# Flooring Choices



## NuttinButGoldens (Jan 10, 2009)

Carpet. It's cheaper, and wood always worried me with big dog stability.


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## Scarletts_Daddy (Sep 4, 2008)

I love the look of the more exotic wood floors. The home I built last year had tile and carpet. I loved the tile. However it did have faults it was brutally cold to my feet. Sadly my clumsy ass also dropped some dishes *crash* I'm 90% sure that wouldnt have happened on wood.


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## esSJay (Apr 13, 2009)

The hardwood that you buy these days is pretty well made and are good for high traffic areas. My old neighbours laid the pre-finished hardwood down about 10 years ago on their entire main floor and it has held up really well. There are no scratches, fading, etc. They have a dog but it is a little maltese/shih tzu. It looks fantastic too! (the floors, not the dog)

Our house is mostly original hardwood from the 1960's, aside from the kitchen which is ceramic (hate it, too hard and cold on my feet and knees/back), our entrance way and basement are laminate, and our family room is bamboo (don't get it - it's too soft and scratches easily!). I'm not a fan of the way our laminate floors looks (it looks like laminate!), but it is tough as heck! I see the new laminates they have at Home Depot/Lowe's, etc these days and they look really good and much more like real hardwood. 

Overall, my opinion is that both types will serve its purpose without being worn out, so just go with what you like and what you can afford.

We plan to redo the floors in our house next year sometime and it will definitely be one of the two - if we can find a nice looking laminate that is cheaper than hardwood, I will be ordering it!


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## Noey (Feb 26, 2009)

my mom has hardwood with a treatment on it for dog reason. If they spill water and or lots of paw traffic it hold up better and that top layer of marks can be buffed out and cleaned. The wood is not damaged.

I'm looking as well. I'm thinking a laminate/floating floor based on cost with a coating. Wood is too much for us and Bamboo is s new material, not sure how it does with water, acciedents, and oet feet. Have you looked at Lumber Liquidators? they offer 3 free samples.


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## Swanolck (Jan 17, 2007)

I have laminate in my kitchen that is quite old and I strongly dislike it. I have newer laminate in my office and it's ok, definitely not my first choice. 

I have real hard wood in my dining area (high traffic area) and it is by far my favorite floor. We went with the number 2 oak so it has many more knots and a lot of variation in coloring. Plus we went with the little plugs for a country look. It has held up nice and I say any scratches in it add character. Here is the only pic I can find of it, on the right is the older laminte (by the chair) and the dark wood on the top left is Bruce pre-finished WAX floor (which I will be sanding down and polying some day).


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## NuttinButGoldens (Jan 10, 2009)

This all reminds me of a funny thing that happened to me once.

I went to Carpet-One to discuss new Carpet, but was also going to consider hardwood floors.

She showed me Pergo. Said it was scratch proof. I said really? She handed me a sample and said "Try to scratch it".

I took my car key out of my pocket, and commenced to put a HUGE scratch in the sample.

I looked at her and she said "Um, that's not quite what I meant" LOL

I went with Carpet 



esSJay said:


> The hardwood that you buy these days is pretty well made and are good for high traffic areas. My old neighbours laid the pre-finished hardwood down about 10 years ago on their entire main floor and it has held up really well. There are no scratches, fading, etc. They have a dog but it is a little maltese/shih tzu. It looks fantastic too! (the floors, not the dog)
> 
> Our house is mostly original hardwood from the 1960's, aside from the kitchen which is ceramic (hate it, too hard and cold on my feet and knees/back), our entrance way and basement are laminate, and our family room is bamboo (don't get it - it's too soft and scratches easily!). I'm not a fan of the way our laminate floors looks (it looks like laminate!), but it is tough as heck! I see the new laminates they have at Home Depot/Lowe's, etc these days and they look really good and much more like real hardwood.
> 
> ...


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## AmberSunrise (Apr 1, 2009)

I love the look and feel of wood. I just needed to replace 50 year old flooring (a previous refinishing job had badly damaged the original) and did not even look at laminate. I am talking a complete replacement for a 26 x 52 foot main floor other than bathrooms and kitchens which have tiling. I may be old-school but a few of my brothers:

Installed and promptly REMOVED the laminated flooring; they hated it that much. It looked wrong and was really bad on the feet. It was so cold and hard they could not stand it. This was in 2 different houses.

Another brother still has laminate and it is holding up 'wel'l but after 10 years it looks like laminate, not wood. He also keeps his heat up very high in the winter and they have carpeting in the living areas.


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## LuckyPup (Sep 9, 2009)

My dad always said that if you are thinking hardwood or laminate it should be where it is location wise in your house. He always said upstairs you should do hardwood and in the basement you should do laminate. Something about settling or something? I really do not know why!


