Real Wood or Laminated Wood Flooring

[KAHLUA]

We are getting ready to re-floor our family room.  The room is 260 sq feet.  Right now it's carpeted and it's taken a beating since we've had Kahlua and the addition of Paxton.  Of all the rooms in the house, we use this room 100 times more than any other room.  This room is connected to the kitchen/eating area (which is tiled).  Oh we also have a pool, so this room will sometimes get wet from the pool when the grandbabies come in and "forget" to dry off.    I would say that most people will enter the door in the family room and walk through this room to get to the rest of the house.  My point is this room takes a lot of wear and tear. 

I want to put laminated wood flooring in this room.  Main reason is the price compared to real wood.  My husband said that real wood would be better.  But I've talked to people and they said with animals and traffice that comes through it would be better to go with the laminate flooring. 

As you all know, my daily routine is to look at the newly posted pictures every day.  I see so many homes with some type of wood flooring.  So I thought I should see what the general concenus is amongst fellow doodle owners. 

Let me know what you think.  My hubby says he will be "open" to listening about the pros and cons from other doodle owners and will take all info into consideration. 

What do you think?  Real wood for laminated wood flooring?

[Christine & Camus]

If you are open to ceramic tile is the way I would go.  I too lived in Florida for a time and most of the ""Florida rooms", which were basically large family rooms (many with a pool accessed by sliding glass) doors had tile floors.  So easy to keep clean.  In my apartment I pulled up all of the carpet downstairs (with permission) and in the kitchen dining area I put in ceramic tile, the remaining area has a painted faux finish on cement, which held up for about 14 years until I had a flood.  I wish I had tiled the whole area because the tiled portion was not damaged by the flood.

[Ginny Nightingale]

I have a room just like you have described and it has a yellow pine floor--there is no pool outside, but lots of wet grass in the morning. I had a terrier before my three doodles and the wood, which was installed in 1989, got really destroyed. It got scratched a lot and in some places there are deep gouges from the wear and tear of his nails. My doodles do less damage and have a "softer" walk (my terrier used to dig into the floor with his nails more. ) If I had it to do over, I would get a harder wood, like oak, or laminate. The rest of my house has 200 year old wide pine boards and it looks better than the new pine does.

However, I have tiles at the entryways to the room. (Industrial strength!) and they look great! We have a 3 foot deep area of tile in front of our two french doors on one side and a 4 foot by 4 foot area in front of the back door on the other wall. That might be a good idea for you--I have rugs on the tile and they catch a lot of the water and debris. 

 

 

[Jen, Lachlan, and Declan]

I went with laminate for my floors after much research. The "quality", thickness and hardness, of the laminate, makes a major difference. There are some very nice ones out there that are hard to tell from real wood but they are much harder to damage. The one I chose was a "birch" with a wood-grain texture and I love it. Nice thing is, if a piece does get damaged, it's easy to pop it out and slot a new piece in to replace it.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Your doodle matches your floor. Good thinking...LOL! Love the floors and Lachlan is adorable.

[Sue, Lola, Pongo & Hubby]

what a gorgeous doodle!! I love the matchy-matchy look!!! Very cute!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

We have ceramic tile and laminate wood flooring throughout our house. It was all here when we moved in and both are easy to take care of and I don't notice any damage from the dogs.

[Sue, Lola, Pongo & Hubby]

We have laminate, and I'm so glad we do. I've seen the floors of some of our friends' houses (and my parents') and you can see scratch mark all over them. I guess it depends on what kind of wood you put down, but our laminate has survived four years of Lola, as well as other dogs, running around!

[Kaytlin and Cooper]

we have laminate and its fine...

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

I vote for tile rather than wood or laminate.

[Jennifer,Chloe & Myla]

Well...we have laminate in our kitchen and this was done a few years ago, it's ok. When out water bowl leaked out from our cat when we were at work, I came home to a fairly new floor that was all bubbled up. I'm sure they can withstand water, just not that much! As far as noise, yes they are noisy. Then we had a really old carpet in the office/dog room it had to go-finally a few months back DH agreed. My brother put laminate in for us and it is way slippery compared to our kitchen and it's actually more textured than the kitchen-weird.

Now I would LOVE to have fresh hardwood floors but I believe the laminate would hold up better to scratches. My sister has all hardwood in a newer home but her dog is quite calm and older. 2 boys and they hold up pretty well. My dad had to have his redone a couple times because of their 2 bigger dogs. It's really a toss up but those are the factors that I know of personally.

[L.M.]

We have hard wood throughout most of our house....ceramic tile in kitchen...laminate in dining room.  The hard wood is resistant against scratches and whatnot, BUT you don't want to get it wet or damp all the time as it will warp.  So if dogs going in and out all the time is a concern in that room, I would pass on real wood.  Honestly, ceramic tile is the best, but I know most don't want it for a family room.  We have laminate in the room that is our dog exit and it holds up fine.  We of course have doormats to keep everything clean and dry, but we have gotten water, snow, mud, etc all over the laminate floor and you don't have to worry about how you clean it.  I just swiffer it and it cleans/dries fine with no worry of warping.  It looks really nice too.  The sound is totally not real lol but to me that's a small sacrifice for easy cleaning and some money saving.

[KAHLUA]

Wow!  This is AWESOME feedback.  I believe I may do a little more research on the hardwood flooring.  Concensus is that it's not that much different in pricing.  Seems that that hardwood flooring has more maintenance (stripping, varnishing, cleaning) and more issues with scratching, gouging (normal animal wear and tear) and doesn't do well with water.  On the other hand, it's long lasting, less noise, looks better and good for resale. 

 

Looks like I may have to hold off on my choice and look into this more, but all comments and posts will be instrumental on my decision. 

 

Note:  If I could get away with tiling the entire family room and kitchen, I believe I would, but we live in Kentucky and most people don't like tile in their family room and since we plan on moving in the next 3 - 5 years, it may not be a good idea, but it is an option!

 

Thanks again to all of you.  You all are AWESOME!!!!!