Is there hardwood under the carpet?

jck910 - no, just a plywood subfloor.

The price of the house is different than the VALUE of the house. A $200K abandoned house is going to be VALUED much higher after it has been fixed up and lived in.

You have just gone through the housing market. What did you see while you were looking? Did you see hardwoods in 75% or more of the houses you looked at? Or did you see the ever present "New hardwood laminate flooring throughout"? Ya. See that? "hardwood laminate" is just an up-sell for 'laminate'.

Right. If the house is going to be VALUED at $450K after you fix it up, then hardwood is the way to go. If the house is going to be VALUED at $250K after you fix it up (not a very big uptick) then LVP is a great option.

As a homeowner you need to decide what works for you RIGHT NOW (that includes financially) as well as what works for the VALUE of the home at a later date.

If it is AT ALL POSSIBLE this home is going to DOUBLE in VALUE once fixed up, then I would SERIOUSLY look at hardwood.

SJ McCarthy - we bought the house 7 years ago for $134,000 as a foreclosure. We've been updating it since then, the floors just weren't a priority until this year (needed new roof, windows, and driveway culvert over the stream before this). The carpeting was brand new then, but is definitely overdue to be replaced, and we've just kept the hardwood covered with rugs. Similar houses to our's are going for 2-250ish in the area.

We'd move tomorrow if a house we wanted popped up, but we're particular with what we are looking for and willing to wait to get it. We're really trying to get this place updated so we could sell it at any point.

I would probably go check out a few open houses of similar homes and take a look at their flooring and chat with local realtor. That said, five years is a long way from now and you want to enjoy the home in the meantime.

It sounds like the current updates have brought your house into the range where the value meets the purchase price.

You might find that removing the damaged wood and replacing with new and then doing a full sand/refinish over the entire floor MIGHT turn out to be roughly the same as removing all of it and installing new LVP throughout.

A quick calculation tells you whether or not a patch + sand and refinish is worth it or if a full removal/replacement with a lower value product is the way to go:

$4-$5/sf for a full sand and refinish (no patches or repairs to do).

You add in the cost of the wood itself (depends on your product but '87 was good for 3" strip hardwood) + cost of labour to patch the existing wood floor. I'm going to guess the price for the wood is going to around $6/sf (if I'm correct a narrow hardwood is going to be an easy product to source). The material = only for the areas requiring the patch. Labour to remove old and patch in new = $3-4/sf (for that area only). Add in some subfloor work for the water damaged areas = $2/sf for the patched areas.

Now the full sand/refinish occurs (which is already established at $4/sf). It sounds like a lot....but wait until you do the math for the LVP.

LVP (decent quality = $4/sf) + cost of removal of all flooring products ($2-$3/sf = includes dumping fees) + cost of subfloor preparation ($2/sf includes labour) + cost of install ($2.50/sf).

Remember the LVP costs are for the ENTIRE square footage of the home. The hardwood patching costs (new hardwood + new subfloor material + labour) is only for the small area needing new product. The full sand/refinish costs are for the entire wood square footage.

A little bit of math and you have your answer.

SJ McCarthy thanks! It figures we can't have a normal house and they went with 6" planks instead of standard 3". It will absolutely be more expensive to rip up and replace 1200 sq ft of flooring with LVP vs the 250 for hardwood refinishing, but really not by much, especially since we need to replace the carpeting as well.

I guess I'm just trying to figure out if hardwood is still preferred over lvp, even if combined with carpet and where the median home price in the zip code is sub 200,000. Hardwood is timeless, but LVP is very popular right now. I've done some digging on this site and from what I've seen in the past, most choose the hardwood. We'll reach out to a realtor as well, and I am planning on getting quotes for both options.

I vote for hardwood all day, every day.

We put our LVP over the prefinished wood in our home. Not sure on the shape or levelness of your hardwood, but maybe it doesn't have to be all ripped out prior to LVP. We figured if future owners wanted honey oak back, they could just rip up the LVP.

@Kaitlin McNew - IMO if budget was not an issue there would be more hardwood flooring. I believe it is always preferred over vinyl unless you're in a basement or wet area.