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## BeauShel (May 20, 2007)

We put Bruce hardwood down in the family room and I love it. It is the glue down kind. No big scratches from all the dogs. The only scratches that happened from it is because I went to move the coffee table and the little tab underneath to keep it from scratching came off and when I move it it put a scratch mark on the floor. Got one of those pens for flooring and it helped to cover it where it isnt really noticable. We have laminate in the bedroom from when Beau started having seizures and ruined the carpet and I hate it with a passion. It holds up well but I dont like the feel of it and looks like fake. I hate the click and lock too. It can be frustrating. The glue is so much easier.


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## Traz (Jan 19, 2009)

We layed our own laminate in our kitchen , dining room & down a hall to the bedrooms. I love it. Much cheaper than carpet when you DIY. I do have carpet in my living room & family room because I like the warmer comfort. The laminate has been down probably 5 years & looks as good as the day we laid it. All but a few months of that we have had a golden & no scratches. It is so much easier for cleanup with all the dog hair.


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## Mssjnnfer (Aug 9, 2009)

I have wood floors ALL through the house... except the bathroom and a little patch by the door.

I like the look of them... but I also hate them. (The wood) lol... If I don't sweep for a day not only is the dog hair super noticeable but so is the DUST. Maybe because we have a really dark color of wood... But yeah.

Other than that, wood is pretty. LOL. I didn't help at all, I'm sorry.


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## Bailey & Charlies Mom (Jan 27, 2009)

We have hardwood through the whole house except for the kitchen and the entry ways and I love it! They are durable easy to clean and don't hold any smells. I have braided rugs down and dog beds in most rooms so the girls never have to lay on the hard floor if they don't want to.


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## Penny & Maggie's Mom (Oct 4, 2007)

We have the original hardwood ( 1950's) and LOVE it. It's worn great ( we ripped up carpet to get to it when we bought the house 29 years ago ) and has great character. We do have carpet in the family room and guest room. Wood in living/dining room, halls and other bedrooms.


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## Dallas Gold (Dec 22, 2007)

We've done carpet, ceramic tile, wood (glue down type) and travertine tile. The carpet was disgusting after a few years, the ceramic tile was ugly and the installers didn't set the tile properly, the wood got scratched and due to a moisture issue in the foundation it delaminated and warped. Our dogs' tags and nails did a huge number to the wood. It was Anderson Cherry wood. The sales people said it would hold up to the dogs--they lied. The travertine, while expensive, is wonderful! WE LOVE IT!! The dogs really enjoy it during the hot Texas summers. It's easy to maintain and the color matches our dogs' fur. We can forgo a few days of vacuuming until we see the fur tumbleweeds collecting on it.


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## Faith's mommy (Feb 26, 2007)

we've used Alloc laminate flooring in several rooms and love it. it's held up really well, no issues with scratches or whatever.

the only thing, as stated above, boy does it show dirt and hair quickly. you have to sweep every day to keep on top of it. and, even then, i swear i have swept up and then turned around to find another hair tumbleweed blowing through the room.


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## slip_kid (May 12, 2009)

Mssjnnfer said:


> I have wood floors ALL through the house... except the bathroom and a little patch by the door.
> 
> I like the look of them... but I also hate them. (The wood) lol... If I don't sweep for a day not only is the dog hair super noticeable but so is the DUST. Maybe because we have a really dark color of wood... But yeah.
> 
> Other than that, wood is pretty. LOL. I didn't help at all, I'm sorry.


get an irobot roomba...


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## Ambesi (Jul 16, 2009)

I've had both and have to say I love the hardwood in our new house much more than the laminate that we had in our old house. That being said, we bought pretty cheap laminate in our old house because it's what we could afford.

They do make laminate now that has a thicker layer (1/4"?) of actual hardwood on top and we were told that it can be refinished up to three times (I proably wouldn't refinish more than twice though).


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## GoldenJoyx'stwo (Feb 25, 2007)

I have a huge laminate floor in our kitchen. It was installed at least 5 years ago. I was only down a few months when we had a problem with a water leak. We then got a second laminate floor because the tiles beneath are asbestos. We were told the laminate would encapsulate it. I dislike the laminate floor. I love my wood floors.


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## lgnutah (Feb 26, 2007)

If you need convincing that wood will hold up, here's my experience. We bought a 1960 era house in 1979 which had been "renovated" in the 70's style gold, brown and orange carpet and linoleum. As we could afford it, we started removing all that and lo and behold, underneath it all was either oak hardwood flooring, or heart pine flooring (even the kitchen and dining had been oak, but unfortunately someone had glued down an asbestos backed linoleum so we couldn't salvage it).
Anyway, in some parts of the house the 50 year old oak floors (that were covered by carpeting for probably 30 of those years) have never been refinished and still look GREAT!!! The heart pine floors just recently were refinished, and they now are gorgeous. The guy who did the work said no imitation wood floor is ever going to stay good looking as long as a real wood floor.


