hard wood vs. laminate

Sorry Im at jury duty today and as of right now its BOOORRRRING so i thought I would start posting away!!
Do hard wood floors need to be installed by pros?
I know Lam you can do yourself and I think its cheaper.
Tell me all you know about these 2 products......Amuse me

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

You can install hardwood yourself... it's much harder than installing laminate though since you need glue, nails, etc. We installed laminate wood in our house.

The laminate wood we got was click-lock floating meaning that all we had to do was click the planks into eachother and the floor just floats over the concrete. It got tricky making sure all the planks were different sizes around eachother and making the cuts at the ends had to be pretty perfect, but it came out great.

We we went with laminate over hardwood mostly for cost reasons and b/c we live in FL. It's actually really popular here. Most people either have this, tile or carpet in their homes... we didn't see much hardwood in homes when we were looking.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

We did laminate flooring in the bedroom, halls and dining room. I did most of it myself. It really wasn't that hard, you just need to be patient. We got it at Costco and after 2 years it still looks great.
I love hardwood but it was just too much $$.

ETA: We got more expensive laminate for the kitchen.. guess what.. it's all scratched! Price doesn't always make a difference.

Message edited 10/28/2008 11:55:05 AM.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

we just did the entire downstairs of my house in pergo laminate. I love it. I would have loved hard wood but it was too $$$$.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

We installed both hardwood and laminate in our house ourselves. The laminate was a bit easier because all the pieces were nice and straight, and they clicked into each other. The hardwood had some imperfections because its natural and they had to be nailed to the subfloor. We rented the nailer from home depot.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

We have laminate in our kitchen and living room. My DH did it. We have it because we are on a slab.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

We are getting laminate and my DH will be doing it by himself. he's done it before and said it was pretty easy.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

Quite honestly, we have beautiful hardwood floors in our upstairs and laminate in our downstairs and I MUCH prefer the laminate! If you can imagine that! And everyone who comes over that doesn't know we put down laminate thinks it's hardwood.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

hardwood is def. harder to put in.

in my opinion, laminate doesn't even compare to it! the real wood is so much prettier but of course, more money....if you can afford real wood, go for it! we have one room (unfortunately!) w/ laminate (on a slab) and it bugs me!HAHA!....i can't wait to put an area rug over it!....

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

hands down the real thing looks better. I think it's much more costly though.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

We put down hardwood in our living room and hall way 2 years ago. It was SOO worth it. DH and his brother did all the work themselves.. it was not easy but it saved a lot of money.

We bought the wood at Home Depot.. it was Bruce.. took them about 2 days to do it. They worked through the night though.. once you get the hang of it it goes faster.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

I definitely prefer hardwood over laminate. However, now that I have hardwood in my house I find it a pain in the butt to maintain. I feel like it scratches so easily. It's very annoying.

Re: hard wood vs. laminate

We put down laminate in our Kitchen/DR. DH did it with a friend in two nights. It seemed pretty easy and looks very nice.

We also had hardwood floors refinished in the rest of the house. The real hardwood floors look much nicer, but we couldn't afford to do the rest of the house.

Laminate flooring is a great option if you can't swing the real thing. I personally like real hardwood better, but the laminate can look really nice as well.