Flooring question below brought this to mind:

We're looking at hard flooring in our dining area. It's going over linoleum and exposed plywood (there is no original exquisite hardwood in this part of the house to unearth.)

We'd like a laminate product, we think. It will be a heavy, daily use area, lots of sliding chairs, foot traffic and general abuse.

What I don't like about many laminate surfaces I have walked on is the hollow, plastic sound and thin, flexible feel you get when walking on them. What am I looking for in product or installation that will give a solid feel? Should it be wood after all?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2017 03:54PM by Acer.

You need a solid foundation and it needs to be nailed in. You also need a real wood engineered product like solid wood only slightly cheaper. What you have probably walked on is floating laminate. That would give you that cheap feeling.

See here: [www.slaughterbeckfloors.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2017 04:09PM by Carm.

We like our bamboo. It's survived as well as any of our laminate.

Have you considered deck material. Some of that is very attractive.

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If your linoleum is glued down well you can glue or nail and use the thinner laminates.
If your linoleum is not glued down you're really gonna want to nail your laminate down. As long as you have the required substrate to nail to.

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Laminate vs hardwood
[www.coswick.com]
We did floating laminate and it looked nice for about a year. Then it started looking bad. Water, dirt and dropping stuff on it damage. (We have dogs and children). Ripped it out in the living room, dining,office, and kitchen. We keep it in the bedrooms. This was in my second home.

Current home has porcelain tile that looks like wood. Much better and more durable, not from local home improvement centers, they didn't have the color or size that we wanted. Has held up well and no complaints.

We have had real wood floors in our house for 15 years on a concrete subfloor -- not even super good stuff, maybe 3/8" -- but its as solid as day one.

Lots of little scratches and what not, but no buckling, or separating, or wear patterns.

I suppose the good laminate, like $5 SF might be as good, or at least it feels like it when I touch in in Home Depot -- but no idea what it will look like in 15...

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Edited 999 time(s). Last edit at 12:08PM by jdc.

I'll second Carm's suggestion of engineered wood. Even the best laminate is going to have a limited lifetime in a high-traffic area.

Engineered wood is a good compromise between actual solid hardwood and laminates.

faux wood ceramic tile. it is solid, will hold up to heavy use, water and spill proof, and likely quieter than laminate. The pieces I've seen look very good.

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Real hardwood planks. Pay once, cry once.

We put in composite stuff that's, like, 1/4-3/8" thick (on top of the existing subfloor, on top of "silent floor" manufactured joists). It feels pretty solid, but has a slightly softer-than-tile harness, so dropped plates don"t automatically shatter (it's in the kitchen).

Wife says it's called "LVT" (for "luxury vinyl tile").

If you are not going to put in a thick real wood floor, then the task of providing a solid feel falls to the subfloor. This could mean adding a layer of 3/8" plywood, or tearing out what is already in place and putting down new 3/4" ply.

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sekker
We like our bamboo. It's survived as well as any of our laminate.

We put in the click-lock bamboo stuff from Costco several years ago and it has been great. Very durable, easy to clean, simple installation and it looks great. Subfloor is kinda thin so it will flex in places but that's fine with me, and it does not have that cheap laminate thin/hollow sound.

Only issues have been due to expansion and contraction, mostly the latter. Wound up leaving too much of a gap around some edges which have since contracted beyond the cover of the moulding. I will be able to put a thicker moulding board in to help cover that, but next time I would leave less of a gap. User error.

What about roofing felt?