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## Gwen (Aug 9, 2007)

We have hardwood (oak) in the main living areas & I LOVE IT! It is easy to clean & always looks good. It is very important to keep your furkids nails trimmed up.

Carpet - I HATE it & have full intentions of removing all of the carpet in our bedrooms & downstairs family room. We'll be replacing it with ceramic in the basement & hardwood in the bedrooms. If you have doggies & any accidents, carpet is horrible for cleaning.

My furkids LOVE the coolness of the ceramic in the kitchen, bathroom & downstairs hallway & it's easy to clean.


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## jwemt81 (Aug 20, 2008)

I can answer this! We just installed all new cherry laminate flooring in our house this summer and we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. We installed it ourselves with the help of a good friend. It's totally scratch resistant and came with a 25-year warranty. The cats and dogs go flying and sliding across it and there are NO marks whatsoever! We put it down in our kitchen, dining room, and hallway. We have red oak laminate in our finished basement. We have ceramic tile in our entry way and bathroom, which I love as well. We had regular wood before, which was constantly getting scratched and scuffed up. I hated it. Trust me, if you have pets or even kids, laminate is the only way to go! It's super easy to clean with just white vinegar and water. Here are a few pictures of our new flooring. (Don't mind our Maine **** girl.) It's called Mount Vernon Cherry.


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## Ash (Sep 11, 2007)

I have a lot of ceramic tile and laminate floors. Carpet I would never want... ever. I like being able to really clean and disinfect my floors.


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## sammydog (Aug 23, 2008)

I think we have about 4 years on our pergo (laminate) floor. Even with having a multiple dog household we have not scratches from nails. The dogs like to lay on it as well when it gets hot. Its also WAY easier to clean!


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## rappwizard (May 27, 2009)

We went with Quick-Step wood laminate; we got it in the "plank" style. We have two extra boxes in the garage in case we need to repair/replace an area; living in South Florida, one can never be too cautious about flooding and/or hurricanes.

This is natural varnished cherry--our puppy Mac is now 16 months old but she was 8 weeks old when this photo was taken--had just been brought home from the breeders'! Anyway, hopefully you can get the idea as to what it looks like. I want to do my bedroom in wood laminate too. I HATE carpeting.


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## BajaOklahoma (Sep 27, 2009)

I love the look of hardwood floors, but we have oak paneling on our walls (think English Tudor), so it would have been overwhelming. We have tile in the kitchen, breakfast room and dog's room, with marble in our bathroom. The dog's love the cool tile.
But our older dogs have had trouble getting up from the tile floors. We've noticed over the years that as they get older, they avoid the tile and stick to the carpeted areas.


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## Bob-N-Tash (Feb 24, 2008)

NuttinButGoldens said:


> This all reminds me of a funny thing that happened to me once.
> 
> I went to Carpet-One to discuss new Carpet, but was also going to consider hardwood floors.
> 
> ...


 
Remind me to be careful of what I say when I am around you.


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## fuzzbuzz (Aug 3, 2008)

We have hardwood and ceramic tile down stairs and love them both. The upstairs is carpet and since the dogs don't have free roam of the up stairs its great. The only thing about the hardwood is you see all the dog hair.
When I vacuum Buzz follows waiting for me to vacuum him, he loves it. Only thing is he leaves a trail of dog hair behind so there is always more hair to vacuum. :doh: Maybe his name should be Linus! :


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## Debles (Sep 6, 2007)

We have some of everything. We have original 50 yr old oak hardwood through out our house. We did cover the living room with berber carpet a few years ago. It's carmel, matches my dogs.
Our entry is slate and the dogs love to lay there when it's hot.
Our kitchen is oak parquet and is twenty years old. It still looks good but is hard to keep clean as it is waxed. UGH.
My daughter has new laminate and LOVES it. It doesn't show scratches from her kids and goldens at all but she is constantly sweeping! if I redid my kitchen I might do laminate.


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## arcane (Sep 18, 2007)

*floors*

I have laminate in my kitchen, great room, and ceramic in my family/tv room...I hate the laminate and love the ceramic! If I could afford to, I would re-do my kitchen/dining area in a new york minute with ceramic, However it would be costly as I have an older house and would need to level alot of the floor ...why I went with laminate originally ......I am sure hardwood would stand up much better than the laminate...I also hate seeing the dogs slipping and sliding...have these types of floors contributed to hip issues /injuries in our dogs?? I wonder  I use many area rugs for the dogs  Also..I hate the paws prints that are always present!!!!!


