Flooring Laminate vs Hardwood

[OAG]

Looking for information regarding DIY wood flooring over wood project. Laminate floating flooring appears to be the easiest to install but have heard it is not like walking on "real" hardwood. Any one DIY this type of project? Products by name brand, cost, ease of install etc., would all be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[saluki9]

I did a project in my old condo where I put down 1,000 sq ft of Pergo Presto which is the non glue version. It looked better than the carpet, but it isn't like walking on real wood, doesn't look as good, and did nothing to the re-sale value.

I'd spend the extra dough for real hardwood. You can buy a pre-finished version and the price difference isn't that much over laminate.

 

[W2R]

Laminate is cheap and easy. Lots of people think it is ever so terrific.

I wouldn't have it in MY house, though. I just don't like it!! When I look for my retirement home, if it has laminate floors (even the newest or nicest type) I would mentally compute the cost of carpeting over all of it. I hate laminate that much.

Obviously I agree with Saluki - - real, genuine hardwood is worth the price.

 

[Sarah in SC]

If you have dogs, forget about the laminate. We installed our own lumber, straight from the mill and finished it ourselves (7 coats of poly!). Not for the faint of heart or bad knees, but a beautiful job at the end. Random widths of 4" 6" and 8", with rich red tones. Holding up to 7 dogs at the moment!

Heart pine is what we use here, durable and less expensive than other woods, direct from the mill. I wouldn't do the laminate unless you were moving soon.

 

[KB]

I installed hardwood with a laminate coating in my house, and I love it. Walking on it feels like hardwood.

The downside is if a board is damaged, it can't be sanded down and refinished like hardwood. So, I bought an extra box to have replacement boards.

 

[haha]

If you have dogs, forget about the laminate. We installed our own lumber, straight from the mill and finished it ourselves (7 coats of poly!). Not for the faint of heart or bad knees, but a beautiful job at the end. Random widths of 4" 6" and 8", with rich red tones. Holding up to 7 dogs at the moment!

Heart pine is what we use here, durable and less expensive than other woods, direct from the mill. I wouldn't do the laminate unless you were moving soon.

Is this pine cut tongue and groove like normal oak hardwood?

Also, did you sand it with one of those big disc sanders? That always looks like the scary part to me.

Ha

 

[Goonie]

We have 2 rooms that we put down solid oak flooring almost 40 years ago. Hand sanded and hand finished. A LOT of hard work, but definitely worth the results!!! It still looks GREAT!!!

I have friends that have the laminate.....to ME the look and fell of it is cheesy. I personally wouldn't have it.

I'm thinking about putting down the solid oak in my bedroom.....someday!

 

[twaddle]

I prefer "engineered" wood flooring over laminates. A laminate is basically a picture of wood glued to MDF. Engineered flooring is a real wood veneer glued to MDF and finished with a tough ceramic coating. Both snap in and "float." Generally, the veneer on engineered flooring is thick enough to be sanded once or twice, but I'm sure it's preferable to keep some spare sticks around and replace any damaged ones.

Try Lumber Liquidators Durawood QuickClick.

 

[Sarah in SC]

Yes, it is tongue and groove. You use a big hydraulic hammer and wedges to get the boards tight against each other all down the boards. Takes two people!
The big sander is used for the first few passes. The trick is to lower the handlebar and keep downward pressure all the time. If you let it lift up, it it will fling you into the walls and such. Start with rougher paper and go down with each pass. The initial coats of polyurethane will raise the grain worse than later coats.

By the end, I was using my beloved Porter Cable hand sander on my knees to find the few rough spots left. But all that work paid off, it's been five years and we can probably go another 3-5 before we have to sand and refinish.

 

[bssc]

We have Pergo in our house but aren't quite happy with it. It is not holding out as well as it should, my wife's desk chair is making marks in it. Next floor will be hardwood.

 

[FinanceGeek]

We have laminate and like it, although as others have said it does dent. I think its more durable than vinyl which is what we had before...

One gotcha with going to laminate from vinyl is that we had to raise all of our baseboard and door casement trim to accommodate its thickness.

Overall we're happy with it (we have Alloc brand, made in Norway).

 

[boutros]

DIY real wood definitely takes more effort and knowledge than laminate. You can judge for yourself if the look is worth it. If new construction I would go with site finished as you won't have the bevels between boards to trap debris. If replacement look at engineer or solid prefinished. It will be less of a mess and you won't have to stain or poly the floor. There are many species of wood flooring for sale now. Some are easier to work with than others. Hope that your subfloor is level. Good luck.

Here is a forum that I've read re hardwood floor. Many pro's frequent the site. They all have varying opinions. One opinion doesn't vary, don't buy from lumber liquidators.

Hardwood Flooring Message Board - DIY & Professionals

 

[farmerEd]

Go with real wood...how many laminate floors are going to be around 100 years from now?...there are plenty of wood floors that old and older.

From a distance they look OK (laminates), but you are not going to fool anybody closeup.

Regret the price once, instead of regretting the quality forever.

 

[Martha]

I have spent a fair amount of time lately looking at possible houses to buy. I have seen a lot of crappy looking laminate.

 

[bright eyed]

The house we are living in was redone before we moved in (fire)...and they put in laminate...i absolutely dislike it!

i think it's a fad that will wane as soon as people realize how cheap it is. I'm sure there are better brands vs. others but overall, i've seen it in many houses...it's crap.

we also have a small dog and any "liquid" that remains on the floor for any period of time can make the laminate bulge or lift...

it is also hard to clean and makes marks...

i have had hard wood and would definitely take it over the laminate. you might save money up front but i doubt laminate will last 5 years (especially if you have kids and dogs)...you can suffer w/ crappy floors for a few more years post the 5 then you got to replace it! whereas hard wood is a few bucks more per sq foot and you can have for 10 or more years before needing to do any resurfacing...

