Hi all. I put in brand new engineered wood floor by Garrison a year ago in my rebuilt home. I picked a pretty hard top - hickory. Within months, we saw dents, scratches, and worst is the warping and cracking. After a lot of investigation from the installer, glue company, Garrison, it was determined that my installer didn't spread the glue evenly and some of the moisture was able to seep through to the wood and cause damage. The installer's insurance will cover the cost of replacing my floors. So now I get a do-over. At this point, my installer is not recommending garrison. He said that they have installed the floors the same way for years and never had any problem. In their minds, something changed with the wood floor, not their installation method. I have to say, even the glue company said the way the installer cut the wood was very professional. They thought the edges, corners were cut perfect. So in a way I do wonder if garrison wood has a problem, not my installer. So by now, I'm definitely not re-installing garrison engineered wood. I called a local wood floor company and the sales thought that I may be better off with a luxury vinyl because it is water resistant, dent/scratch resistant. Is luxury vinyl floor really all that good? I remember I was told engineered wood was easy to maintain too. I'm debating whether to try another engineered wood, bamboo wood or Luxury vinyl. I would appreciate any suggestion. Thank you!

I had always loved hardwood floors and wouldn't consider anything else... Until we bought our current house. It has LVP (Coretec Plus) that visually is pretty good at fooling people into thinking it's real wood. When you walk on it, you can tell it's not because it doesn't have the echo of wood. But it also doesn't have the hollow sound that I remember Pergo-type floors having. Since we have an open floor plan, it is actually nice that is is a quieter flooring. We found a box with a few extra pieces of the flooring in the garage, and decided to test how hard it was to scratch/damage. Hubby dropped an ax on it, no marks. Then he "chopped" it with varying degrees of strength and it really took a solid blow to do damage. He also took a screwdriver to it, dragging the tip of the tool across the "grain" of the LVP (the grain is raised) to see how much pressure it took to create a visible mark, and again, it took significant force to make a mark that was noticeable. And with all of the marks that were eventually made, they all maintained the same color under the damage, so they weren't terribly noticeable until we held the plank up in the sunlight at the right angle. So I'm not pretty happy with the flooring, especially since we live in a mountain climate (snowy, muddy) and have large dogs. I think it will hold up very well. I have no experience with other brands though.

I don’t agree that LVP is not a good choice for basements. We used it because we have a walk out that goes to a free access dog run with 3 big dogs and the other entry is to the pool so lots of traffic with wet feet, muddy feet and at the end of the day a quick mop and it looks like new 12 yrs later . Hardwood would have by now looked like garbage from dog nails and water left sitting. IMO you choose flooring to stand up to your lifestyle not because some imaginary buyer will like it better. We have always had floors that are not real wood because we will always have big dogs and no matter how careful you are they can do some real damage to wood floors.

Pros and cons of each? How much time do you have? It may sound like I'm joking...but I'm not. It sounds like you are at the beginning stage of your search. There are SOOOO many variables that go into a decision like this I can't begin to contemplate it. I've sold flooring for years (cork flooring experts need to be educated in all the other flooring types because we have to COMPETE with the other types) and I always start with questions about the HOMEOWNER and the HOME before I suggest anything. Tell me: What are your PERSONAL requirements? What is your climate? What is the budget per square foot? That means the ENTIRE cost of project? How many square feet? What are your LONG TERM goals with the house (5 year flip or 15-20 year 'forever home')? These are just the PREQUALIFYING questtions I like to ask. After that, I start to narrow down the particulars. As you can see, the "pros and cons" of the flooring do NOT enter into the conversation before the homeowner starts to make some personal 'pros and cons' that they WANT from a floor. Personal expectations are what drive "issues" with floors. If you expect a $0.79/sf laminate (as an example) to have the same life span of 1" quarried slate, then you are going to be very upset (again...this is an example). Tell us more so we can help you more.