New flooring

My wife and I want to put or have someone put new flooring down in our kitchen, possibly living room, and possibly the hallway depending on how expensive it is. Never had any put down before except in our laundry room. The kitchen is the 12'X12" peel and stick which is starting to come up on the corners and one piece is sliding overlapping another piece. We talked carpet one and they said they could put a sheet of vinyl which is called earthscapes. It would be one piece so it wouldn't be any seams. The living room has carpet in it and when youcome in the front door the living room is to the right and its kinda high traffic so we were thinking either vinyl or possible laminate in there. We do have laminate in the hallway now but we have two dogs a lab and a mini dauchsand. She is worried that laminate is gonna scratch. IS this true? I was told by a friend that if we did laminate get the kind that has the padding already on it. What is everyones thoughts on flooring for these two room and hallway.

 

i recently did my condo with this laminate. it is padded, wont scratch. kicks ass, not sure about a kitchen tho. it is pergo

 

Laminates are pretty durable. Just get the high quality kind. I've installed laminate before. Dogs and cats can't scratch them. If you drop a heavy tool, it can chip though.

 

Don't use laminate in kitchens or bathrooms. Even the best quality laminates will absorb water through the joints.

Laminate is good against scratches. Make sure to get at least a rating of AC3 or AC4 (higher the number the better it is for traffic). I think Pergo and Quickstep are great brands and both very easy to find.

As far as underlayment, my preference is to get laminate that does NOT have the pad already attached. It is very easy to lay down underlayment.

Here is a recent bedroom I did (new paint, baseboards, laminate flooring).

 

Why not do real hard wood.

 

I've heard that's about double the price of laminate

 

I brought my engineered hardwood for 2.60 a sq foot.

 

Was 2.60/sq ft including labor? That is where most of the cost comes from when installing real hardwood floors.

Yes, laminate is much cheaper, especially if you are willing to do the work yourself. It is not recommended for the common DIY'er to install hardwood floors.

 

SWMBO and I put laminate in our place about 13 years ago. Holds up well. We helped put in bamboo flooring for my FIL a year or so ago. I would not recommend it--his shrunk and shows gaps at the edges.

 

No installed them myself. Pretty easy to do.

 

Thanks, for all your responses so far. My wife is thinking since we have laminate already in the hallway that wraps around from the front door to the left around all of our bedrooms and then to the kitchen on the far right side of the house, why don't we just match it up and put that in the living room and then either go with vinyl or possibly tile in the kitchen.

 

My Lab has yet to scratch our laminate.....the floor is about 3 years old and held up well. But, if your dogs pee on the floor often, laminate is not a good choice. My mothers floor is ruined thanks to an untrained dog. It buckles up & peels apart from the urine.

 

Even more. The product itself could be $5-10 per square foot. Plus install, plus sand and coat, I had a number of bids for it. My wife and I went absolutely everywhere and looked at every type of laminate from the 40 cents per square foot to $4.

We settled on bamboo and it was a great choice. The product itself was very thick compared to any other laminates. Very heavy duty stuff. It's been about 9 or 10 months now and the only scratches are from moving my massive fridge like an idiot and scratching it a little. No big deal.

The warranty is 55 year consumer, 15 year commercial if I recall. I don't really care about that, but others had NO commercial warranty at all and a very low consumer warranty.


Ordered from Home Depot, cost was reasonable. I don't know all the details off the top of my head but if OP is interested to know more or see a pic or 2 of my floor installed just let me know.

 

Remember with laminate and hardwoods, there's also underlayment that needs to be put down (most floor warranties require it). You may want one with a vapor barrier as well. That'll add another $0.40 to $1.00 per square foot.

We had linoleum in our kitchen and carpet in the family room. We replace it with a large porcelain tile (12x24). The large tile made it a little faster. After we were done, I was glad I didn't do that for a living. My knees were killing me. Under the tile we used Schluter Ditra. I found it online for $1.25 per sq ft. The tile was $3 sq ft.

Ditra






For wood floors, we did an engineered hardwood (usually priced between laminate and full hardwood). Engineered hardwood is like plywood with a veneer of real wood on top. We bought it from a store that had it on clearance. We bought it for $2.99 sq/ft. It caught my wife's eye as it was 6" wide and varied in length from 2 to 5 feet. It was also a glued tongue-n-groove connection which made it easier to do through multiple rooms. We laid it as a floating floor. Later we went back into the store to get some more glue to finish a bedroom (about 3 months later) and the price had dropped to $2.79. My wife offered him $2.59 and we bought enough to finish the rest of our house. We've done about 600 sq ft of tile and about 1500 sq ft of wood flooring.