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Hardwood vs. Pergo
First time poster. ::waves hi::
DH and I are redoing our flooring, and currently we have ugly carpet and linoleum and it needs to go. We have been debating if we should install actual hardwood or a laminate like Pergo.
We understand the price for hardwood is much higher, and we are willing to pay it if we determine that is the smarter decision. On one hand we are afraid a laminate flooring would look cheap and have popping and cracking problems. On the other hand w/ a kid on the way hardwoods would be harder to keep clean and get scratched up a lot easier.
We live in a cookie cutter neighborhood where I don't think many people have actual hardwood, but is nice enough that a buyer would appretiate it (even though we have no plans to sell for a long time).
We keep flip flopping on what we should do. What do you have and why do you like or don't like it?
Thanks for any info/advice.
Re: Hardwood vs. Pergo
I can't account for the price differences because the house we moved into 18 years ago (built in the 1960's) had all hardwood floors under the carpets.
The living room, however, had finished hardwood floors with varnish. I don't know what type of varnish, because it was here when we moved in. My daughter was 7 days old, and my son 7 years old, when we moved in, and I've never had them re-done. They still look gorgeous, so that's my personal experience with hardwood floors.
We pulled the carpet out in our bedroom when we did "musical bedrooms" when I got married in August 2011. This was the bedroom for one of the kids of the former owners, and had not been finished with varnish. There were some really serious scratches in the middle of the bedroom, such that it was obvious the prior owner's kids had a tantrum, and used something very sharp to gouge the middle of the room with some really big circles. This was not "moved the furniture" type of scratches, this was an angry, tantrum type of scratches, LOL. Our king sized bed covers all of this, and I never went to the expense of sanding and varnishing. We'll be here long enough that it is an issue for way down the road.
I have never had Pergo, so I can't give any advice. I know some real estate people call Pergo "hardwood", so not sure what the impact is, or how it's viewed differently. I can tell you if you go the hardwood route, and varnish the floor, barring any angry tantrums with sharp objects, it holds up well.
FWIW, we'll be re-doing our kitchen this summer. I am convinced there is hardwood under the linoleum that's laid there. I will insist on scraping off any glue, and sanding it, because it then flows nicely into the living room.
We have had both wood (bamboo actually) and laminate flooring. We have a dog (see below) and the laminate held up very well to her paws/nails. We never had any issues with the laminate (cheap stuff from IKEA). It does look cheap-ish.
Now we have hardwood (bamboo). We picked bamboo because it is more durable than most hard woods and it look same. We have a few minor scratches in the floor. It has held up very well to us (and our dog). It was well worth the cost (3.50 per square foot). We only paid about 1.00 per sq. foot for the laminate
*We had laminate in our previous home and bamboo in our current home
{See photos in blog}
Sadie the Dog
Our Kitchen & Bath Reno Blog
Background: I am an Interior Designer, I sell flooring and design kitchens blah, bah, blah.
I have wood in my kitchen/dining/entry ways and I hate it. I have a (almost) 2 year old DD and a 5 year old German Shepherd, they have made their mark on the floor. The floors don't look too bad but they are scratched, boards are gapping (from the current dry air) and wiping water constantly from the entries is a pain.
My plan is to float an LVT over the wood. That way I have a floor that is durable and fits my needs but I am not damaging the wood below.
I would go with either a decent laminate-opt for an individual plank, not a three strip as those look for cheaper, a thicker plank for less of a hallow sound and a decent moisture barrier/ sound deadener for under the laminate. Or, I would go with a nice LVT. LVTs have become more and more popular due to their duribility and new visuals.
We recently bought a home and replaced 1200 sqft of carpeting. We also had a tough time making the decision between hardwood or Pergo. After taking some samples home and "testing" how easy it was to scratch the hardwood with just a pen, we knew it would never survive our pets or future kids. We went with Pergo.
I would recommend getting the BEST laminate you can afford- that's why we went with Pergo. Every single visitor we've had believed it was hardwood! And its held up GREAT, no regrets!
We have a 3 1/2 year old, and one on the way, and a dog. We made the decision to go with hardwood for two reasons: 1) I have never liked how laminate feels under my feet. I don't like how it sounds, and I didn't want to trick people into thinking it was all hardwood. We will be living here for at least 7 years, so we knew it would work for us while we lived in it, and when we go to resell. 2) Since the rest of the house had hardwood, I didn't want to mix that with laminate-- would've looked silly. we did end up doing an engineered wood in our finished basement, but that was because we couldn't put hardwood down there-- no subfloor/below grade.
There is no doubt that pergo holds up like crazy. So if you only want durability, then that is something to consider.
Hardwood does hold up very well, as long as you aren't planning on intentionally scratching it.
We have a 1960s house, and we had all hardwood under all of the nasty carpet--everywhere but the kitchen, bathrooms, and sunroom. We had water damage, which caused us to change our kitchen and sunroom flooring. We decided to do hardwood so it would flow. In the process, we had our existing floors sanded, stained, and varnished. Holy mother they look amazing. I cannot believe what the simple sanding and staining did to them.
From what I've been told, since we had three layers of topcoat put on, they should hold up fairly well for a long time.
EDIT: I have lots of PIPs in my blog (link below) of our hardwood process. More coming soon. They haven't finished our sunroom yet.