On 29 Jun 2003 07:36:58 -0700, (Russ) wrote:

I've decided to go with wood laminate, as I have two big labrador
retrievers who have big sharp nails and like to chase each other
around.

I'm far from an expert, but I did replace our living room carpet with
laminate a year ago, with pretty good results. Here are my comments.

I've narrowed it down to either Wilsonart or Mannington since I've
heard good things about both. Would it be better to pick a 20 year
warantee model over a 15 year? I understand the construction is
better on the 20 year ones vs 15.

Basically, all the laminates come with no warranty. Yeah, I know they all
say they have 15- or 20-year warranties, but when you read the actual text
of the warranty, you find out that it's really no warranty at all.

The only thing they warrant is that it won't wear through some significant
surface area to some significant degree Some of the warranties require a
wear-through of 2 square inches before the warranty is breached. Ours
requires 1 square centimeter, which is a little better, but still pretty
damned unlikely.

The warranty also excludes damage from scratches and falling objects, or
water.

And what does the warranty get you? A $5 replacement board for the one
board that's worn through. Installation is your problem.

No, the best warranty you can get on laminate flooring is to buy an extra
box of matching planks and store it.

And forget about using the warranty as a selling point when you sell your
home. It applies only to the original purchaser.

Don't get me wrong: I have no regrets about our laminate floor. It's just
that the warranties are scams.

I am looking at ordering through either fastfloors.com diyflooring.com
ifloor.com or internetfloors.com. They all seem to have roughly the
same ending price including shipping.

I shopped local and found an extraordinary price of about $2/Sq. foot.
That was slightly better than the best deal I found on the Internet, and
it was patronizing a local store (which also has the advantage that I can
go down and scream at him in person if I needed to, but I didn't).

Is there any way that I can save some money, like maybe by using some
other brand's underlayment (I was told it didn't matter which brand
you use, as long as you use the right type for the subfloor).

The underlayment is a pretty small proportion of the cost, so a
substantial savings there is going to be a small savings overall.

As someone else pointed out, the matching moldings are exorbitantly
priced. We went out and bought plain pine trim, and we applied Minwax
stain/polyurethane to make it a rich dark and glossy color. We gave up on
trying to match the flooring, and found that, as long as our trim was at
least as dark as the flooring, it made a nice framing effect.

A pain in the ass, though; it was priming, sanding, then three cycles of
staining, steel-wooling, staining, steel-wooling and staining a third
time. But the end result was worth it.

We again avoided the matching laminate transition strips where the floor
ran up against the adjoining tile, and used a brass strip instead.

Any suggestions overall?

I take it this is for a living room or some such, right? I'd be hesitant
to put laminate in a kitchen due to reported problems with water, and
kitchens are great sites for spills. OTOH, I've never put it in a kitchen
so perhaps others who have can comment more (In my research, one person
had put laminate at their entryway, and regretted it. He lived in an area
with significant winter snowfall, and kids tracking in snow made for
substantial warping.)

If you're absolutely sold on using laminate in a kitchen you pretty much
must go for the glue-together type. The laminate itself is waterproof,
and the glue is waterproof, so if you put it together completely
correctly, the result is, in theory, waterproof. But I wouldn;t want to
test that. When we redo our kitchen, we'll probably do linoleum again.

The laminate brand we used was Columbia Clic, and I needed to call them
for questions on one issue (due to some problems with my subfloor, not
their product). The gentleman I spoke to was quite helpful.

I gotta disagree with Davefr and Bob on one point: the Laminate we have
seems extremely scratch resistant. Granted, we've only had it a year, but
a year later, it still looks new. It has one scratch, where I set down a
computer too abruptly (moving furniture out of adjoining rooms prepping
for new carpet), and the corner of the case caught the floor, and
scratched it as if I'd taken a screwdriver to it. The scratch is barely
visible. I just went into the other room to look for it, and it took a
long time, even though I knew to within a square yard where it had to be.

I've moved a piano across the floor, with no ill effects.

Good luck!