I have cats (and they are getting on the elderly side). Half the flooring is engineered, the other half the original oak. All litter boxes sit on a throw rug - so far none are having accidents. That said, if we reached that point I would lay down some sort of vinyl/plastic/resin material underneath the throw rugs and then put the litter boxes on top of those two surfaces. And yes, CP, the floor was done by previous owners - evidently they didn't want to spend the time or money to repair/replace what must have been severly damaged original oak floors in the living area.

I had tile in my last home and moved to a home with carpet everywhere but the kitchen (yes, even the bathrooms had carpet (yuk)). After 20 years my joints could not withstand the impact of living on tile floors. Choices were to replace the carpet with Carpet - It is soft and quiet. It gets dirty and is hard to get clean. Muddy paws from an active puppy while delandscaping the yard was a nightmare. Hardwood - much more expensive - harder than tile or LVT to maintain, would require purchase of area carpets to protect. LVT - cost efficient - low maintenance, limited lifespan (20 years ish) I'm 59 - 20 years I won't be able to see what it looks like. Can add area carpets for aesthetics, but can eliminate the trip hazards of area carpets as I age in place. Engineered hardwood seemed to have the same cons as hardwood, but cannot be refinished over and over again - thin layer of wood. I decided to replace the carpet with LVT, I am doing one room at a time as I renovate, but am very happy with my choice. I bought Downs H20 from Cloister's Flooring America. It is waterproof and is manufactured by Coretech for the CCA Family of flooring companies. Same product, different name at each company website. Different price at each store (store not company level, two different Flooring America franchises had 2 different prices). Difference from highest price to lowest price was a difference of $2.00 per sq ft - I was covering 2000 sf, so this was a substantial savings. I loved the franchise I picked - Cloister's Flooring America. Other franchises really pushed the professional install - Cloister's seems to cater to the DYI folks (Owned by a Mennonite family). For $75.00 they send one of their installers out for 2 hours to teach you how to lay the flooring and they will rent you a tool kits that has everything you need to lay your floors. I bought one box of each of two colors and could exchange the one I didn't pick when placing my full order. I also got an additional $500 off because I hadn't placed my order yet and they called because they were having an anniversary sale. I hadn't called because I had a heart attack and was in the hospital when I got the call. They gave me the $500 off and told me I could call when I was home and feeling up to ordering even though the sale was just for the week. They even helped me with the layout plan. Told me to use graph paper and tracing paper. I drew out my floor plan on graph paper and traced the outline of the flooring pattern on the tracing paper. You place the tracing paper over the floor plan and move it around until you have a placement that doesn't leave you with little 2" strips anywhere. You do have to be exacting in your measurement and drawing of the floor plan and lay out enough pieces to get exact measurements for your tracing. I didn't find this method on the internet anywhere - most have you plan from the center of the room, but this worked out really well for me.

Thanks all. We removed the floor. Unfortunately as expected, that exposed more of a mess. Luckily, no "damage" to subfloor per say, but it looked like the previous folks who installed the floor used leveling "float" on pretty much the entire 700 sqft and in some place as thick as almost 1.5 inches. This made it very difficult to remove the layers of flooring (combination of engineered hardwood glued down and some solid wood nailed down to plywood, which was glued and nailed down to "leveling float", which was poured over OSB subfloor). The demo guy tried to get to the OSB subfloor as best he could but he stopped after 2 days of demo and when the OSB was starting to get damaged as it came up with some of the float. We have now moved on to filling the 3 very low areas with some plywood and then pouring self leveling float over the entire floor to try to fill in all to "holes" that were created by trying to pull up the previous float. I guess I am officially welcomed to home ownership.

We had our floors installed we feel there is gaps between the boards and over time dirt will collect between them the company that installed them is amazing and trying to make things right… they said they could fill the gaps with wood filler and extend the warranty for 5 more years…. Is this industry standard ? They will have to fill a lot !!! Thoughts ? Debating to get a independent flooring inspector in. Thank you!