Home Flooring Question

[Rick D]

We live at 5000' in the California mountains. Our eight year old wall to wall carpet is getting harder to clean and my wife and I have decided to explore alternatives. The snow, pebbles dirt and cinders are murder on carpet. The house is built with plywood sub floors.

We have pretty much tossed the idea of natural wood flooring and are leaning to composites. Specifically, we are looking at a vinyl planking Home Depot carries. It has a distinct grain, had a substantial warranty and looks good. We also found some Pergo we like.

Our question is to you who live out of California, maybe midwest. The only thing we see here is carpet and heavy planked floor. No one we know has Pergo nor any of the higher end vinyls. We are wondering about your experience, pluses and minuses. thanks in advance.

 

[Phil Herring]

According to my wife the interior designer, the big drawbacks are:

Noise. Dropping a key on laminate sounds like a gunshot.

Resale. real wood is worth a lot more.

It's pretty much indestructible though. Great for dogs.

She says a popular thing now is tile or stone with heating coils between the material and subfloor. Super tough, warm, good resale. Not cheap.

 

[Sailm8]

Another alternative is engineered flooring. This has several plywood layers glued at cross angles for stability. The finished layer is real wood. Our floor, Brazilian cherry, came with a 20 year warranty and the ability to be sanded for refinishing 4 or 5 times. Ours was a european produce with planks 76 inches long. In theory they snapped together but they were above average to install. We really like the way it came out.

It is a floating floor and can be laid over concrete with the appropriate vapor barrier. It also is installed over a sound deadening foam that comes in rolls. The biggest challenge was undercutting the door jams but you can rent a saw that makes that easy.

 

[windward54]

Rick, stop on by and see ours next time you are at your boat. We have Pergo in the part of the house. Came with the house when we bought it. Easy to clean, indestructible, and looks good. We have some of the old wood flooring so you can compare the two.

 

[Ctskip]

I'm ripping out my wall to wall carpeting and replacing it with Mexican terra cotta tile. The LR,kitchen, dining room and hall will be tiled. I live in Texas. My office is engineered wood flooring and the game room is engineered wood flooring that is glued down to the plywood sub floor. I used to swear by the old hardwood flooring, but this engineered flooring is pretty impressive stuff. Check out Craigslist.com. If I were to live up north, I'd consider using the heating coils under the tile flooring. I'd do it in the bathroom for sure. I can't say I'd blame you ripping out the carpeting. It's dirty and smells and holds on to many germs. I don't know how parents can let their children play on a carpeted floor. Think of all the nasty stuff outside on the ground. ick. Those Japanese are onto something by leaving their footwear outside and not wearing it in the house.They don't even bring the footwear in.

Keep it up,
Cskip

 

[Gregg9020]

Rick~ I live north of you by about 7 hours in Sonoma County, and a few years ago, we pulled all of the dark brown carpet that was existing, and replaced it with Brazilian tile. 12 X 12 light tan with a chocolate brown grout line. I love it over the carpet, and wouldn't change it (well maybe in the winter). We use the wood stove all the time in the winter, and cleanup is a snap. I have a 3000+ sf home, and 1600 sf is tile. The rest is white oak hardwood with topnail... Old school. I like both serfaces, but I like the tile better. For the tile, I too had plywood sheeting as a subfloor, I laid down a 1/2 hardy backerboard first then mortared the tile to that. It took me about three or four weekends to complete. The grouting took about two weekends. I didn't like to composite floors because it didn't match our exsisting flooring in the rest of the house, and it didn't fit the custom style of our house. BTW we have a Spanish/Mission style home.

Good luck

Gregg

 

[Rick D]

Good Thoughts

Our great room on the entry level, which is the top level in our house, consists of dining room, living room, bath and bar. It has a cedar open beam ceiling, paneling and cabinetry. About a quarter of it is tiled including front and rear entries. I think going all tile might be a bit much, so that's the reason for considering a synthetic wood floor. BTW, the house we had two ago, we did the whole house in Mexican tile and it was great. When we visit out of the country, it is rare to find carpet and I am not too fond of it especially after it ages a few years.

 

[Rick D]

Update

We wound up installing the Home Depot product strip planked vinyl flooring and are very pleased with the result. We hired our own installer, the same guy who did the Lonseal floor on our boat.