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## beccacc31 (Aug 17, 2009)

We just removed our last rug in our home (except in basement). We put down Pergo style flooring. I love the color but I am not in love with the tappiness of it. We have hardwood and ceramic through out the rest of the house. I love the Oak, it held up perfect with Mitchell (our house is 15 and Mithcell was 13.5) it shows very little wear and tear and the tile is the easiest. I would never have another carpet. It will be interesting to see how this fake wood floor holds up to puppy pee when we finally find the little guy!


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## AquaClaraCanines (Mar 5, 2006)

Spare the kitchen and bathrooms, which are tile, our whole house is wood laminate. I LOVE it. It's easy to clean, it doesn't get scratched, and can be cheaply fixed if a section gets damaged. LOVE IT! easy to clean and maintain.


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## NuttinButGoldens (Jan 10, 2009)

You'll want to watch the puppy pee on the laminate, and clean it up asap.

My mom's Yorkie has hit a few spots in the living room, and while the floor is still in place, there is a bit of curling at the very edges where the boards go together. It also tends to darken the seams.



beccacc31 said:


> We just removed our last rug in our home (except in basement). We put down Pergo style flooring. I love the color but I am not in love with the tappiness of it. We have hardwood and ceramic through out the rest of the house. I love the Oak, it held up perfect with Mitchell (our house is 15 and Mithcell was 13.5) it shows very little wear and tear and the tile is the easiest. I would never have another carpet. It will be interesting to see how this fake wood floor holds up to puppy pee when we finally find the little guy!


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## fostermom (Sep 6, 2007)

I had laminates in my bedroom and the hallway. I hated them! First of all, they are really loud. The dogs moving around at night woke me up, the cats racing around woke me up and it hurt my feet when I had to get up during the night. I was also really worried that one of the dogs would slip and hurt themselves. The dust bunnies were horrible!

I have hardwoods in the livingroom, they are worn, but at least they are quiet.

I replaced the laminates after one year with carpeting.


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## CCoopz (Jun 2, 2020)

Hi,
We have something called Amtico. In the UK it is bracketed as within the luxury vinyl flooring market. As expensive as some hardwoods. It’s made from Resin.
Amtico reproduce the look and feel of hard wood reasonably well as they even have grain like patterns you can actually feel running through the planks.
I tried other luxury vinyl ‘wood’ floorings and they felt and looked like laminate. Amtico really doesn’t.

We bought an oldish house 1906 and the floors downstairs had been stripped back to the original wood floor boards. So many of our friends loved the look of them but it is really cold as all the cold air comes up through the floor boards. To me there is a big difference between original wood flooring and floor boards! Latter let’s up all the cold air from underneath the house. I love original proper wood flooring you get in these grand large old posh houses in the uk. I’d have kept that if we had something like that. 

We had the Amtico laid down in a parquet flooring fashion.
So far it has been taking the running around of our GR very well and his wet muddy paws when he first comes into the hall before being dried off. It’s also made a noticeable difference to how warm the rooms are.

If you do go for real wood I would choose something that has a nice obvious grain and texture to it to better hide any scratches or marks.
I had engineered wood in my last property and it was nightmare as the wood layer in the top was one uniform colour with no grain and it showed up scratches terribly. And that was without a dog around then!


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## JulesAK (Jun 6, 2010)

We installed LVP (luxury vinyl plank) in January of 2019. We love it. We have a super wet environment with dogs coming in and out all day long and it has worn very well. We went with the glued down version as we wanted as water tight as we could get. It is easy to clean and the pattern we got hides footprints quite well. It has a much warmer, softer feel than our laminate downstairs. I notice the dogs feel much more secure on it. We did put a doggy rug runner for when they come in the door and that rug is amazing!!
Jules


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## CAROLINA MOM (May 12, 2009)

JulesAK said:


> We installed LVP (luxury vinyl plank) in January of 2019. We love it. We have a super wet environment with dogs coming in and out all day long and it has worn very well. We went with the glued down version as we wanted as water tight as we could get. It is easy to clean and the pattern we got hides footprints quite well. It has a much warmer, softer feel than our laminate downstairs. I notice the dogs feel much more secure on it. We did put a doggy rug runner for when they come in the door and that rug is amazing!!
> Jules
> 
> View attachment 877890



Your flooring looks great, like the pattern.


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## CCoopz (Jun 2, 2020)

Amtico LVP in white Ash. But lots of more traditional oak options. 
I live near the beach so wanted a beachy light and airy look.


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## JulesAK (Jun 6, 2010)

CCoopz said:


> Amtico LVP in white Ash. But lots of more traditional oak options.
> I live near the beach so wanted a beachy light and airy look.


Looks really nice and matches your Golden nicely 
Jules


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