Flooring Material of Your Choice
 

So my family, namely my dad, has gotten the renovation bug, so all afternoon I've been in the process of moving the contents in my closet to makeshift closets in anticipation of knocking down the current closet walls and making a new closet adjacent and expanding into a neighboring room, as well as laying down new flooring material.

In kitchen and entryway, they will be laying down tile. In the rest of the house, there will be a neutral shade carpet.

Once I realized petitioning for hardwood floors for my corner of the house would be unsuccessful(:()I've been trying to convince them tile is the best flooring for me :)

I was curious what preferences others have.

My ideal order would be:

1. Hard wood floors- not the cheapy kind, but a darker, richer hardwood

2. Big thick tiles- they're so nice and cool to lay on when it's a hot day out.

3. Carpet as a last resort, too much and other things can accumulate really quickly, especially with pets.

I love dark hardwood. I'd petition some more for that shit :)

I love hardwood floors and it adds to the resale value as well...

One of the things my parents had done in one of the houses they had which was cool, was hard wood floors in the majority of the room, and underneath one of the biggest windows was about 3 -4 feet of really pretty ceramic ish tile -- which the dog loved because it was always cold, and it was a great plant area because if the plants flooded it didn't damage the wood floors.

Wood is the way to go!

I managed a floorcovering department for about 7 years. Quite an experience too. We'd have people with 4 kids and 2 dogs come in and want white carpet ... then get upset because it would get dirty. Peoples expectations were insane. I mean, after all, you're walking on it.

My preferences: Good tight, dense carpet in the rooms(with a good dense, less than 1/2" thick pad underneath). Ceramic in walkways. Instead of hardwood I'd go with a wood laminate. Requires less maintenance and usually has scratch, dent, stain warranties.

Hardwood floors are over rated. I much prefer to curl my toes in carpeting, in the middle of winter, than to deal with chilly wooden floors. We have hardwood floors, and carpeting over them is on my list of home improvement wants.

In our living room we wanted to keep the hard wood floor but it was to messed up so we ended up laying carpt. In the toy room we left the hard wood floor. In the kitchen and bathroom we got the sticky tiles I am not really sure what they are called. But after living here for a year or so I want to lay real tiles not so much in the kitchen but in the bathroom. In the bedroom we are planning on putting down carpet.

Hardwood flooring is a great way to add value to a home; it really does make it easier to sell the home. I have ripped out all the carpet in every home I've ever owned, replaced it with hardwood and have always recouped the cost+. A dark, warm, elegant wood that isn't too hard on the pocket is: sapele. It's absolutely gorgeous and is extremely stable. Good luck.

Hardwood floor all the way. I love sliding around in my socks and undies. :)

I would also have a nice rug for people to sit on though in the middle of the living room or whatever.

I prefer laminates. With the good ones, patterns are minimal and you can barely distinguish from hardwood. Its cheap, easy installation, and as mentioned before, stain and scratch resistant characteristics.

I grew up tap dancing... I need hard wood.


And I like "hard wood" for other reasons too.

Tile. I live in Miami and it helps to keep the house cool.

It depends on the use of the rooms for me. I have eucalyptus floors in all the rooms except for the bathrooms which are tile over a concrete base. But in the living room and my bedroom I've layed carpet over the floors because I like to lie on the floors and read books and play board games and stuff so carpet is much more comfortable. And if I ever for some reason decide to sell the hardwood floors are there undamaged under the carpet which just lays on top no carpet tack strips.

We got some major wood here.

:)

Wood, tile, etc.

I've never seen anyone with carpeting here.

(We take off our shoes when we enter someones home/our own home)

I like the wood laminate because its much cheaper than hardwood, and is scratch resistant. Nothing is worse than spending a fortune on hardwood floors and then to have them all scratched up and gouged. Ugh...

Wood is the way to go... you can put area rugs on them for warmth and comfort...

The other thing to check out is bamboo flooring... It installs just like hardwood and has a very similar look to hardwood but it is way more environmentally responsible. Bamboo groves grow back alot faster than wood lots.

i just installed a new product from europe called kronotex...
it's a hardwood laminate that snaps together slick as shit...

linkage

for a video of how to install check this out... linkage

scratch resistant and super easy cleaning - i love it!!! :D

I also just did my living room with kronotek and was easy to do once I got the basics down and it looks fantastic. We used this distresed oak stuff and just love it

I love hardwoods best, but laminate and tile are nice, too. I hate linoleum with a fiery hate. And carpet is just not a possibility for someone with serious dust and pet allergies - trading in carpeting for hardwoods has enabled us to keep our two cats. We still have carpet in the guest room and office, and my allergies are noticeably worse in those rooms.

