Originally posted by @Johann Jells:
Originally posted by @Nancy L.:
My concern about floors and pets: I think potty accidents are unusual (have always have pets of my own and have had 0 accidents, except in housebreaking a puppy)... But if they occur, carpets are easily wrecked, for any kind of snap together floor, the urine can soak in between the cracks and be there forever... A nail down hardwood with its coats of poly gives ppl a better chance to clean it up. And they can be refinished if scratched or mildly stained.
Sorry, but that begs the installed price point question. I'll freely admit that I prefer hardwood to laminate too, but I'd also prefer a new Honda Odyssey to my 14 year old Caravan. I can DIY laminate I buy for under $1.5/ft with far less effort than all the cutting of moldings and doors it would take to lay oak, plus the sanding and finishing. And while you can't sand laminate, you can disassemble it and replace a damaged plank.
I'm working on a place where 4 years ago I reluctantly laid laminate in the kitchen during a tenancy, and it looks damn good. Actually looks a bit better than the 5mm click vinyl I laid upstairs from it the next year.
True! Guess the question is the overall lifetime/maintenance costs of each type of floor. My gut feeling is that the nail down hardwood may be cheaper over, say, 20 yrs... But that would have to be costed out and would obviously depend on those installation and maintenance costs, usage, if you actually plan to keep the place that long, etc.
I have done DIY installation of both nail down and floating floors (laminate, bamboo, and engineered hardwood). Did not do anything differently from one to the other with the trim. Still had to undercut doors for floating floors... Nail down is way harder, and I had a lot of help from someone who's stronger than I am on that. Floating floors are a pretty reasonable DIY if you're into that sort of thing.
No matter what, my advice is to keep extra flooring for making repairs!!! In one of my apartments, I moved a closet, and of course under where the old closet wall was, there was no flooring. I had only saved a few scraps and that type of flooring was no longer available! Turns out they're very specific in terms of the way the tongue and groove fit together, as well as color and style. I was able to take up the whole corner of the room and weave in the scraps, getting the gap down to just one plank in the corner. Then a good carpenter friend of mine cut a board to size (somehow ripping it to make it the same height as the other flooring using only my circular saw!) I polyed the board, and it actually blends pretty well, but lesson learned, always save extra flooring!
