Browse Forums Flooring & Floor Covering Re: Pre-finished hardwood floor vs pre-finished timber floating 55Nov 17, 2007 7:32 am royalblue :roll: All the more reason that CARPETS have many benefits over such floors! The bottom line is that all floors require maintenance and at some time, restoration. When you look at all the issues around restoration of hard surfaces, carpets are a dream! Ash. Problem with carpets is the ongoing maintenance and susceptibility to staining. If you drop some coffee on a carpet it's a disaster. Do the same on ceramic tile or wooden floor and things are better. Regular cleaning is also an issue. There are a lot more professional carpet cleaners out there than professional wooden floor or tile cleaners. This should tell you something (even when you take into account the relative popularity of carpet). With wood or tile I can be busy for a couple month and neglect them. After that I give them a clean and we're back to square one. With carpet it would never recover. Difficult to identify the ideal flooring area. We know its tiles for bathrooms, but what about the rest of the house. I'm still struggling between wood and tiles (and maybe laminate), at least for the living area. Still leaning towards wood in the bedrooms, but would consider carpet there. Happy to use carpet in the theatre room. Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: Pre-finished hardwood floor vs pre-finished timber floating 56Nov 17, 2007 7:56 am Casa,
If it's no maintenance your after then tiles is the only option. If you look at my last house pics, that is only 3 years of usage on an oil based polyuethane - see the dinng room chair scuffs. Yes they are dark floors so that shows it up more, but with kids who drag chairs across the floor - wooden floors are going to suffer. So - no maintenance with wooden floors (especially if they are dark) is not really an option. Tiles as you know are hard wearing, hard when you drop something, and are colder to touch, but they have their benefits. My advice, it's better to have a house that you can all happily live in without thinking or saying (DONT DRAG THE CHAIRS) or similar to your children all the time. If you want it to look nice all the time with no maintenance - well you know the choice. Steve Re: Pre-finished hardwood floor vs pre-finished timber floating 57Nov 17, 2007 11:04 am Yak_Chat Casa, If it's no maintenance your after then tiles is the only option. Unbelievable! No maintenance is an option maybe, but the grout will normally become pretty gungey, as well as the face of the tiles. Maintenance of tiles is quite necessary, and cleaning the grout can be a nightmare, unless you pay a professional to clean it. I clean carpets, starting at about $3.30 per sq/m. I clean tiles& grout starting at about $5.50 per sq/m. You might have noticed that many of the carpet cleaners you mention are also cleaning tiles too. There are SO MANY misconceptions about floorcovering maintenance, it's hard to know where to start!!!!! Ash. Re: Pre-finished hardwood floor vs pre-finished timber floating 58Nov 17, 2007 11:47 am Allright Ash - I don't mean absolutely no maintenance.
Of course everthing needs a sweep, a clean, a vacuum, a resurfacing, a sealing or something during it's used life. But would you not agree that if you are looking for an relatively easy maintain and clean, non staining, hard wearing surface..... Tiles are certainly at or very near the top of the list? Slate is in my experience, a bit too soft and even with a sealant can be damaged by chairs etc scraping across them. And horses iron clad hooves !!!! Marble and marble like stone materials are expensive and not all that hard wearing or durable. Timber - as we all know needs some care or it too gets scuffed and scratched. Carpet is nice and warm and as you've explained, very good for air quality - but it's not loved by all, and needs regular cleaning to be kept at it's best. And having lived in the extreme climes of the world (tropic to the Artic zones) with a mix of all of these surfaces, I'd put tiles as one of the easier to manage surfaces in a house when children and extended periods of - low maintenance are desired. Which I think is what casa is referring to. And is there not a way of sealing trhe grout between the tiles? But one thing with tiles that does need to be considered, they can make a hous damn noisy - so soft furnishings on the walls and rugs help to stop that echo echo echo feeling. In the tropics (where tiles are even more suited) this not such an issue as you tend to leave the lourves and windows open all the time. Steve Re: Pre-finished hardwood floor vs pre-finished timber floating 59Nov 17, 2007 12:17 pm I was originally going for tiles in the main living area, but switched to floorboards for one reason. We have a four year old, a one year old and another on the way (due in April). We currently live in a unit and, as is mostly th case, everythign is carpeted. Our youngest on many occasions has been sitting on the carpey and fell backwards and not knowing to curlt his head up has hit the carpet with the back of his head with a thud. It's distressing enough on carpet. I'd dread to think what it would be like for tiles. Timber would not be that much better, but it's slighly better.
continues below... Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: Pre-finished hardwood floor vs pre-finished timber floating 60Nov 17, 2007 12:18 pm For our proposed wooden (or tiles) main living area flooring, I've even thought of getting some sort of cloth headwear to protect the skull!
I would never put carpet in the main living area. It's either tile or wood. I don't mind carpet in bedrooms. Actually I like it. Low traffic and low chance of food spillage. However, the wife suffers from allergies and when she was a girl, living with her parents, the allergy got so bad that they had to rip out the carpet and go to floorboards. Now, if I could convince her that there is no allergy problem (dust mites), I'm sure we could get carpet in the bedrooms. We are having carpet in the theatre (acoustic, low risk of staining) and study area. I think deciding on the main living area flooring and sourcing my energy efficient sliding doors to the balcony (two 4 m wide x 2.7 m high opening) are going to take as long as selecting everything else in the house. I should add that I'm adding hydronic in-slab heating in the main living area. Even after I've decided to go for wooden floors I have to decide between engineered wood, slimwood (12mm) or normal floorboards (19 mm). Then I have to decide between direct stick or plywood underlay (batons are not an option since I want all floor levels to be the same and the air gap would not work with hydronic in-slab heating). This is how I feel: Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Hi All. I'm currently resurfacing the hardwood floors and when removing the old layers that there's a long dark line running across the boards. Does anyone know what or… 0 15081 Thanks Simon, I guess I'm no concerned with the volume of the noise rather that dead and hollow sound and feel that is associated with floating floors. But I'm not sure… 3 6426 Thanks, that's the motivation I needed to give it a try sooner rather than one day! 4 3280 |