Please help. Prefinished hardwood or laminate?
Sarah
6 years ago
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jlj48
6 years agoPeter Roehrich
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Old fashioned hardwood vs new-prefinished ones??
Comments (38)judiegal, your husband is wrong on two counts. First, there are square-edged prefinished hardwoods available. There is one problem with the square edge - you can get something often called "sock-catchers" if the subfloor is not perfectly flat. There are many different depths of bevel available nowadays. We had the microbevel in our previous house to avoid "sock-catchers" and it did not collect debris. I could get the floors completely clean with a microfiber dustmop. (My current house has 107yo heart-pine floors, and I am getting all too familiar with catching debris because it has gaps over 1/4" wide between many boards. Maddening.) It peeves the living daylights out of me to hear people refer to engineered hardwood flooring as not "real" wood. It is just as much "real wood" as solid wood. Call solids solids if that's what you mean. We chose an ashwood engineered flooring for our previous house because NH has massive swings in humidity (we did not have central AC - it would have cost well over $12,000 to install) which can create problems with cupping, buckling, or gapping, and were extremely pleased with it. I cannot TELL you how many dealers and installers tried to bully us into site-finished flooring, even though we could not afford to vacate our house for a week plus, and there was no way we could stay and try to work around the construction and finishing (I would have almost surely been very sick from the stain and finish odors, and let's not even talk about trying to keep the cat and dog hair out of the finish.) Here in New England, the attitude of "we've done it this way for 100 years, we're not going to change now" is rampant! We did not have any problems with the floor delaminating from cat barf, spilled beverages, tracked-in snow, that sort of thing, and the aluminum oxide finish was very durable. The manufacturer, Robbins, did NOT recommend putting any additional finish on after installation. They were nailed down, not glued (the installers checked with Robbins to make sure they could be nailed instead of stapled). The reason why johnatemp thinks she can always spot engineered flooring is because CHEAP engineered floors use a rotary-cut veneer, which looks like plywood; better-quality engineereds have sliced and even quartsawn/riftsawn veneer layers. Another frequent myth about solid wood flooring - it cannot be refinished as many times as people are led to believe. You can only sand them down to the level of the tongue, which is usually less than a third of the thickness of the board. Old (50+ years) floorboards can often be flipped and reused if very carefully pulled up, but that is quite rare in modern flooring. Our floors were warranted for three full refinishings; the veneer layer was a third of the thickness of the board. However, you don't need to completely refinish a hardwood floor unless you have deep gouges or want to change the color. These days, if you want to refresh the finish and remove small scratches and scuffs, you just do something called a screen and recoat. It costs a LOT less than a full refinishing, too. Here are a couple of pictures. The floors are, as I said, from Robbins; style is and color is Tigra....See MorePre-finished hardwood: you love yours, tell me!
Comments (26)I think your floor is beautiful! When we were building our home we went with prefinished because it was much less expensive due to the amount of time you have to spend on site-finished. I also didn't like the micro-bevels, but after living with it for three years now, I don't know that I would want site-finished. The prefinished wears fantastically, and once your rugs and furniture is in, it's much less "in your face". The low sheen is much better for hiding scratches, etc., so is better in the long run. I hope you come to love your floor; it looks luxurious in the photos!...See MoreEngineered hardwood.....the good, the bad, the ugly?
Comments (14)Hi runninginplace (great name! :) ) - sorry, sometimes humor gets lost over the internet. :) What I was trying to say is that a lot of people whine about laminate that it's "not real." And I laugh at that, because it is very much a REAL floor. You can walk on it and everything! Ha ha. Yes I'm aware laminate has a printed wood-look face to it. I don't care. The "it's not REAL" camp doesn't resonate with me. Full disclosure, I like Corian better than some granites too. That statement also horrifies some people. Again, I don't care - it's a cost/benefit analysis for me and I'm not pretentious. All I was trying to say is I have exactly what this woman is talking about - a ~4 year old Shaw pre-finished engineered wood floor. And frankly I hate it. To me it has all the negatives of a wood floor, without hardly any positives. I liked my ~15 year old wood-look laminate plank floor much better than this current floor. So I explained why. Given that it is my opinion that I hate my current floor, I'm pretty sure that is a valid assumption. ;) If you have a prefinished wood floor and you like it, I'm genuinely happy for you. Different strokes and all that....See Moreon site finished or prefinished hardwoods
Comments (17)The specifications indicate a 5" wide solid European Oak product. A wide plank like that is going to need extra help. Wide planks are anything 5" or wider. And that means it requires a GLUE ASSIST for install. That means both nails (or staples) AND glue are necessary to get this floor to behave. The glue reduces the possibility of movement with change of seasons. Damp summers + dry winters can cause problems with wide plank products. As beautiful as these floors are going to be, you will need to make sure your HOME can handle the hardwood....that is to say you have the ability to control the humidity with a touch of a button. If you do NOT have this feature, you will need to add that in to the home BEFORE the flooring shows up for acclimation. As for site finished vs. factory finished, it is a personal choice that is made by the homeowner and their lifestyle. If moving everything out for 1-3 weeks is not a possibility then the factory finish is the "best fit" for your lifestyle. I am a "site finished" fan....but I am well aware of how life goes on around a renovation and what is doable for some is not possible for others. Personally I would be more interested in how good your HVAC (heating/cooling/humidity) system is. A wide plank product is going to need help being happy (which of course is HIGHLY dependent on where you live)....See MoreUser
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