My honey has decreed decided that she wants to go back to wood floors. We have some in the house, but they have been covered in carpets for the past 35 years. I belie3ve they probably aren't in the best of shape.
As we have 3 dogs (a total of 270 lbs worth) she wants the "dog proof" kind.(Her exact words). I was looking at Lumber liquidators and I suspect that their Bellawood is what she is talking about. Could anyone here confirm that for me?
The second thing is how hard is it to match existing flooring? As I said earlier, we do have some existing wood floors. I suspect that it might be better to spend the extra $500 and get enough pre-finished to match the two rooms. Any comments?
Thanks in advance...
P.S. My parents would cringe as they spent good money back in the 70's for carpeting...We grew up with all wood flooring.
No such thing as a dog proof floor unless it's concrete. ;D
I'd have a look at what's under the carpeting. Our old house, built in the early 50's had real nice hardwood lurking under the wall to wall carpeting. It was nice after sanding and refinishing. I think a lot of older hardwood floors were covered over with wall to wall as the old wood floors that were simply waxed and polished were a lot of work to keep shiny. That was what my parents had before longer lasting modern floor finishes came along.
As for matching old to new... does it have to be a perfect match? Sometimes complementary looks fine too. ???
Dog nails are harder than any wood I've ever heard of. The maple I put in my house got scratched almost immediately. Accept it; embrace it; go rustic! People pay good money for "hand" scraped flooring. Go "dog nail" scraped!
Seriously, consider a softwood like doug fir or a variety of pine, and don't worry about it getting marked up. If one area gets abused and doesn't match the un-trafficked areas, then manually ding & scrape the other areas to match.
If there's existing hardwood under the carpets, I like Mtn Don's points as well.
Anyone recall the movie The Money Pit? Remember the scene where (someone) is "distressing" the wood floorings with chains? He's saying, "This is distressing!"
It is odd that everyone seems to say that hardwood floors will be irreversibly marred by dog nails. It is almost stated as fact, but my experience is otherwise.
The floors in our 1916 bungalow in Tulsa were the original red oak, covered by real wool carpet (probably from the 50's!) when I bought the house in 1995. I ripped that carpet up first thing and did nothing more that cleaned the floors with Murphy's oil soap every couple of weeks. This lasted about 6 years when the original finish (shellac and wax I suspect) was finally worn through and I was finally finished moving doors and walls around.
I rented the HD oscillating floor sander (slow but idiot-proof), spent days sanding, stained with an oil based stain, applied 3 coats of oil-based high gloss poly followed by one coat of satin with a light screening between each coat. They were amazingly beautiful floors at that point! For the next six years we cleaned them with nothing more than a drop of Dawn in a 2-gal bucket of hot water and a rag mop.
Last year, we got serious about renting that house out and had a pro come in to freshen up the floors...he did a light screening and one coat of satin oil-based poly and called it good. Wife says there is only one place you can even see the nail marks from my 90# Newfie or her 85# Lab/Dane mix...plus our other three dogs...and that is where my Newfie liked to dive from the bed (3' off the floor) 5' out to skid head-first into the coffee table (he was not that bright) when someone came to the front door.
So far our house in Hammond shows no wear from the dogs and we have a little over 200# of dogs at this time. This is 2 ½ years since the floors where done in a similar manner. These floors even include two rooms with heart pine while the rest are white oak.
We do keep their nails trimmed but we are not fanatical about it...YMMV.
Mike
It is the Newfie blood my wife is worried about. Ours is a 110 lb Newfie/Black Lab mix. He is a gentle giant. But like all new Newfies he is headstrong and can raise quite a ruckus just doing his own thing.
Our Newfie was "my" dog...which is rare in our world. He would get up from wherever he was at 4:30PM and go lie down in front of the door waiting for me to get home from work. Loved kids, cats and any dog on leash. Never chewed or dug but could only be crated with one of his sisters in there with him.
Hated dogs off leash. Barked without end when someone came onto our porch (with his tail waggin the whole time). Would not allow a stranger to approach my wife if they were out on a walk without me, but never had to resort to anything more dangerous than that echoing low-pitched growl that sounds like it comes from miles away.
In addition to the launch off the bed into the coffee table his other favorite was running full tilt from the back of the shotgun bungalow to the front to see who was on the porch and forgetting to slow down...bamm! skidding, full-tilt slam into the multi-light front door. Broke three panes with that hard head of his before I screwed a piece of plexi to the bottom half of the door.
He was a dog left chained and abandonned when his owners blew town in the middle of the night to skip out on three months back rent. Local shelter called us after rehabing him for three days because they did not believe he could be put out for general adoption due to his size, skin condition (ended up a flea allergy) and general fear of all people. Grady bounced back from his abuse faster than any dog under our care before or since, but I just could not put him up for adoption. He died of kidney failure (a result of his earlier living conditions) while I was on my second tour in Iraq and I miss the big stupid lug.
If that guy could not damage a hardwood floor, nothing short of a rotweiler with sandpaper paws could do it. But again, I am certainly in the minority believing this.