So we're replacing all the flooring in our entire house (3500sqft).  It's going to be reclaimed walnut solid hardwood vs a mix of cheaper carpet and ugly oak flooring that we have now. 

We went with a premium level but lol, but "because of COVID" the price is $19 per sqft!   So yeah, hardwood flooring is expensive nowadays.  The whole project.is costing us $90k.   

[uniwelder]

So we're replacing all the flooring in our entire house (3500sqft).  It's going to be reclaimed walnut solid hardwood vs a mix of cheaper carpet and ugly oak flooring that we have now. 

We went with a premium level but lol, but "because of COVID" the price is $19 per sqft!   So yeah, hardwood flooring is expensive nowadays.  The whole project.is costing us $90k.

Face punch? Antimustachian wall of shame? Perhaps this gives your contractor the opportunity to install some reclaimed oak flooring in another clients house.

[ToTheMoon]

If putting LVP down in the basement/garage do you think you could very occasionally park a small car on it? Like once a year.

@Fru-Gal I am sure that LVP like anything else comes in different grades/quality but I can tell you anecdotally that the inexpensive LVP we laid in our mudroom deals with bikes, dirty shoes, and has had our motorcycles on it many times - no matter what we do it seems to clean up to looking brand new again. That said, it does have one good scratch from accidently dragging a piece of furniture that had a sharp pebble under it. :/

My opinion is that parking a car on it a few times would have very little impact - especially if the floor is clean and the tires are as clean as possible (or throw down a sheet/blanket to drive onto.)

We have inexpensive cork in the rest of the basement level (wears too easily - wouldn't do it again) and much higher quality cork upstairs which I definitely recommend! 15 years in and it has a bit of a patina in a couple of spots near heavy use doors but that is outweighed by all the benefits - acoustics, warmth, comfort underfoot, scratches fill with furniture wax pens and are never to be seen again.

[Papa bear]

So we're replacing all the flooring in our entire house (3500sqft).  It's going to be reclaimed walnut solid hardwood vs a mix of cheaper carpet and ugly oak flooring that we have now. 

We went with a premium level but lol, but "because of COVID" the price is $19 per sqft!   So yeah, hardwood flooring is expensive nowadays.  The whole project.is costing us $90k.

Holy fork balls.  You could build a huge addition with gold fucking toilets and hardwood floors for that price…


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[Fru-Gal]

Thx @ToTheMoon. I like this idea, but maybe 1st priority this year will be some electrical work.

[iris lily]

Hey, we are putting hardwood floor in roughly 700 sq/ft in our home.  I am leaning hardwood as I like the aesthetic and have 2 dogs/young kids and want the ability to sand it multiple times to remove claw marks, etc.

Has anyone laid solid hardwood, engineered or laminate recently? Happy with what you decided on?

Lastly, who is everyone ordering their flooring from? Ordered samples from Lumber Liquidators and Carlisle but weren’t thrilled with either. Saw one at a local store we like.

Thanks in advance!

We are old and are spending our money, so yeah, we chose top grade red oak hardwood replacing 80% of the mismash flooring in our 1941 cottage.

I think it’s beautiful and the guys who did the installation did a great job. However – this is a 1941 cottage and the lesser grade hardwood would’ve been perfectly fine because it is a modest house. We tried to match the existing oak floor in the living room. My one regret is that I didn’t have it stained. We put the finish coats on top of unstained wood. It’s too late, I don’t really like the light look, but it will darken with age only I’ll probably be dead by then!

It was funny that we went to one of the big flooring places nearby and got the spiel about  engineered wood, but I wasn’t interested. I wanted to lay down wood that was not prefinished, and have it finished in place.

The sales lady said well you’ll have to talk to the owner about doing that kind of job. So the owner came out to look at our 1941 cottage and shook his head and said he didn’t really want the job because the floors would creak and we would be unhappy with it. It is true that there were some actual holes in the flooring upstairs, The underlay.

 So we acted as our own subcontractors, ordered the hardwood from the lumberyard, contracted with our neighbor to lay it. Oh and guess what – – the upstairs floors now creak a bit. And it isnt a big deal, this is an old house. I find creaky floors comforting, the sound of antique floors!