 

[bow-tie]

I have no doubt our laminate will last 5 years or more. Our house we just sold was installed in 2001, and it still looked great, to me anyway. I installed more in the house we moved into. We don't have inside pets. If we did, I don't know what we would do. My SIL has hardwood, and they have an inside ankle biter, and they're floor looks pretty beat up. I think it's around 5 years old.

 

[BUM]

I've done a few installs for friends and relatives. They all picked laminates. IMO they go down easy but look and sound awful.

I selected Mullican 3/4" T&G prefinished oak. Widths were 3" 4" and 5" in a repeating pattern. When the last piece is nailed down, its ready to walk on, and the factory finished can't be duplicated on site. Its been down 3 years now. Still love it.

 

[GatorBuzz]

Man, I don't know what laminates some of you are using, but ours are great as far as durability. I'll grant you that nothing comes close to true hardwood; not laminate, not "engineered," etc, nothing. However, we have one 65 lb dog and a toddler. They have not caused one scratch, dent, scrape or anything in three years. We used a thick "QuietWalk" padding underneath the flooring, which reduced the hollow sound when walking that I've heard in other homes.

We knew that we were selling when we bought the place, so I was not going to spend the money on hardwood. When we're in our house that will be ours for twenty or more years, I doubt we'll go with laminate. But for our purpose, I couldn't be happier.

To make a long story short, I think someone could argue that laminate looks cheesy, will go out of style, etc., and I wouldn't be able to argue. But the durability of the stuff we got is outstanding. We actually put a piece of the flooring in a glass of water for a week (to test the waterproof claims of the manufacture). We pulled it out a week later and it had not warped, bent, lost its finish, etc.

If you're interested, I'm sure I can track down the name of the supplier we used.

 

[REWahoo]

Jeez, I didn't realize we had a forum full of "flooring snobs". (Just kidding...)

Last year I got sick of the carpet we had in our family room, ripped it up and replaced it with laminate - Kronotex Swiftlock Plus (Lowes). True, a lot of laminate flooring looks cheap, but some of the better brands/colors/patterns are difficult to distinguish from the real thing. We shopped hard to find one that is difficult to distinguish from natural wood, even if you look closely.

The floor shows no sign of wear, even though I've been rolling my desk chair over the same spot for 18+ months.

 

[bbbamI]

Last year we had new flooring put in our dining room, kitchen and laundry area. We chose a brand of flooring called Amtico. The linoleum and carpet were pulled up and the floors were leveled. They then put glue down and installed the new flooring.

It comes in strips, just like hardwood flooring. It won't scratch, it's water resistant and it won't fade. They have this flooring on their showroom floor, and it looks brand new even after several years of heavy foot traffic.

Our last house had hardwood floors and I loved them. I love this flooring too. I think the texture of the floor makes it look so great. Every one that comes in our house thinks it's hardwood.

It wasn't cheap. To do our three rooms (average size) cost $4800 installed. It would have been the same price for hardwood.

 

[OAG]

Thanks everyone. I was almost sure what the consensus was going to be. Really wanted confirmation of how I felt. Spend the money go hardwood forget the laminate which is what I will do. I should have asked if DIY or professional installation was better. I think I will just bite the bullet and get some professional installed flooring.

 

[Bultacoman]

I put Bruce Dundee strip in our family room and our bedroom. It is a 3/4 inch prefinished oak floor. DIY is not hard to do with these floors if you decide to go that way. You will need a electric chop (or miter) saw. I used a hand saw for the family room and the electric miter saw for the bedroom. Guess which one I did first? I would also recommend an air assisted nailer for the work. On the family room I used a nailer that was activated by how hard you hit the nailer. It takes a lot longer to hand drive the nail after you didn't hit the nailer hard enough because you were tired. The pneumatic nailer works fine every time. It took me a weekend to do the bedroom.

 

[farmerEd]

Thanks everyone. I was almost sure what the consensus was going to be. Really wanted confirmation of how I felt. Spend the money go hardwood forget the laminate which is what I will do. I should have asked if DIY or professional installation was better. I think I will just bite the bullet and get some professional installed flooring.

It can be done DIY, but you'll need to rent a few specialized tools (normally I buy all my tools but not if I only going to use them once every 20 or so years)...I finally decided by the time I bought all the wood, rented all the equipment, etc it was cheaper to have it done by the pro's.

It came out to about $8/sf *installed* for solid oak hardwood floor with 3 coats of poly...I honestly don't think I could have done it cheaper myself and they did it in about 6 hours (with 2 more days of 45minutes to recoat).

 

[ERD50]

I prefer "engineered" wood flooring over laminates. A laminate is basically a picture of wood glued to MDF. Engineered flooring is a real wood veneer glued to MDF and finished with a tough ceramic coating.

I'm with twaddle on this one. Kids wanted laminate (pergo) in their bedrooms. I just couldn't get past the artificial look of it (OK, I am a snob about some things).

Found an 'engineered' product at IKEA. Pretty cheap, and about 3/16" of birch over the MDF substrate. All pre-finished. Tight fit, it was kind of a pain to install. Looks good, but not as flat or as solid feeling as 3/4 hardwood.

We have 3/4" T&G red oak in several rooms downstairs. Night and day difference, but this engineered stuff was pretty good for an older kids room. Personally, unless you are really good, I would leave the sand/staining of a hardwood floor to the pros. The experience pays off in getting a nice even finish w/o hills/valleys. I don't think they charge all that much compared to the cost renting the sander, and of a substandard finish on all that expensive hardwood.

Just my 2 cents. - ERD50

 

[Fireup2020]

Go with the real thing! And I second the opinions for hiring the pros. Get 'er done!