New flooring

[accuratehorn]

Turning my attention to the inside of my house-we will remove the carpet due to allergy considerations and install new flooring.
We bought used pull-out 3/4" solid maple high school gym flooring, and have stored it for four years, but we are giving up the idea of installing it, so we will sell it. We have a slab, and the right way to install the maple is over a subfloor, although it can be glued down. This would require raising everything 1 and 1/2 inches, a job in itself, then the sanding and refinishing would be a big job. The costs of a professional installing it are large, and the logistics daunting-they would want us to move all the furniture into a storage container in the driveway and move out for three weeks or so.
So we decided to get something that is new and already finished. That leaves glue down wood, or snap together "floating" wood, cork or engineered laminate products.
Does anyone have experience with the floating floor products, and what are the drawbacks? Do they seem cheap or flimsy, feel funny underfoot, tend to curl up or other problems?
Laminates can be as expensive as some wood floors, Pergo at Lowe's is over $3 a sq foot, for example.
It is hard to decide which way to go.
They are making the laminates better now and some look like wood, with grain and "distressed" patterns and textures. There is one we can get for $1.19 a foot, pecan (thin) tongue and groove glue down for $3.99 a foot, lots of choices.

 

[brntorng]

I used a commercial grade Mannington engineered flooring glued over a slab and am very happy with the result. 25 year finish warranty and it's holding up extremely well. You're doing the right thing by avoiding the solid wood over a slab. It can be done, but it's not a good solution.

Personally, I don't like floating floors because I don't like how they feel and sound under foot. Night and day when compared with a glued or nailed floor. Also, I suspect floating hurts resale value because many times it's seen as a cheap DIY floor.

You can order flooring online and save a ton of money. They'll ship it freight to your door and there's no tax.

At least half of the work is preparing the slab. Any paint overspray from construction has to be removed and the slab has to be leveled to a pretty tight spec. This can mean filling low spots and grinding down high spots. You'll need a heavy duty grinder with a diamond cup wheel to remove the paint (piece of cake) and grind the high spots.

 

[MarylandHorn]

I put in a Bruce hardwood stick-on floor several years ago and was relatively happy with it, though I had a problem in one area where the slab wasn't level. Everywhere else it was fine. The job was really simple and the feel of the floor was soft to walk on with the foam tape backing. It is far easier than the glue down too. My only recommendation is that you make sure the slab is level, dry, and clean. If not level, either hone it down as mentioned by the above poster, or poor some leveleing compound on the area that sags. But let it dry a really long time or you won't stick to it. It has to be both dry and have no sand grit on the surface for the wood to stick down and not bounce later. Patience counts...

As for the floating floor, I'm not a fan because you can't sand it down later to refinish it when it wears out. The engineered hardwood has a pretty long warranty, and you can refinish it 2 - 3 tiems over it's life.

 

[taco]

I just finished putting down thomasville brazilian teak engineered snap together that I got from Home depot. it was the hardest/most scratch resistant I could find. (I scratched samples with a key). My main concern is dogs and kids scratching.

I didn't want to do glue down due to time/mess.

Its only been a few weeks and seems fine. no crackling noises etc like many people complain about. my slab was pretty flat but any dips of 3/16th or more you should deal with. theres a couple that i didn't and I can notice them, although they aren't that bad. I also got floor muffler underlayment which helps. don't go cheap on that if you do floating.

I helped my brothre install bellawood glue down and its nicer but more work/mess installing

I don't think I will lose many potential buyers I'm not that high end

next step is baseboards

 

[accuratehorn]

Are you putting the wood in the kitchen/bathrooms, taco? Probably not with kids in the bathrooms. We don't have kids or a dog right now, could get a dog later, which is an issue on flooring.

 

[7Titles]

We put down an engineered wood that has a hansdcraped finish. Its glued to a slab. The one thing about gluing it to a slab is that its hard as a rock, as in there is absolutely no give when you step, or any sound for that matter. This was new contruction and they came in with some kind of large machine that cleaned the floors, then they glued it down realtively quickly. Id say we have about 2000 sq ft of the stuff and there was one spot that had an extremely slight pop when you walked on it, the guy came back and fixed it. Im happy with it, I just dread the cost of replacing it if we are still there is 20 years or so. Removing glued to the slab wood flooring would seem costly.

 

[brntorng]

I'd recommend not putting wood flooring in "wet" rooms. Even if you're careful, all it takes is a leaky pipe and you have a ruined floor. I've seen it happen way too many times.

With surface finishes being what they are these days, a dog shouldn't be much of a problem on a wood floor. You may want to put down area rugs or runners in high traffic areas, though, to extend the life of your floor.

 

[taco]

I only did living room, entry and dining room. the wet rooms already had tile.

I second the recommendation of not putting it in wet rooms. Maybe go with tile instead?

my advice is to shop around. theres so many different types out there and every salesman had a different perspective it seemed.

For example, my friend put in bamboo glue down recently thinking it was supposed to be very hard/scratch resistant. The dogs scratched it up in no time. So I was asking about this while shopping, some guys would say all bamboo is soft, some would say only certain kinds and he got the wrong kind, etc.

 

[brntorng]

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[cbs]

We used marmoleum "click" flooring floating floor, and we get tons of compliments on it. We're 5 years in, and it's held up well. It's a little more expensive than what you're talking about.

 

[BigWill]

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[Tailgate]

We had a glued down wood floor (I did not know it until a pipe broke) and it took four days for them to remove @ 1,000 square feet of it. They had to have a jack-hammer type device do it and the second day.

Luckily insurance covered this, but I cannot imagne trying to replace this kind of stuff on my own.

 

[AustinBat]

I used vinyl planks in one of my bathrooms. It looks like wood, is installed like wood, but is exremely easy to take care of. I probably wouldn't use it in a large area, but it's great for a bathroom.

 

[accuratehorn]

We've looked at marmoleum, linoleum, cork, wood, engineered wood, engineered bamboo, bamboo, laminate...
Right now we are trying to sell the maple, and if no one is interested, we are probably going to glue it down to the slab. Could be a mistake, but it won't be my first.

 

[cbs]

When we remodeled, we took out the wood flooring that was glued down. We had about 200-300 square feet. The wood came off easily, but it left a lot of glue residue. It took me 3-4 nights of me and some Jasco to get it all up, but overall, it came off okay.