Anybody ever tried bamboo floors? They're supposed to be as durable as hardwoods but from a more renewable source.

Edit: Forgot to sing the praises of stained concrete floors. My boss has those in her bedroom and bathroom, and they're gorgeous! They're stained a sort of reddish-brown and polished, and they have heating elements running through them so they are nice and toasty for the tootsies, especially in the bathroom.

I did my dinning room, living room and kitchen in bamboo and love it...

btw - i chose kronotex over bamboo because of price - bamboo runs between $2.50 - $5.00 s/f - the kronotex i got for $0.79 s/f

I'm a fan for hardwood floors in living spaces, tile in kitchen and bath areas and dense medium shade carpeting in bedrooms.

I looked at laminate flooring but having seen how it wears (i.e. not all that well) I didn't go that route. That said, if you think of laminate floor as you would cheap carpet... You can afford to replace it as needed.

When I finish my basement I am most likely going to go with a laminate flooring... That way if I ever get water damage replacing the flooring is not as expensive.

I voted other. Mainly because I plan on using a mixture of hardwood, carpet, and tiles.

I have one plank of bamboo flooring in my office. I want to put it in the apartment but right now it's a bit too expensive to take on.. next opportunity for an upgrade it's a toss up between the kitchen and the floors.

After visiting this place, and walking on laminate vs. hardwood. I won't get a whole place laminate. I'll do a small area, but if it's the whole place, it's hardwood. You can really feel the difference like a pair of different shoes.

http://www.goldcoastflooring.com/showroom1.jpg
http://www.goldcoastflooring.com/showroom2.jpg
http://www.goldcoastflooring.com/showroom3.jpg

Cynthetiq do the kitchen... you will thank yourself many times over. I have been nothing but happy since my kichen reno of last year. I now have a kitchen I like being in... Floors can be covered or ignored...

I selected "Other" because I prefer rugs. Carpeting is too permanent, but sometimes hardwood floors can be a real major pain to deal with (LOTS of experience here). So, area rugs are my family's floor covering of choice.

Cynthetiq,

That hardwood selection was enough to make me pick up my argument again! Thanks! :-D

That's what I was planning to do if I bought the house I was looking at. First step, refinish the hardwood floors. Second step, rip out the worn-out linolium tiles in the kitchen and replace them with whatever.

I voted "hardwood", and am interested in what kinds of problems you've encountered with that.

Other: Tatami

Hard wood floors are great! Once they get old and scratched up, you can always sand them down and stain them, and have a brand new looking wood floor again without replacing anything. Plus if you want a softer wood, go with a quark floor! It's a soft wood floor that absorbs sound more than hard wood floors, but is still hard under your feet. It also looks gorgeous! I've never seen a more beautiful floor than the quark floor I saw once on TV on an interior design show.

I love wood floors too...however, from my time in Japan (5 years) I really want to make a Tatami room in my house. It's made of woven bamboo (I think) and comes in around 3' x 6' x2" thick pieces. It is really nice to walk on with your bare feet.

Just one room Tatami and the rest wood, is what I want someday.

clothes. haha just kidding.

In the living area/bedroom, it's carpet. Tile in the kitchen and bathroom. but i love hardwood!

Having two long-haired dogs, we have found that carpeting reduces the number of tumbleweeds rolling across the living room. Dog hair is much easier to vacuum than sweep.

Stairs, however, are another story - it takes longer to vacuum the carpeted stairs than to vacuum the rest of the entire house.

We recently balked at buying a very nice house because the owner - wanting to increase the value - had all the downstairs rooms tiled prior to putting it on the market. What a shame - if she hadn't done that, she would have saved thousands, and we could have bought the house for thousands less. When we factored in the cost of carpeting, it just didn't make sense.

although tile is beautiful, it's hard to clean thoroughly and it's rougher for children, since I have them.
I'd go with hardwood floors.

Hardwood, with rugs in the centre of the rooms so the floor dont look bare, and runners for the hallway / stairs.

geniuses in disguise? :)

this is what i want to do when i eventually build my own house except use wood laminate in place of some of the ceramic tiles.

I love hardwood. Concrete kills my back, even with a good carpet and bad. We have hardwood all over on the first floor, even in the kitchen, which I dislike because it's hell to keep clean in there and has taken a lot of wear, stains, and so on. Eventually we'll put tile in the kitchen. But otherwise hardwood rules. If I had the money, I'd rip out the carpets on the second floor and do hardwood as well, with area rugs and runners for the stairs.

In our area, nearly all hardwood floors are red oak because it grows around here and, frankly, grows faster than it can be chopped down. Makes a great floor.