[iris lily]

So we're replacing all the flooring in our entire house (3500sqft).  It's going to be reclaimed walnut solid hardwood vs a mix of cheaper carpet and ugly oak flooring that we have now. 

We went with a premium level but lol, but "because of COVID" the price is $19 per sqft!   So yeah, hardwood flooring is expensive nowadays.  The whole project.is costing us $90k.

Holy fork balls.  You could build a huge addition with gold fucking toilets and hardwood floors for that price…


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The top grade red oak for our bungalow was $10,000. It was probably another $10,000 ish to lay it. Four small bedrooms, two small halls, kitchen/dining area, sunroom. Maybe 1200 sq ft?

[iris lily]

A final post: we had some question about the pretty Oak floor in our living room in this 1941 house. Here in this 80-year-old house we wanted to sand it down because one corner of the room had been water stained.  But we wondered gosh is there enough of that floor to sand? And we theorized that because it was owned by frugal Germans, built by them and owned for generations, likely they never did any sanding of that floor because it was unnecessary.

And we were right!

[lutorm]

We tore up the super nasty carpeting and refinished the vertical-grain Douglas fir floor underneath when we bought our current house and we're happy with it. It's not the most durable and it creaks, but it's fine. However, there's a more recent addition that still has carpeting and that we'd like to replace with something reasonably nice and cost-effective. However, that carpet goes up a few stair steps to the main part of the house. I'm pretty sure those steps are just plywood, too. I've never used any of the non-wood solutions. How does one handle stairs?

[Le Poisson]

We tore up the super nasty carpeting and refinished the vertical-grain Douglas fir floor underneath when we bought our current house and we're happy with it. It's not the most durable and it creaks, but it's fine. However, there's a more recent addition that still has carpeting and that we'd like to replace with something reasonably nice and cost-effective. However, that carpet goes up a few stair steps to the main part of the house. I'm pretty sure those steps are just plywood, too. I've never used any of the non-wood solutions. How does one handle stairs?

For our basement stairs we put on unfinished "skins" - they are tread kits you can pick up at Home Depot for about $45 per stair. It's a hardwood veneer over a particle board core that you glue onto the existing tread and riser. They turned out really well.

https://www.homedepot.ca/product/simplestep-1-2-inch-x-10-1-2-inch-x-42-inch-oak-veneer-stair-tread-cap-riser-kit/1001214579

[bryan995]

We have engineered hardwood on concrete. It is glued down.   Though I can already tell that it will not last longer than 15 years or so and cannot be refinished.

https://m.coronahardwood.com/brentwood-hills/brentwood-hills-melrose-european-white-oak-brentwood-hills-bh5370ml.html

Good, not great.
Was $5.50/sqft or so.

I tend to think that LVP looks cheap and will soon be labeled as such. I’d put it in rentals, but not in a primary home.

[hucktard]

I prefer tile. I am tired of floors I have to worry about scratching or getting wet. I want to be able to drag a table across the floor and not stress about it. Or if a dog gets sick and takes a big shit, or a pipe leaks or water splashes out of the shower or whatever. Tile is awesome. If it is too cold on the feet then put down an area rug. I installed pre-finished hardwood myself a couple years ago. It was wide plank hickory. There are lots of gaps and it was really hard to get it to go straight. It is not nearly as durable as I would have thought. We had finish in place Oak before that and the hickory is way less durable. My dogs claws have completely scratched up the surface. Water and dirt gets in all the cracks. It does look decent from 6-10 feet away though. If I had my way, the entire house would be tile, and there would be big throw rugs in bedrooms etc.

[lutorm]

I prefer tile. I am tired of floors I have to worry about scratching or getting wet.

Tile can crack, though, if you drop something hard on it. (And more likely to break whatever you drop, too. I kind of prefer my floor to sacrifice itself for my Macbook like it did when I dropped it yesterday...)

