Kyle wrote:

STAY AWAY FROM LAMINATE! Laminate floors, including the Trafficmaster
Allure recommended by /benick/, are simply a paper or vinyl image of
wood over particle board or some such, and will NOT handle being
scuffed, scratched or dinged. They're fine for light traffic areas
like in your own home where you can care for them, but you have no
control over how your tenant(s) take care of the floors. The same can
be said for some engineered flooring, which is a thin-thin-thin layer
of the real wood over particle or fiber board and any damage cannot
simply be filled in or buffed out.

You're correct about laminate being essentially wallpaper over a backing
stock. But it's then covered with - I don't know - ballistic polycarbonate,
Lexan on steroids, or somesuch.

And it will hold up. We've experimented.

We attacked CHEAP laminate with a pointy-nail, a wood rasp, a hammer, an
orbital sander, and other violations. I asked my local femme-fatal to prance
around on it with spiked heels. Dog-claws don't scratch it. I put strips of
it in a glass of water for a MONTH with no detectable distortion or
swelling. It does, however, burn.

That stuff is almost impregnable! You could make bullet-proof vests out of
it. It doesn't rot and termites won't eat it. It'll be around long after
cockroaches are extinct.

I evem took what I had left over from doing two rooms and covered the
60's-era Formica on the kitchen counters. Looks double-swell (like
butcher-block) and is holding up as well as the Formica (of course I don't
have 40 years of use on it yet...)