Thanks, Jerry_t. I'm not expecting the floor to be indestructible, but resiliency is desirable. Our current house is oak hardwood floored and it has held up fine. The problem is that our cat tends to stay in the kids bedrooms, which two of the rooms will be. She particularly likes to puke under the bed, so carpet is absolutely out. Forgot to mention that the concrete slab is below grade. Underneath the existing carpet, which I'm pulling, there is an old vinyl tile layer that I don't want to remove. Floorguy told me that floating the the floor was the only good option for hardwood. Also, the floor I install can't be too thick otherwise the transition to a ceramic tiled bathroom will be awkward. However, I spoke with a person who works at the local place we are going to by our flooring from for another project that is above grade. His company has a very good rep and he has been selling and installing their product for years. He recommended gluing luan plywood to the tiles and then installing hardwood flooring on top (glued and nailed). He said that he wouldn't use a vapor barrier, which seems to fly in the face of everything I've read in this forum. Interesting advice since I didn't tell him that cost was a concern. His company sells an engineered floating floor that is about twice the price of the quartersawn 3/8" inch flooring we are using in the above grade job. I mentioned it and he didn't change his recommendation. Thoughts? mrs517

I've dealt with 30 year old engineered floors with the original finish, and a couple of screening and topcoating over it. If you take care of floors and don't let kids play roller hockey indoors, you too will never need to do a sand and refinish. The idea of "refinishing" as a criteria for choosing your floors is not really a valid concern. Choose a quality major brand, and you won't have any worries. No LL or box store crapola. $5-6 a square foot and up is where the good stuff starts. Under that, you can get some OK buys, but you're generally gonna have to do a lot more homework to make sure. So, what does "taking care of your floors" entail? Vacuuming a couple of times a week. Not allowing food and drink outside of the kitchen. Using rugs at all entries to capture the dirt from outside. Being a no shoes indoor household helps a lot too, but I'm not going to get into that classic arguement. Don't mop your floors. You can damp clean them, but people get all hung up over sloshing water on top of wood, and that's just a comple no no. Use something like a Bona cleaner a couple of times a month, max. Every other type of cleaning should be spot cleaning. But with food and drink confined to the appropriate spot, spills are minimized. Abrasion from debris is minimized by rugs that you frequently clean. And in 8-12 years, you do a refresher of a screening and recoating. You don't need to sand down to bare wood at all. Unless you don't do the above and wear through to bare wood.

I plan to put maple engineering wood floor in natural color in my home office. I like its quite, clean look. We don't have kids and pets in the house. I got a few samples from flooring stores. The flooring installer says I should just pick the one I like since first quality products (instead of factory clear out, or seconds) all have good warranties. Is this true? Could anyone please teach me how to tell if one product is better than others? What characteristics should I look for in a sample? What is the reasonable price range for a quality floor? Does brand name of a company matter? What width is ideal? Thank you in advance for your inputs.

With dogs, I would work with natural coloured wood, not "coffee". Hickory is traditionally a harder wood than birch, but when it comes to engineered hardwood, the top species isn't the biggest concern. I always ask people how THICK the wear layer is (3mm is required if you have any HOPE of refinishing) and how thick the entire plank is. Mohawk is an acceptable mid-grade product. Not super cheap and not super expensive. A true middle of the road manufacturer. If you have a HIGH END home, you might want to look at something else.