[iris lily]

I prefer tile. I am tired of floors I have to worry about scratching or getting wet. I want to be able to drag a table across the floor and not stress about it. Or if a dog gets sick and takes a big shit, or a pipe leaks or water splashes out of the shower or whatever. Tile is awesome. If it is too cold on the feet then put down an area rug. I installed pre-finished hardwood myself a couple years ago. It was wide plank hickory. There are lots of gaps and it was really hard to get it to go straight. It is not nearly as durable as I would have thought. We had finish in place Oak before that and the hickory is way less durable. My dogs claws have completely scratched up the surface. Water and dirt gets in all the cracks. It does look decent from 6-10 feet away though. If I had my way, the entire house would be tile, and there would be big throw rugs in bedrooms etc.

I’m concerned about aesthetics so I don’t think tile looks appropriate in all places. But in many places, like for instance in the Southwest, I see tile all over the place in public rooms and I think it’s great!

 I agree with the above poster’s  point that tile does crack. You probably won’t go 20 years without a cracked tile which I suppose it’s not a big deal if you’ve saved some spare tiles back to put in.

[big_owl]

So we're replacing all the flooring in our entire house (3500sqft).  It's going to be reclaimed walnut solid hardwood vs a mix of cheaper carpet and ugly oak flooring that we have now. 

We went with a premium level but lol, but "because of COVID" the price is $19 per sqft!   So yeah, hardwood flooring is expensive nowadays.  The whole project.is costing us $90k.

Holy fork balls.  You could build a huge addition with gold fucking toilets and hardwood floors for that price…


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Yeah it's ridiculous but the floor was delivered this week to acclimate and I think it's gonna be gorgeous when it's done.  The installer does have to figure out what to do about my 2500lb fish tank before he gets started though...

[afox]

I prefer tile. I am tired of floors I have to worry about scratching or getting wet. I want to be able to drag a table across the floor and not stress about it. Or if a dog gets sick and takes a big shit, or a pipe leaks or water splashes out of the shower or whatever. Tile is awesome. If it is too cold on the feet then put down an area rug. I installed pre-finished hardwood myself a couple years ago. It was wide plank hickory. There are lots of gaps and it was really hard to get it to go straight. It is not nearly as durable as I would have thought. We had finish in place Oak before that and the hickory is way less durable. My dogs claws have completely scratched up the surface. Water and dirt gets in all the cracks. It does look decent from 6-10 feet away though. If I had my way, the entire house would be tile, and there would be big throw rugs in bedrooms etc.

Its a myth that tile is not damaged by water. The tile itself is impervious to water but the grout is not and water left on grout willl make its way into the subfloor where it will cause damage. Tiled showers and other waterproof installations use a waterproof membrane below the tile to achieve waterproofing. Tile is also very expensive and/or labor instensive to install, requires a very stiff subfloor to avoid cracking requiring additional structure in most buildings, and is also very expensvive to remove when it needs to be replaced. Re-grouting is also very labor intensive/expensive.

There is no doubt that floating floors are the obvious choice for value and function. There is good reason that they are the flooring of choice in new construction, they are the end result of a few centuries of flooring technology. Tile is more of an old antique flooring choice, some people may like it for various reasons but it is neither cheap, easy, or practical for the vast majority of applications.

[MayDay]

I prefer tile. I am tired of floors I have to worry about scratching or getting wet.

We chipped the crap out of our kitchen tile. Dropping the occasional pan = not great for tile.

Plus it hurt my feet. No big deal in the rest of the house where you can put a rug down, but standing in the kitchen, it wasn't my fav.

That's said nothing is perfect and you always make trade-offs!
Tile can crack, though, if you drop something hard on it. (And more likely to break whatever you drop, too. I kind of prefer my floor to sacrifice itself for my Macbook like it did when I dropped it yesterday...)

[Drink Coffee And Stack Money]

We had a new house built and moved in 13 months ago. We chose a beautiful dark laminate flooring and while it looks really nice it already needs to be replaced. Our particular flooring seems to soak up every drop of water, even if cleaned up quickly, and we have slightly warped edges in three different places already. It feels worse than it looks so we plan to wait another year or two and replace the laminate with LVP or tile.

[big_owl]

Floor is DONE!  IT LOOKS FUCKING AWESOME.  I can confirm, $90k well spent.  Now I need to get to work upgrading the trim.