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Hard wood floors

Often, suppliers and installers will suggest a product because they are most comfortable with using that product, not because it is the best for you. Get many opinions and use you best bullsh*t detector when listening to them. Play dumb and ask questions to which you know the answers to gauge how much they know and how much they assess things the same as you do before taking their advice to heart.

Jay's advice about using the traffic anticipated in the room as a guide is useful, but only if you want or need to cut corners. Otherwise, go with the best stuff available.

After researching it extensively and balancing the costs/benefits, I originally decided upon Universal Engineered Floors from Home Depot. The fact that engineered floors use only the top layer of premium wood and thus save money by using plywood milling for the rest of the layers made me think I would get a better floor for less by doing so. Also, because the plywood layers of Engineered wood floors are criss-crossed, they work together to avoid warping. I also liked the plan of "floating" the floor over foam because I have a concrete subfloor and wanted to cushion the floor.

Unfortunately, I think my reliance on Home Depot as the supplier limited my choices and led me to a bad choice. Before I installed the Universal flooring, I researched it some more at other stores and on the Internet, and developed a much better appreciation of the different types of Engineered wood and solid wood.

First, you can get solid wood floor direct from wholesalers off the Internet for less than anything available at Home Depot, which surprised me.

Second, not all engineered wood floors are created equally. They use different glues, different thicknesses, different number of layers, different finishes, and different quality "stuffing" for the lower layers. There is no magic rule such as "think is better" or "more layers are better." All thing being equal, those two guidelines are legitimate, but things are never quite equal. Thick top layers can be made of shoddy wood, and nice top layers of fine wood can be so thin that they will scratch off with a single, deep gouge.

Third, warping is not a huge problem on most wood floors, so that benefit of Engineered wood is not that great. Good installation should eliminate almost all warping, and warping can be fixed by nailing the offender down.

Fourth, the Universal floor product I bought comes in tiles that are three planks wide. They pitched it as making installation easier because you installed one-third the number of rows. Although it looked o.k. on the display at Home Depot, I finally saw some installed in a neighbor's apartment, and I could very easily see the seams every three planks, especially in the sunlight reflection near windows. It looked like a tile floor, not a plank wood floor. Some engineered wood products come in single-wide planks, but be advised that those that use multiple-plank widths do NOT look the same as those with single-plank widths.

Fifth, floated floors tend to produce an undesireable, cheap, "clicking" noise when walked upon with hard-soled shoes. Glueing is an option, but it often yields a surface that is no more comfortable than the subfloor. I did not want a concrete-hard wood floor. So I opted instead to lay down 3/4 inch plywood as a underlayment, and nail the wood floor to the underlayment for stability. Thus, I did not need engineered floors for my installation; I could go with either one.

Last, I came back to the ultimate point that I have been in 300 year-old homes and public buildings with still-beautiful, original, solid wood floors, and none with Engineered wood floors. Perhaps 300 years from now, people will talk differently, but Solid Wood has stood the test of time, whereas Engineered wood has not been able to do so. Cared for properly, I decided that solid wood floors would be the best bet, and nailing them down the preferred installation method.

The final decision is finished vs. unfinished. Although pre-finished floors significantly reduce the costs and hassles of installation, and although the factory-finishes are often smooth as silk and stronger than polyurethane, you need to have some bevel on the edges so that you do not have ridges. On unfinished floors, you just sand out the microscopic difference between plank heights, which creates a smooth, level surface that I wanted. By installing and finishing onsite, you also can create a truly sealed finish, where the polyurethane seeps between the microscopic seams between planks and seal them better. So I opted for unfinished solid wood.

[This message has been edited by Lawrence (edited August 25, 2001).]